This review may contain spoilers
Takahashi is great
The reason I watched this was because I needed more from this actor after binging on Kishibe Rohan. This series is very addicting- I watched 6 episodes in one day. And the rest of the episodes started coming in like a slow drip.
Takahashi has this quality where he can be overly confident and borderline narcissistic while having a big heart of gold underneath. I think this is innate to the actor’s personality and so he can portray a broad depth of characters. Neo and Eito seem like opposites but are really two sides of the same coin. Even as Neo who is supposed to be overly driven and narcissistic and selfish, you can see the kindness in him underneath all of it. There is a vulnerability in him even in that role. To see how that mind or soul adjusts to life as Eito is really interesting because out of necessity he builds compassionate which is already there in him in seed form.
The story reminds me of The Family Man, where the first version of the main character is a high flying executive businessman who puts his relationship with some chick on the back burner, and he gets transported by a magical moment to have a glimpse into a different life where he had chosen the female over his career. He wakes up in a brood of kids and his wife- they’re poor, but happy and have hearts of gold. The businessman is painted as a arse, while the poor man with the wife and kids is painted as a saint where “real happiness” lives. To me the second life looked like hell- and endless loop of the same old boring family characters crowding the scene with their needs and wants, and behaving in foolish, ignorant, and trashy ways, calling it happiness. This is the same virtue signaling I see in Reborn- the idea that poor people have hearts of gold and the rich like Neo are scum. But Neo has a good heart. If you look closely, the poor ones in Eito’s life are just as sinful, selfish, egotistical, money hungry, and greedy as the rich folk, sometimes even more so. The only thing is it is all mixed in with foolishness, sentimentality, and ignorance in business so they look even more ridiculous. And Sarasa making her ridiculous comments to her money hungry dad Kinpei San who lost their shopping street’s entire savings with bad stock investments, like “Maybe it’s good that you lost all that money, because I like seeing you working hard!” What? What kind of ridiculous nonsense is that? But when Neo offers a very fair deal to by up their shopping street and secure their futures with a lucrative relocation package in the name of “For the People” which he offered to pay 5 times the original amount, but the shopping street people are in an uproar because they “Don’t want to leave their home” and some sentimental nonsense even though they blew all their savings in some stock market fraud and have no customers left- but they have to blame everything on the rich CEO guy because “He must be bad and we need someone to blame for our problems even though we blew all of our savings which came from Eito who is really the mastermind of Neo so we should actually be doubly thankful to Neo.” The fools of Akari shopping street are painted in a kind of saintly idealistic light as if they have hearts of gold when they are just ignorant, pompous, arrogant, greedy, and prideful for no good reason. They freely take Eito’s help, but constantly sabotage their success and go off drinking or harming themselves (ie Kinpei) whenever they have problems without regard to their families that they claim to care about. Kinpei starts getting drunk everyday in the name of bonding and sentimentality and eventually causes himself and the family the ultimate harm which is just an ego image of “We’re good people unlike that horrible Neo!” Again virtue signaling. Kinpei getting drunk shamelessly in front of his daughter while telling Eito useless old stories about Sarasa in diapers while she smiles on is not bonding or love, but dysfunction, coping, and addiction wrapped in sentimentality. Sentimentality is NOT true love or honorable or virtuous. Kinpei commits suicide and the whole family blames it on Neo, instead of understanding that every person is accountable and must take responsibility for their own actions. Neo didn’t kill Kinpei- Kinpei drank himself to madness and killed himself. He must be held responsible instead of blaming it on Neo and attempting to murder him. Taking their anger out not on Kinpei’s foolishness, but on Neo and other people who have nothing to do with Kinpei’s self destruction (he was known to drink too much even when Sarasa was a child and this fate was inevitable for him regardless of the situation). None of the fools on Akari shopping street understand the mind of Neo/Eito and even though he grows to love them or whatever, he remains set apart from them and an outsider. He is the only kind soul in that Akari Shopping street group that has any integrity. The shopping street fools never properly thank him or understand the gravity of how much he has constantly helped them.
Eiji (Eito’s father) tries to keep all the fools chained to his failing ridiculous shopping district for the sake of “memories” or sentimentality, which is nothing but stupidity and senseless attachment to material things and has no honor in it. Clutching to a dying shopping street business for what?
The croquette lady says this dialogue to Eiji following Kinpei’s second round of suicide: “Maybe it’s time to stop forcing your feelings on others. Everyone wants to stay. But if we stay, we’ll all die in the gutter. Face reality, Eiji. To survive, sometimes, you have to let something go…. (These younger guys).. they still have a future! How long will you keep them tied to this place? They’ll go along with you because they’re good, foolish people. Can you take responsibility for their lives? Our memories will live on in our hearts. We can dream of the day we come together again. Isn’t it time we let go?” This is probably the most sensible line of dialogue that came out of Akari shopping street. Finally someone had sense knocked into them. Though they pat themselves on the back for being “good foolish people,” there is nothing good or inherently righteous about being foolish and sentimentally attached to a dying business.
Eito’s father is truly a piece of work. Speaking of zero integrity, he blows all of Eito’s psychic prediction money that was supposed to be used to pay off their debts and instead bought himself a flashy suit and a watch and plunged them deeper into debt. How is that an heart of gold? “Oh but they’re just lovable family people!” No they’re not! And this father has no remorse except for an ugly sad expression as if he deserves pity for his own greed. And they somehow declare themselves saintly and virtuous compared to the rich guys. It’s abominable. The “low income” characters in the story are just as flawed and sinful or even more so than the rich ones, but the rich are blamed even when they do good. The poor just haven’t had the chance to play out their dysfunctional tendencies on a grander scale like the rich- just give them a lottery win and see what happens. They’ll blow it all in a few months. We all know how that turns out.
