Love and Fortune Episode 12

I like controversial.

Unlike other viewers, I gravitate towards controversy so it was actually the fact that a thirty something year old woman falls for a high school boy, that captivated me. So the fact that Wako does not face criminal charges did not matter to me. I appreciate how they demonstrate the flaws and make no main character likeable. An example is Fu. Initially I was disgruntled because he felt like an archetypal douchebag, however he was just callow and never seemed to think of anything deep enough. He did love her and have a sense of obvious right and wrong but he didn’t have the nuance for emotion. I’m glad they decided to give him texture by him trying for Wako after realizing her dissatisfaction, and not cheating despite of being so enticed and Wako herself doing it first. Yet he inevitably could not suddenly grow all that consideration. I didn’t enjoy how Wako never explicitly protested except the one time and thought it would all work out. She is rarely honest at all, yet she is victimized. If she even victimized after being honest, that would make her more sympathetic and less of an airhead. The fact that the characters have no means of understanding each other when they easily could is frustrating.The acting was decent I suppose, though the lack of communication bothered me significantly. Wako so often withholds the truth. She is tremendously meek. The fact that she is narrating makes it feel as if we are naturally supposed to sympathize with her, in a society where so much of her worth is as a mother and how she flips that around by fornicating with a boy who she could be the mother of. I don’t find that social commentary insightful given how I myself am a female close to Iko’s age, from a far more sexist country. That makes it more difficult for me to empathize as I am in a society like that but even worse, and this is an unreasonable response. It was intriguing initially, when she clearly felt so wrong initiating but she slowly lost that awareness. The lack of genuine conversation other than for melodramatic purposes makes me wonder why there is even a relationship. This is my central issue with the drama overall. It felt as if they had such limited mental capacity. Their interests felt shallow, whether with the movies or each other. I did like the visual metaphors though, with the gacha golden lion, the dripping water tap and such. They were the most thoughtful aspects of the work. I enjoyed how the relationship with Iko deteriorated and in a contorted way, she still stayed and they both achieved their dreams together. I wasn’t that perturbed by their relationship overall because Wako herself felt like a child. Her mental faculties felt quite limited, she had some self awareness and that was it. Her actions and her desires were all too often impulsive, complementing Iko’s overly domineering possessiveness. None of her relationships were anything substantive because Wako herself was not. I’m not certain if that is the point of the drama since having her as a narrator made her more sympathetic. Tsuchiya was the closest thing to a likeable character and it was good for her to reject him as after all, she is fundamentally an idiot so it makes sense for her to gravitate towards those instead of a genuine person.Overall I would say the artistic details are the best, with the metafiction (forgot the term) of the movie along with visual metaphors, the shots, the colour palette and so on. Acting was convincing. Just the blandness and the very trite theme often bored me.TL;DR: dialogue is too choppy and simple, negligible flow of conversation. Probably attempts at artistry. Message is trite. Characters dumb and vapid, dialogue fitting. Concept is intriguing and the portrayal of it too.

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