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The unfortunate idiot at the center of this bog-standard boy meets girl and pines for her for two years before they decide that they are couple despite having all the sexual chemistry of shower mold - no, I should not select something living since that would be an insult to shower mold, and so let's say all the sexual chemistry of argon - is Itchitaka who likes Iori. He was embarrassingly rejected three years prior to the start of this story by a girl in middle school and as a result cannot ever decide what he wants or say what he means. That's all we know about him. He is unbelievably underwritten. He is not shown having any other interests. We see his father twice, and his mother only serves to tell him various I's are calling or visiting him.
The scenarios, such as they are, are essentially situation comedy set-ups and coincidental climaxes all played for pathos and to insure that the couple never express what they really feel, and, ultimately, to maximize the embarrassment of Ichitaka. It's a world full of sexual harassment, kidnapping, attempted rape, stalking, creeping, up-skirt photography and physical assault all of which apparently might have legal, scholastic and emotional consequences but any of that takes place off screen to make room for more moping.
The acting is, nevertheless, pretty good, and, honestly, Shibata Kyoka does exceedingly well as Itsuki, the witness, childhood friend and supporter of Ichitaka. She has one memorable scene towards the end of her main run on the show which is beautifully moving. Seraishi Sei as Iori has little to do except be passive and gorgeous. I really cannot say anything bad about Okayama Amane's performance as Ichitaka: the character is awful, stupid and occasionally mean and he portrays that as intended, I think.
The original manga ran weekly for nearly three years starting in 1997, and this drama may well be a faithful rendering of the material. It is reputedly a bit on ecchi side of manga, and that fact probably accounts for the many lingering thigh-to-waist shots of the women in this drama. The serialization of the original material undoubtedly also accounts for the lack of any kind of emotional progress in the central relationship until (maybe) the last ten minutes of the final episode.
I will not judge what you like. If you go to the comment thread for this show, you will find several people who were thoroughly invested in this series, and the tone of this series may resonate with you as it did for them. For me, however, I found the series both dull and unrelentingly anticlimactic.
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I think it was supposed to be funny
Small Fry Heroes is a superhero parody along the lines of the movie Mystery Men in which a small band of people with "special" powers come together to save the world. Do they? Does it matter?The concept might have been fun were it not for the fact that what we really have here is a series of nearly bottle episodes almost entirely set in one conference room which are intended to be a satire of the Japanese government's relationship to it's constitutional mandate to have no human forces with "war potential". (via Wikipedia: Article 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.) And so a minor functionary of the Ministry of Defense (Madozumi played by Rokkaku Seiji) is directed to collect a set of people with the least offensive set of supernatural powers that he can find resulting in what is hoped to be seven inaugural special defense reserve cadets with the hope of expanding the roster to people with more useful powers later once the Japanese public and other nations have accepted their presence.
Each of the "cadets" are given roughly an episode each for us to learn just how lame each of their powers are and then they face a final challenge. There's some internecine conflicts between the members of the groups which are not especially interesting and do not really go anywhere. And there's some exposition giving some background and detail about the Minister of Defense (Kurokawa played by Takasugi Koh) and his plans for Japan's armed forces. There's essentially one action scene along the way (yes, in the conference room), and so do not watch this expecting much in the way of action. Instead, expect riveting discussions of merch and the thrills of call center interactions (yes, both in the conference room).
One gets the sense that the idea was to show how by working together these otherwise fairly useless powers can accomplish something more. Do they? Does it matter? There is a denouement. Yay.
Like all comedies, YMMV. Pretty much all of it fell flat for me (yes, even the real Spider-Man bit). I do think the actors did what they could with the material, but honestly even if you're a fan of one or more them, I would give this series a skip.
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An Arthouse Slice Of College Life About Grief And Kokuhaku
I'm going to begin this review where I usually end a review by telling you who I think will enjoy this film and who will not. Because, more so than usual, this film is hard to rate even on the three dimensions that MDL provides (I never care about the rewatch value).If you are a film studies major or consider yourself a cinephile, then this film is a must-watch. Similarly, if you are a fan of or are following any of the three main actors Ito Aoi, Kawai Yuumi and Hagiwara Riku, the film is also a must-watch. However, if you're not in any of those groups, it's almost certainly not worth your time.
