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Alas, a missed opportunity
This "Kekkon Surutte, Hontou Desu ka?" had all the ingredients it needed to be a very good - if not outright a great - dorama...but failed miserably due to the main characters being written as a pair of robots. It's even more infuriating, considering that the leads, Aoi Wakana and Sato Kanta, can both act very well but weren't allowed to show their potential, compelled as they were to portray those two expressionless characters (such a waste of talent!). And adding insult to injury, it's not like the writers can't write either, as they also showed their potential here and there, when the situation allowed - alas, too briefly. The rest of the cast, the "packaging" and the music were all pretty good, so with differently written main characters this would've really been interesting!The way *I* would have written it (very "90s style", LOL - roles that could've been written for the 90s' Sorimachi and Takeuchi, if you know what I'm sayin'): I would have had the ML as a male chauvinist philanderer, and the FL as a staunch, borderline man-hating feminist. And then I would have had them change and grow bit by bit, due to many (often outrageous and funny) happenings, until their final realization that they both would be way better, stronger and happier together, in mutual love and respect.
Cheesy and unoriginal? Yep, you bet. But a gazillion times more entertaining and fun to watch than this yawnfest! ^___-
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Total let down, as far as I'm concerned
I had great expectations for this movie, but alas, it was a real let down, as far as I'm concerned.The only really good part was the subplot involving Haru, the beautifully tragic (or tragically beautiful) character portrayed by Morikawa Aoi. If they had made a short movie using only those scenes, I would've given it a 10!
Unfortunately, everything else was either "meh" or else just plain bad, imho.
For once, instead of my usual "honorable mentions", I'll go for some well-deserved "dishonorable mentions":
1) while Miura Haruma managed to give a decent performance (nothing spectacular imho, sorry...but at least it was okay), the rest of the male cast was - again, imho, take no offence - plainly terrible! O___o
2) the sound guy(s) should be fired: the audio was annoyingly deafening whenever SFX, music or shouts were involved, and then almost totally inaudible whenever the normal dialogues were taking place. And adding insult to injury, the parts "in English" only got Japanese, but not English subs (which of course would not be a problem normally, but here - hence my quotation marks! - the "parts in English" were actually either in "Japanglish" or in a thick Scottish accent - imagine listening to a speech by Sir Alex Ferguson with only Japanese subtitles to help you decipher what the hell he's mumbling! >__<)
3) last but certainly not least (and as I previously mentioned, apart from Haru's subplot), the script was as bland, plain and uninteresting as they come: a bunch of random scenes and sequences thrown together don't make for good storytelling - at least, not in my book.
As I said, a real let down.../.__.\
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Back to the dorama: the problem is that even Mahjong lovers like me most probably won't appreciate it because it's horribly "shonenjumpesque" and so far removed from reality it hurts (compared to this, even the Hong Kong trilogy of "Kung Fu Mahjong" seems like a realistic depiction!). Hamabe Minabi and Furuhata Seika are both very cute and good actresses, but alas, that's definitely not enough to save this dorama.
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Not all that glitters is gold...
...nor all that's brown and nicely confectioned is Swiss chocolate, if you know what I mean...^__^;;;In other words, looks can be deceiving, as is certainly the case with this J-drama.
Waitaminute!
This *looks* like a J-drama at first sight, what with the all-Japanese cast (a star-studded cast, BTW - what a waste of talent, seriously! T___T) acting in Japanese, and the Japanese setting.
But don't be fooled.
This is pure Hollywood.
The filming, editing, music commentary...but most of all, the extremely poor writing, the tremendously obnoxious "dialogues" where 90% of the time you'll have stupid, immature characters trying hard to be "cool" (gosh, I *hate* that word!), the confusing and completely implausible plot, the silly ending...and then again, the *abnormous* amount of mindless violence and morbid attention to the most disturbing details, and all in all the utterly luciferian taste - or rather lack thereof.
Not a single character passed the good ole "Meteorite Test" (for those who don't know this old scriptwriting inside joke, let's recite it once again: "If all the characters were to be assembled inside a building in the middle of the desert, and a meteorite were to suddenly fall upon said building, thusly killing them all, would you feel sad for any of them?").
The only thing that could've saved this would've been if they had added a sorta "episode 10.5" where a "Deus Ex Machina" armed with a sledgehammer (half The Mighty Thor, half Ramon Mercader, LOL) suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started bashing all characters' heads in. Then broke the "fourth wall" and went on to administer the very same treatment to the series' writers and producers.
When news of Netflix arrival in Japan broke out, I remember photoshopping myself an image signature (which I've used for a while on another site) with "Zetsubou Sensei" from the eponymous manga shouting, as per his usual: "Zetsuboushita! Netflix no dorama no sei de zetsuboushita!".
Seems the Sensei was right in despairing.
It has been mostly a disgrace, indeed.
p.s.
Of course plenty of viewers, who enjoy Hollywoodian productions, will love this.