Takahashi has this quality where he can be overly confident and borderline narcissistic while having a big heart of gold underneath. I think this is innate to the actor’s personality and so he can portray a broad depth of characters. Neo and Eito seem like opposites but are really two sides of the same coin. Even as Neo who is supposed to be overly driven and narcissistic and selfish, you can see the kindness in him underneath all of it. There is a vulnerability in him even in that role. To see how that mind or soul adjusts to life as Eito is really interesting because out of necessity he builds compassionate which is already there in him in seed form.
The story reminds me of The Family Man, where the first version of the main character is a high flying executive businessman who puts his relationship with some chick on the back burner, and he gets transported by a magical moment to have a glimpse into a different life where he had chosen the female over his career. He wakes up in a brood of kids and his wife- they’re poor, but happy and have hearts of gold. The businessman is painted as a arse, while the poor man with the wife and kids is painted as a saint where “real happiness” lives. To me the second life looked like hell- and endless loop of the same old boring family characters crowding the scene with their needs and wants, and behaving in foolish, ignorant, and trashy ways, calling it happiness. This is the same virtue signaling I see in Reborn- the idea that poor people have hearts of gold and the rich like Neo are scum. But Neo has a good heart. If you look closely, the poor ones in Eito’s life are just as sinful, selfish, egotistical, money hungry, and greedy as the rich folk, sometimes even more so. The only thing is it is all mixed in with foolishness, sentimentality, and ignorance in business so they look even more ridiculous. And Sarasa making her ridiculous comments to her money hungry dad Kinpei San who lost their shopping street’s entire savings with bad stock investments, like “Maybe it’s good that you lost all that money, because I like seeing you working hard!” What? What kind of ridiculous nonsense is that? But when Neo offers a very fair deal to by up their shopping street and secure their futures with a lucrative relocation package in the name of “For the People” which he offered to pay 5 times the original amount, but the shopping street people are in an uproar because they “Don’t want to leave their home” and some sentimental nonsense even though they blew all their savings in some stock market fraud and have no customers left- but they have to blame everything on the rich CEO guy because “He must be bad and we need someone to blame for our problems even though we blew all of our savings which came from Eito who is really the mastermind of Neo so we should actually be doubly thankful to Neo.” The fools of Akari shopping street are painted in a kind of saintly idealistic light as if they have hearts of gold when they are just ignorant, pompous, arrogant, greedy, and prideful for no good reason. They freely take Eito’s help, but constantly sabotage their success and go off drinking or harming themselves (ie Kinpei) whenever they have problems without regard to their families that they claim to care about. Kinpei starts getting drunk everyday in the name of bonding and sentimentality and eventually causes himself and the family the ultimate harm which is just an ego image of “We’re good people unlike that horrible Neo!” Again virtue signaling. Kinpei getting drunk shamelessly in front of his daughter while telling Eito useless old stories about Sarasa in diapers while she smiles on is not bonding or love, but dysfunction, coping, and addiction wrapped in sentimentality. Sentimentality is NOT true love or honorable or virtuous. Kinpei commits suicide and the whole family blames it on Neo, instead of understanding that every person is accountable and must take responsibility for their own actions. Neo didn’t kill Kinpei- Kinpei drank himself to madness and killed himself. He must be held responsible instead of blaming it on Neo and attempting to murder him. Taking their anger out not on Kinpei’s foolishness, but on Neo and other people who have nothing to do with Kinpei’s self destruction (he was known to drink too much even when Sarasa was a child and this fate was inevitable for him regardless of the situation). None of the fools on Akari shopping street understand the mind of Neo/Eito and even though he grows to love them or whatever, he remains set apart from them and an outsider. He is the only kind soul in that Akari Shopping street group that has any integrity. The shopping street fools never properly thank him or understand the gravity of how much he has constantly helped them.
Eiji (Eito’s father) tries to keep all the fools chained to his failing ridiculous shopping district for the sake of “memories” or sentimentality, which is nothing but stupidity and senseless attachment to material things and has no honor in it. Clutching to a dying shopping street business for what?
The croquette lady says this dialogue to Eiji following Kinpei’s second round of suicide: “Maybe it’s time to stop forcing your feelings on others. Everyone wants to stay. But if we stay, we’ll all die in the gutter. Face reality, Eiji. To survive, sometimes, you have to let something go…. (These younger guys).. they still have a future! How long will you keep them tied to this place? They’ll go along with you because they’re good, foolish people. Can you take responsibility for their lives? Our memories will live on in our hearts. We can dream of the day we come together again. Isn’t it time we let go?” This is probably the most sensible line of dialogue that came out of Akari shopping street. Finally someone had sense knocked into them. Though they pat themselves on the back for being “good foolish people,” there is nothing good or inherently righteous about being foolish and sentimentally attached to a dying business.
Eito’s father is truly a piece of work. Speaking of zero integrity, he blows all of Eito’s psychic prediction money that was supposed to be used to pay off their debts and instead bought himself a flashy suit and a watch and plunged them deeper into debt. How is that an heart of gold? “Oh but they’re just lovable family people!” No they’re not! And this father has no remorse except for an ugly sad expression as if he deserves pity for his own greed. And they somehow declare themselves saintly and virtuous compared to the rich guys. It’s abominable. The “low income” characters in the story are just as flawed and sinful or even more so than the rich ones, but the rich are blamed even when they do good. The poor just haven’t had the chance to play out their dysfunctional tendencies on a grander scale like the rich- just give them a lottery win and see what happens. They’ll blow it all in a few months. We all know how that turns out.
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