The film tells the story of Toru (Hagiwara Riku) who has returned to college after a break for personal reasons. We never learn that much about him. He has one friend, Yamane, and works a post-closing shift at a family-run bathhouse where he has a nice convivial relationship to the owners. He has little to no interest in his classes and ignores their existence to the extent he can. (He walks into a couple of ongoing lectures and starts full-voiced conversations with his schoolmates in a way I never experienced in giving a couple hundred lectures at a Cal State University. I know Japan has a reputation for college life outside of the major research institutions being very not focused on academics, but I'm not sure how realistic those scenes are given how polite and aware of other's spaces the rest of Japanese society is.)
The two major themes of the film are grief and love confessions (kokuhaku), and that's a very odd and difficult combination to pull off, and which I presume come from the novel that the film is based on. Nevertheless, that combination is a young actor's wet dream for all three of the principals, and the writer/director, Ohku Akiko, gives the cast amazing opportunities to show what they can do with a long monologue for each of them, and each staged and shot in very interesting ways. Saki's monologue is probably the best, but while it could have been shot in a couple of one-takes of Ito, Ohku cuts in reaction shots, and so we can't be certain. Nevertheless, the film also flashes back to it a few times. Hana's monologue is given in an extreme close-up one-take, and, you know, it's Kawai: of course she nails it.
A secondary theme of the film is supposed to be serendipity which we know because The Three Princes Of Serendip is mentioned a few times. But while there are several unplanned discoveries in the course of the story, by no means are all of them fortunate in any sense. In fact, the story largely tilts its umbrella towards the rains of melodrama while maintaining some distant rays of possible romance.
And so we reach the best and worst thing about the film: Ohku's craft. The blocking, the framing, the camera placement, and the camera movements are frequently amazing throughout the film. But she pushes the techniques to the point that it's sometime hard (at least for me) to understand what she is trying to say by using them. She changes the aspect ratio at one point for a bit, and I have no idea why. She does a sudden zoom in to an extreme close up on Kawai's face in her monologue, but the zoom is done a bit into the monologue for reasons? I have seen other pieces of Okhu's work (please, please seek out her series for NHK, Kazoku Dakara Aishitan Janakute, Aishita no ga Kazoku Datta also starring Kawai- any good drama otaku will know where to find it with English subtitles), and so I know that she's a master of the art of film and that these choices are intentional, but this particular work is hard to follow in some moments. And sometimes the techniques can call attention to themselves in ways that pull you out of the film.
As a writer, Ohku also chooses to leave some story points ambiguous in ways that will almost certainly be unsatisfying for some viewers. Was that time lapse of Toru sitting on a pole for a day, his being stood up? I'm not certain. Are the cuts to things Hana is saying to her co-workers about Toru reality or his fantasy? I don't really know for sure. And how does Hana react at the end of the film? It's left to our imagination.
Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the craft and performances in this film. It's a relatively small story with some very moving moments carried by some fantastic young actors.
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A fantastic tale of the life of a singer
Boogie Woogie is the fictionalized biography of Kasagi Shizuko who was a popular jazz singer from the early 30s through the 50s who was a major muse for the songwriter Hattori Ryouchi. The production made the wise decision to focus on her career as a singer, but Kasagi continued to work as an actress through the early 80s. And so we get to see the life of "Hanada Suzuko" from middle school through her early 40s when she decide to retire from singing and focus on acting instead.Suzuko is deftly played by Shuri who pretty much nails the acting, singing and dancing that the role demands. The series concludes almost every week's episodes with a production number of one of the actual songs of Hattori. As you can imagine, a Japanese woman singing an American subgenre of jazz had to face some challenges when Japanese nationalism hit its heights during the wars in China and the Pacific. However, her brother was killed in battle, and one of the most moving moments of the series occurs when she sings a song written by Hattori about her brother's service which had been presumed lost until a few years before this production started. More central to her story is the love affair she had with her life partner who fathered her daughter but died of an illness during the war.
Hattori is played by Kusanagi Tsuyoshi, and is one of the more persistent characters in her life. However, like most asadoras the cast is huge, and so we also get to meet many others of Suzuko's family and friends (and at least one frenemy) along the way.