To each his own. Peace!
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And that's the first problem I had with this "Gomen ne Seishun!": I normally am a fan of Kudo Kankuro's style of hiding some deep messages amidst some silly, sometimes even outrageous, scenes...but this time I think he went too far and crossed too many red lines, constantly mocking both Buddhism and Catholicism as he did here (oh, btw - and before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusions - it's not like I felt offended because I'm Buddhist or Catholic - matter of fact, I'm neither; but then again, even though I'm no Muslim, I still think that Charlie Hebdo's "satire" is utterly *disgusting*!)
But anyway, even without considering all the above, the script was still waaaay below par: the main storyline about the ML's past and his sense of guilt was interesting and well done, but unfortunately, apart from the ML and a coupla more characters, everybody else was a mere caricature - unrealistic, idiotic and bidimensional. And every other storyline was poorly written, with characters constantly doing something in an episode and behaving as if nothing had happened in the next one...there was really no coherence nor consistency!
The cast did well, all things considered (or at least some of them did, namely the actors Nishikido Ryo and Yamoto Yuma, and the actresses Moririn - no surprise there, LOL - and Kuroshima Yuina - she totally *charmed* me! <3), and the OST was kinda catchy, but the script's many faults made it so that this can't get the passing grade, unfortunately.
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Hamatsu Takayuki is simply great in his role of this salaryman with the hobby of roaming through Japan's less-beaten roads in search of "endangered restaurants". It's nice also to see again Kaburagi's character. And my beloved Sakai Wakana playing the wife is, last but certainly not least, so lovely! In fact, I actually wish her role would get more screentime, 'cause I find they're such a nice couple indeed (for example, the short scene with them and the fireworks felt nicer and more authentically romantic than all those "CEO+Eyelash-batting-secretary" dejavu-fests put together! ^____-).
Some beautiful scenery and a fantastic OST complete the package!
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The premise was nicely developed, the setting very nice, and the production value pretty high.
The whole cast did a marvelous job, seriously. My hat goes off to all of them! Honorable mentions for Sun Qian, for Luo Yu Tong (who grew on me so much that by the end of the drama I was liking her even more than the FL - and that's saying quite a lot!!!) and for Tao Hai.
The script was very good and I particularly appreciated how well they accomplished character development and how nicely they managed to convey a wonderfully positive, ethical message.
The only reasons I'm not giving this a perfect 10 are, on the one hand, that I really didn't like how they set things up for a potential second season (I'm talking about the very last scene with the never seen before character - totally unrelated to the rest of the series), and on the other hand, that I found a coupla scenes a bit weak/forced. But then again, perhaps the machine-translated subs (that at times one had to *interpret*, rather than simply *read*) are to blame for that? Whatever, beggars can't be choosers and machine-translated subs are still a whole lot better than no subs at all, of course. 9/10
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So much more than just a food drama!
This "Atari no Kitchen!" captured me right away with that lovely, uplifting, terribly catchy opening credits song, then kept wooing me, episode after episode, with the sheer quality of its script - and let's be honest, also with the sheer (both inner and outer) beauty of the eponimous main character, whom I fell desperately in love with - Gods, please give me a time machine so I can go back to my youth, and let me meet someone like her, LOL! ^_^;Jokes aside, this is really a wonderful series, and so much more than just the Nth food drama! Sure, food has a relevant part in the story, but rather as *soul* food: the FL uses it to bring joy to those lucky enough to taste it, and to us viewers too in the process. Delicate and deep at the same time, chapeau to the writers!
And then a virtual standing ovation to the adorable - and tremendously talented - Sakurada Hiyori! Perfect 10!
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First things first, what I've liked:
- The story was a clean one, with a nicely proper, ethical message (exactly what I would expect from an NHK production, and that was comforting in itself ^__-)
- The female cast was very good; I'm quite a fan of Fukuhara Haruka so I knew I was gonna get a great performance from her, but also Kurashina Kana and Daichi Mao were great, not to mention the lovely Izumi Rika!)
- The music and the "packaging" were totally OK too
On to the things I wasn't enthusiastic about:
- The male cast; I must confess not being a big fan of Yamashita Tomohisa, but I'll say this: he still was, like, the only male who gets a passing grade here, imho; the rest were all below par (though in all fairness, I couldn't say how much of that was the actors' own fault and how much actually depended on the script - I'm willing to give the actors the benefit of the doubt and blame it on the scriptwriter and/or on the original manga authors
- The hair stylists; this is a problem this drama shares with many other J-dramas adapted from a manga: crazy hairstyles that work on paper get too faithfully portrayed in the live-action, resulting simply too weird; take for example this drama's villain, he was supposed to be scary and all, but due to the hairstyle being a kinda mix between Elvis and a Leningrad Cowboy, the guy ended up looking just ridiculous, imho. (oh, and that hairstyle on Kurashina Kana was a crime against humanity, seriously...T_____T)
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