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Kahoko is a Hot Mess. Same old nonsense amplified
So after the wonderful birthday parties, weddings, and big moments are over, comes “Ordinary time” where Kahoko, Hajime, and the family have to live their regular boring lives. There’s only one problem- Kahoko talks a big talk but can’t back up any of her words with any real action that keeps her daily life or family going. Her day care business is a failure and in debt, she can’t cook, clean, or do anything except fall asleep like a big baby mid-task, just like the first series. And seriously what is up with her clothes? Why does she still dress like a cross between a 1 year old baby and a grandma? How does a fine young man like Hajime fall for a mess like Kahoko? Besides, the two have zero chemistry- they’re more like brother and sister than romantic partners.This “Special” is dedicated to showing how life after the romance, honeymoon, wedding, “happily ever after” big dramatic celebration moments falls apart because it’s the boring mundane stuff of the everyday, which Kahoko and the rest of them are terrible at. After the “big wedding” or the “big birthday bash” is the time when they say “What now?” And they simply can’t sustain it. If the characters get bored for five minutes, they stir up drama like kahoko’s parents getting a divorce. Why? Just because! Every time Hajime is having a serious conversation with Kahoko, she gets a call from someone in her extended family who’s having a meltdown and she needs to run away mid conversation and give them a wide-eyed pep talk to make them come to their senses, and then all of a sudden her mom and dad who were hell-bent on handing in the divorce papers, are now lovey dovey again. These characters really resemble 2D cartoon characters and at some point -I think it was the airport scene with Ito and her parents, I realized that I don’t give a **** about any of these characters anymore. Maybe a different director made this special because it’s like the original series on steroids, but more annoying, superficial, and more unrealistic in a bad way. Kahoko gets more and more annoying and incompetent and big baby like and I really don’t see what Hajime “sees” in her at all- she’s totally self centered like a toddler and only cares about putting out ridiculous dramatic fires in her family one after another because her grandma told her to keep the family together and keep having birthday parties, without the regular care or need to tend to her relationship with Hajime- he’s essentially an afterthought and a side character in her extended family drama. She does things like get married or have kids just to make people in her family happy or “make her grandma happy” like in the series, and it’s ridiculous. Her mindset is so immature it’s annoying to watch. And for some reason, whenever anything in the show falls apart like the daycare center they started, or Kahoko’s parents’ marriage, or her own marriage with Hajime, or Ito’s plans to go to Vienna, or Tomatsu the foster kid- all it takes is for Kahoko to run over to each like like a large baby and start talking really fast about “how they should keep going because… ganbatte!” while hyperventilating like a toddler and either passing out or falling asleep mid-sentence and then all of a sudden the problems are all fixed. Kahoko keeps intervening in different situations that are none of her business just because she doesn’t want her idyllic world to fall apart, and she doesn’t want other people to get divorced because she will be sad! So she nags at everyone to keep going with whatever nonsense isn’t working just to keep her own mental ideal of them intact. What on earth am I even watching? And then she has two babies at the end, because they needed the perfect next big dramatic moment to punctuate the end of the show. This show is like a Facebook highlight reel of the “big moments,” where the little everyday moments are really not working at all and at the end of any “real” everyday conversation is “Well then maybe we should break up!” If Kahoko’s mother wasn’t there to take care of the entire family, the whole family would be f***d. Kahoko the overgrown toddler isn’t capable of sustaining a marriage, a family, a house, or anything for that matter. They should just call her “Incompetent Kahoko.” In the first season she was a bit endearing because the concept was kind of new, but to see her try to sincerely break out of her infantile state while succumbing to her impromptu naps was at least somewhat entertaining. But this special was just bad. It was the same Kahoko if she was a few years older and was the same and can’t do anything properly except fall asleep mid conversation. It shows how she’s utterly incapable of sustaining and relationship and should have never gotten married, but marriage to her is just a “big moment to make people happy!” What over-simplistic garbage. I say Hajime needs to find a better partner.
It’s funny because the series seems to be about “family is the best no matter what!” But it just shows how dysfunctional the whole family experience is, and is more like a cautionary tale to be careful when making the decision to get married and have kids instead of just falling into it because “that’s what everyone does.” In the very last scene, Kahoko’s grandpa (the dad’s dad) says to Hajime how much he is going to suffer with kids. The hint underneath the “wonderful family picture” is basically torture and suffering that people just “check out” like that grandpa.
The best part of the series is the “Family Song” theme song by Gen Hoshino- it’s very addicting and breathes life into an otherwise long dead story.
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The whole series and SP were manic and OTT and relentlessly awful. The Drama at least had the redeeming feature of the titular lead's own growth from 22 year old child to functioning adult, but sitting through all 11 episodes (inc this SP) is, perhaps ironically, enough to reduce sane viewers to gibbering wrecks.
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I finished the original Overprotected Kahoko series earlier today (I'M IN LOVE WITH IT), and in my eagerness to consume more media about this wonderful cast of characters, I immediately jumped into the special. And I have to unequivocally say that I am Not in love with the special. In fact, it's not only not worth watching, it almost tainted my feelings for the original series.It's not that the special is necessarily terrible. It's just........not exactly good either. The characters are still the same, and the situations are (mostly) in line with something you might expect them to go through (although there were a few things that had me side-eyeing), but because the writer doesn't have the luxury of ten episodes to really flesh things out, the whole thing ends up feeling very rushed and incomplete. I think if this had been a ten episode season 2 instead, it probably could have been just as good as the original season as all the necessary ingredients are there. But as it is, it's just a disappointment.
Overprotected Kahoko (the original series) has officially made it into my top ten favorite Asian dramas of all time, so I definitely recommend watching it, but I would suggest skipping this special. It's a waste of time.
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