Most biographical asadoras have a hard time with the fact that most lives are not uniformly interesting throughout their span, and so often the series have to resort to significant time leaps to get to the juicy parts. There are indeed a few such leaps in this series as well, but the series does a better job than most at maintaining its pacing throughout the series and limiting this series to Kasagi's career as a singer helped to do so.
If you enjoy boogie woogie as a genre or asadoras in general, then this series is almost certainly for you. I think Japanese drama watchers in general would enjoy the acting of Shuri, and I would place it fairly high in the rankings of assdoras in general. It is certainly well worth watching despite being quite a time investment (like all asadora).
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Louder!: Can't Hear What You're Singin', Wimp
2 people found this review helpful
OTT in a good way
The premise is completely absurd and the writing is barely functioning connect-the-dots to reach the visual moments that the writer/director Miki Satoshi wanted to achieve. But those visuals are worth it, and the direction is lively, inventive and original.It is a comedy, and, as ever, YMMV, but there were several bits that genuinely made me laugh. Expect the kind of humor and set pieces as a Stephen Chow film though we can argue about whether Miki is as successful at executing them.
It is a story of Sin ... who in this case is the mysterious lead singer of a heavy metal band who has been injecting illicit drugs directly into his vocal cords to achieve the volume and range that the music demands, and it is immediately clear that his throat cannot take much more of the abuse. Abe Sadawo nails the stage presence and has a fine comedic turn in the role as an artist who knows his career is almost done and is looking to pass the torch.
The singer he chances upon in a midnight scooter rampaging meet-cute is Fuuka (Yoshioko Riho) who is talented, but whose issues prevent her from singing barely above a whisper.
The film is not really a musical. There are only two songs (or three, if you count Shubert's Ave Maria). But, surprisingly, it is kind of a romcom with most of the expected story beats seen through a broken kaleidoscope.
Will the couple kiss? Will Fuuka sing out loud? Will Sin be redeemed? Watch the movie and find out.
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A Quality Survival Show
The Nizi Project is a survival show made in collaboration by JYP Entertainment and Sony Music Japan to create a "global" girl group by which they mean a Japanese girl group that they hope to market internationally. The idea is to create a J-Pop group using the training methods, aesthetics, and standards of K-Pop. This 10 episode series is the first of two which resulted in the creation of the group NiziU ("Needs(y) You"). This first series is mostly set in Japan and covers auditions in 8 cities in Japan, an audition in Hawaii and one in Los Angeles as well as a subsequent elimination process to select a group of trainees to be sent to Seoul for the second series of the show.The host and only vote which matters for this show is JYP himself, Park Jin-Young. He does take care to listen to his staff, but at each step of the process, it's pretty clear that he is the one who will be making the decisions, and, ultimately, choosing who will go on to Seoul for training (and, in the second series, who will be in NiziU).
Each of the women who pass the audition episodes are given a necklace with four slots for bedazzled puzzle pieces. Filling all four slots will result in the women being sent to Seoul, but the gimmick is pretty pointless since JYP can grant additional puzzle pieces to the women pretty much whenever he wants to. The necklace does, however, serve to frame for the viewers the four abilities that the women are to be judged upon throughout both series: singing, dancing, variety show skills and likability/cooperation/discipline.
Unlike many shows in this genre, the focus is almost entirely on preparation and performance. Very little time is spent on the women's background stories, dorm-room interactions or variety show games. Furthermore, I do not believe there were any product placement segments at all (other than the music used for the performances - you will hear a lot of JYPE's TWICE and ITZY) in either series.
JYP is charismatic and knowledgeable, but he can be capricious in his criticism occasionally lambasting the individuals for being outside the narrow scope of what he considers the essential standards of K idols even when the performances are good.
The candidates themselves are the usual mixture of pop-star wannabes of various levels of skill and and training with a few ringers who have already been training at JYPE for years. There is not much tension for a few of the women who probably should have debuted a year or two ago, but, nevertheless, it is very fun to meet all the candidates and see what they can do.
The fact that there are no live audiences and no viewer input whatsoever is probably why this is one of the best singing competition shows ever produced. There can be no accusations of vote rigging or producer manipulation of audience voting via wildly disparate allocation of screen-time when there is only one voter who is not even seeing the final edit of the show. If you always wanted a singing and dance competition where the focus is entirely on, you know, the singing and the dance, then this is the show for you.
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Sono “Okodawari”, Watashi ni mo Kure yo!!
2 people found this review helpful
It's mostly cringe humor a la The Office or Christopher Guest films like A Mighty Wind or Waiting For Guffman. It's unclear the extent to which the scenes are improvised, but they might well be. You might think after you've watched the first four episodes, that you know how this show will go with each episode featuring a different strange obsessive, but then the series becomes more about Matsuoka and Ito's approach to the show and life in general and begins to tackle themes of how people create personas for themselves on screen and what it means to be authentic in the kinds of bizarre and scripted situations that crop up on variety shows. And the show does so while largely staying funny.
There are some mild twists, and a really silly denouement. There are a couple of plot points that are made and then immediately forgotten about. I'm not quite sure that it nails the landing or satisfactorily concludes its theses, but the mere fact that it attempts to address the issues of persona and performance in variety shows is surprising and interesting.
Under-girding the whole show is the delightful chemistry between Matsuoka and Ito. Who knows if they are as close friends in the "real world" but the friendship as its portrayed feels authentic, and provides a lovely foundation for the show.
It's a show that has not had many viewers, but is, nevertheless, well worth checking out.
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Shiawase Kanako no Koroshiya Seikatsu
12 people found this review helpful
Way too short, but fun!
This series ends up feeling more like an extended comedy sketch than a full drama series, but the acting and action scenes are on point, and, ultimately, the series does have something to say about the empowerment of the main character and her refusal to be defined by "normal" society.Non plays Nishino Kanako, a recently unemployed office lady, who is offered a job as a hitman and discovers that because of her experience of years of bullying and harassment has acquired the skills to be preternaturally good at the job. The series is happily and ironically cheerful and kawaii as the bullets fly and the blood flows, and Kanako's chibi imaginary animal friends make childish puns as she finds her way in this new world of contract killing and peril.
Every episode features action sequences that are well executed and fun but almost completely bloodless but for occasional splatters and post-combat pools. A polite fiction is maintained throughout that everyone Kanako kills almost certainly deserves it, but the whole thing is so far from any kind of reality that that polite fiction does not really seem to matter much. There are at least a couple of plot points that make no sense at all (wait: didn't she kill that guy?), but the series is so unserious that you probably won't care either since the writer and the director certainly don't.
As I often say in my reviews of comedies: YMMV. But I found the series to be light and funny, and the comedy bits pretty much consistently landed for me. But, at the same time, there is at least one touching moment from Kanako's backstory that was genuinely moving. Non was pretty much born to play this kind of role: a simple and "pure" (?!) person going through a process of discovery to find that she is capable and valuable just as she is. The irony here that her "purity" is the ability to efficiently and relentlessly kill people works for me, at least.
In the end Kanako is offered a choice between the normal life that society says she should want or, instead, continuing to be what she is really good at. And we are left happily cheering her on.
The button at the end of the series says explicitly that there will be a season 2 on Netflix, and one can only hope. But the best information at the time of writing this review is that the button is a joke, and there are no such plans at this time.
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This review may contain spoilers
This asodora has some unexpected twists in the last 25 episodes when the land lady, Tomo, reveals her Force power, the protagonist Mineko turns out to be a Tanuki robot from the far future (2017) and a group of the characters band together to execute a daring rescue mission.Before that it's warm story taking place between 1964 and 1968 examining the migration of workers from rural provinces like Ibariki to urban centers like Tokyo. The spine of the plot is centered, lamentably, on an amnesia trope (a lame trope or the lamest trope?), and everything about one of the associated characters, Kanamoto Setsuko, makes no sense whatsoever. But that's about the sharpest criticism that can be leveled against this otherwise uniformly delightful morning drama.
The main character is charming enough, but the really great moments of the series fall to several of the tertiary characters who are still dealing with the consequences of WWII. The rapid changes of the 60s form the backdrop, and the Tokyo Olympics, Beatlemania, miniskirts and Twiggy all play a role in the lives of these characters.
Special mention also must be made to two of actresses, Sakuma Yui and Ito Sairi, who were in Transit Girls together a few years before. Sakuma's role is quite substantial as Mineko's best friend Tikiko who goes to Tokyo at the same time as Mineko and seeks to become an actress. Ito's role is much smaller but recurring, and the two do get a few scenes which had me as a fan of Transit Girls wishing for them to kiss (again).
As a whole, it's the usual high quality that one expects from an NHK asadora though personally I think Amachan deserves the higher rating between the two.
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An Interesting Alt History of Edo Period Japan
I will preface this review by saying I have not read the manga which ran for 17 years, nor watched this year's anime on Netflix, nor seen the prior drama series from 2010, nor the prior two movies. I imagine that one's experience of this series could vary widely based on how much of the prior material you have encountered.The premise of this drama is that Japan experienced an on-going plague starting in the reign of 3rd Tokugawa Shogun in the early 1600s that reduces the population of men to one quarter of that of women. Thus, part of what Ooku explores, in general, is what that change in demographics might mean to the roles of men and women. What would Edo-period Japan have been like if women were in charge?
This drama is roughly divided into three chunks covering incidents in the lives of the woman who took over the role of the 3rd Shogun, and then 5th and 8th Shogun. The 8th Shogun serves as wrapper for all the episodes as she reads about the lives of these prior two Shoguns. The manga continued through the 14th Shogun, and so this drama does not attempt to cover the entire run of the manga, and, indeed, one presumes Season 2 will cover more of underlying material. Nevertheless, this series (like many other manga and novel adaptations) does suffer a bit from trying to cover too much of the original material.
The cast is huge and the production fairly lavish though we comparatively rarely see what life is like outside of the Shogunal residence in Edo. Like many Roman and Chinese emperors, the Japanese Shoguns in this period seem to be fairly isolated within a system meant to protect them and insure the continuation of their dynasties. And, indeed, the Ooku was the quarters for the Shogun's concubines during the Edo period, and so becomes the quarters for the male concubines in this alternative history, and so part of what the series explores why and how men come to serve as concubines, and how the system works (and sometimes fails) to produce heirs to the Shogun.
The series does address some interesting and perhaps surprising issues over the course of this season, but I do think the quality and interest of the three sections are fairly even though they cover entirely different themes and have have mostly different casts of characters. There are some striking moments scattered throughout the series, and the performances vary from solidly professional to quite good. If you enjoy alternative histories and Japanese period dramas, it's well worth watching.
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Babies' First Steps Towards Adulting?
This series is the fourth installment of the Baby Assassins franchise. The set up remains the same throughout the franchise: Chisako (Takaishi Akari) and Mahiro (Izawa Saori) are two young but highly competent assassins who just want a steady flow of work, but they would like to be otherwise left alone by the Assassins Guild that employs them. And the Assassins Guild, like any good, "benevolent" employer in the modern era, would like to develop their employees to have a wider skillset to leverage all the synergies in the assassination business. The entire franchise is a darkly comedic gun-fu martials arts series that obliquely critiques capitalistic corporate culture.This jdrama continues directly from the three prior movies, but other than some shared characters (particularly among the service personnel who clean up after the assassinations) there's not a whole lot of continuity that anyone would need to know in order to enjoy this series. And so (at this point in 2026) if you've got an HBO Max subscription, and are curious whether you can watch this series without watching the prior movies, I'd say dive right in. You can always go back to the movies if you enjoy the characters, the action and the tone of the series.
This series is roughly divided into two halves. In the first half, the pair get reluctantly pulled into a "project" where one of the Guild's legendary assassins wants to come out of retirement to settle an old score. What's really going on in this part is a not so subtle critique of corporate training retreats. The pair's senpai for this section is Takashi (Kusakawa Takuya) who overacts pretty egregiously throughout, but his doing so seems to be as directed. The leads Takaishi and Izawa play things comparatively understated throughout the franchise in contrast to many of the more aggressive foils both within the Guild and without. That fact is is probably fairly essential to maintaining the comedic tone of the series between the action sequences.
The second half of the series has the pair split apart and assigned to two other departments. Mahiro is sent off to learn from and assist one of the Guild's liquidators who are assigned to kill assassins in the organization who have broken the rules. And Chisato is sent to work in Sales where issues of corporate politics and power harassment come to the fore. But the pair continue to live together, and ultimately work together to become partners again.
The acting of the leads remains superb and reaches a new peak in this series. Mahiro, outside of her extreme skills in hand to hand combat, is always mired in her debilitating social anxiety, and Chisato is outgoing, verging on manic at times. But the two actor's chemistry together is excellent to the point that it is natural to wonder if this series is, in fact, a GL. It's left ambiguous throughout the franchise, but I will reveal that there is a truly swoon-worthy moment in the final episode. Takaishi is the better actor as Chisato, and her career has recently gotten a well-deserved additional boost as she was the lead in this past winter's NHK asadora, The Ghost Writer's Wife. Much more surprising is Izawa's performance as Mahiro. Izawa was almost entirely a stunt performer prior to this series, but here she is not only anchoring the action sequences, but at one point she impressively cries directly to camera. She really should get more work, in my opinion.
If you enjoyed the prior movies, then this series is pretty much a must watch. There's probably a bit less time spent on the action sequences compared to the movies, and a bit more time on Chisato and Mahiro's slice-of-life interactions. In fact, one of the best episodes of the series has no diegetic action sequences at all (just a couple of brief flashbacks of memories). Nevertheless, there are good propulsive action sequences throughout the series with the same level of fight choreography that were seen in the movies. Thematically, there's also a bit more depth than the movies as the women take a few more steps towards adulthood, and the pair's relationship which has always been solid gets to bloom just a little.
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This review may contain spoilers
A Charming Slice Of Life With Twists
THIS IS A FULL SPOILER REVIEW but spoilers will only begin after the Read More button.Unreachable is a slice of life drama centered on the lives of three young women sharing a house on the outskirts of Tokyo. Written by one of the best current screenwriters in Japan, Yuji Sakamoto, it explores the day to day life of three childhood friends as they make their way through their daily lives as they go to work and school, and ultimately address their past and relationships within and outside the trio. Glancing at the cast consisting of Yokohama Ryusei and the three women played by Hirose Suzu (Misaki), Sugisaki Hana (Yuka), and Kiyohara Kaya (Sakura) one might guess that there might be a love story here and, indeed, love does play a part, there is no romantic love story in this film.
It is a film about three women dealing with a world that fails to see them, and how they are constantly trying to reach out to others to affirm their identities.
It is highly recommended that you do not read the rest of this review until after you have watched the film or unless you do not care about spoilers at all.
Unreachable is a slice of death drama centered on the daily activities of three ghosts haunting an abandoned house on the outskirts of Tokyo. It is a ghost story told entirely from the point of view of the ghosts. Horror and ghost stories are a miniscule part of my media diet, and so I do not know if that's a trope in the genre, but it would not surprise me if it were. In any case, that premise is revealed about a quarter of the way through the film.
The girls were nine when they were killed by a knife-wielding psychopath while they were preparing for a choir competition at school. (It occurred to me while watching that the set up would make much more sense in the context of the continual school shootings we subject ourselves to in the US.) But they have continued to grow up together in their own parallel world where they can grab copies of whatever material things they need, but cannot seem to be detected by any creatures in our world. Yuka has decided to go to college and study physics to see if there is any physical explanation of their state, while Misaki and Sakura have adopted working roles that at least allow them to pretend that they are part of some social groups.
As such, the film focused on the young women's attempts to reach out to others, and, in particular, their relationship to the people who still grieve their passing. One of the plot threads deals with a family member confronting the killer who was recently released from prison, and that's a theme that Sakamoto dealt with at length and much more deeply and effectively in my opinion in his 2011 series Still, Life Goes On.
The more interesting plot thread is that between Misaki and her childhood friend, Tenma played by Yokohama. The tragedy continues to haunt Tenma and Misaki truly wishes to help him find his way to healing and getting beyond his grief and survivor's guilt.
Prior to this year, Sakamoto has rarely ventured into genre fiction with the only notable exception being his version of the Chinese classic Journey To The West in his 2006 series Saiyuuki. This year he also wrote the time travel film 1st Kiss which was much more successful at the box office. But he is, as ever, the master of the telling detail, and in this film there are several instances where the revelations of those small details will likely pierce your heart.
Is our world Unreachable to the three young women? Sakamoto resolutely refuses in this film to answer that question unambiguously. But it is entirely clear that the short time that the three spent here continues to effect and shape the lives of others, and that that love is not unrequited.
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A very chill food show
The story begins in media res: Mugimaki Satoko was diagnosed a couple of years ago with an autoimmune disorder which is not life-threatening but leaves her chronically fatigued. She has quit her previous, high-stress job at a big, successful company, and is now working part-time at a small, supportive design firm doing the accounting and other administrative tasks. Her current issue is that her savings is dwindling, and she must come to terms with the idea that she'll never be able to own her own place and that she needs to find a cheaper place to live.She ultimately settles on an apartment in a danchi (large tower blocks built after WWII) where she finds herself living across the landing from her aging landlady, Suzu, who is currently boarding a young free-spirited guy, Tsukasa, who does odd jobs and helps around the complex and goes on long backpacking excursions. Tsukasa and Suzu introduce Satoko to yakuzen, a Japanese form of traditional Chinese cuisine where there is less of a distinction between food and medicine. Satoko finds that she likes the food and hopes it can help her condition, and when Tsukasa refuses to teach her what he knows about it, she finds some books and starts teaching herself.
Over the course of the series, Satoko meets new people around the danchi and makes some friends along the way. She tries some new things and not everything works out the way she hopes as she tries to figure out what her life can be as she lives with her condition. She's a bit afraid of her future in the long-term, but she finds comfort in this ancient approach to eating. She shares what she learns with her friends, but while yakuzen is a healthy approach to eating with an emphasis on plants, it's adherents do not tend to proselytize about it. It very much falls under Michael Pollan's dicta: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants".
There are no major dramatic stakes in this series, and it's very much a slice of a year or so of Satoko's life. She naps, cooks and shares meals with her friends as she grows accustomed to her new life with her condition. Her new approach to her diet does give her a bit more energy to consider what she wants for her future and come up with some new goals as she relinquishes her previous aspirations. By the end, Satoko has come up for a vision for her new life. It's weak tea.
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Chanmina's Girl-Group Survival Show
Here's an idea: let's take all the budget for a girl-group survival show and allocate as much of that budget as we can on the finale and hold that finale in a packed 20,000-seat arena. We won't have a host or a narrator. All the earlier rounds will be filmed in various rooms around the agency, plus, maybe a small gym for one performance round to hold an audience we won't even bother to show on camera.Honestly: it's great.
The popular rapper Chanmina and SKY-HI, the head of the agency, do all the work as hosts and judges, but even SKY-HI's role is primarily to echo the things Chanmina says and leave the production in her capable hands. There are a few choreographers and a solid vocal coach, but this series is primarily Chanmina's show.
Chanmina's idea for the group is to provide an opportunity for and develop the talent of women who have been rejected repeatedly by the industry. And she is wholly committed to the project. After the initial auditions and cuts take the candidate pool down to 30, she bleeds at every further cut, and so tries to do so as compassionately and transparently as she can. Unlike most other survival shows, there is no audience voting, and the cuts are decided wholly by Chanmina and SKY-HI.
The show is otherwise pretty standard: the women are divided into groups and given pieces to perform over a few rounds to display their skills in singing, rapping and dance. However, whereas every survival show I've seen stops at the final selection of the members of the new group and announcing its name this series gives us one more episode to reconnect with every single member of that initial 30. And while the editorial choices in that final episode are unusual - we step back in time before the arena show for 45 minutes of the 80 minute episode before getting snatches of the other women's performances in front of the stadium audience - the climactic performance of Sad Song by the top 10 and Chanmina is one of the most moving moments I have seen on any survival show.
Most of this series was filmed in August of 2024, and in an another interesting production choice, the final 10 are given 5 months to prepare for the arena show. Of course, the real reason for that long preparation is that Chanmina was pregnant, and she had her baby in November. The only mention of that fact occurs in the last 10 minutes of the final episode when Chanmina says that she now has seven daughters ... and her daughter. But, in terms, of appropriately assessing talent, it is hard to imagine a more fair way than giving candidates that kind of stage including all the stagecraft, back-up dancers and musicians as well as that much preparation time to really show what they are capable of. I can't imagine we would ever see its like on any future survival show, and the results are pretty spectacular.
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