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feeling: O_o
listening to: Ohno Satoshi - Kumori Nochi, Kaisei in my head... again
Just a new drama review.
Uta no Oniisan
The title and its connotations don't translate well, but uta means song/music, and oniisan means big brother, or young guy who looks like he could be someone's big brother. It's about a guy named Yano Kenta who was the vocalist for a rock band called Giselle, loving his life and his friends/bandmates and his girlfriend/keyboardist and his music. Then one day, during a Giselle live, his bandmates announce that they're breaking up the band - and they hadn't even told him first. Now Kenta has no band, no job, no friends, no girlfriend, and his family turns against him, declaring him worthless. He's failed a dozen job interviews and is about to give up when he wanders by a TV station and sees that they're hiring for a kids' singing show called "Minna de Utao! Papipupepon," takes the interview, gets hired - and then finds out that they weren't hiring new staff, they were hiring new members. To appear on the show. And sing. Kids' songs. In cutesy animal costumes. Thus, he unwittingly becomes the new Uta no Oniisan. But he's moody and depressed and pessimistic has a bad attitude and hates kids and OH ANGST. How will he survive? Especially when, every time he walks down the hall to his studio, he's surrounded by posters advertising the debut of Japan's hottest new rock band, Giselle?
Yeah... I wasn't sure what to think when I first heard the premise. It sounded like something that would either be majorly cute, or majorly flop. Surprisingly, I was wrong - it was neither. Not bad, not the best; comedic, a little over-the-top at times (ok, a lot), cheesy... almost everything about it felt like one long chain of spoofs. Every episode was filled with references to the actors' real work, the real TV station that aired the drama, cameos by real entertainers employed by said studio... and on and on. Sometimes it got old, but honestly, most of the time it was pretty darn funny. And it wasn't overly toothachingly cute like I expected, but the cuteness came in manageable-sized moments. Like the infamous scene when a little kid finally got Kenta to smile... and honestly, I really liked the crow song. ;_; But yeah, it wasn't all colorful kiddy cuteness; the overall storyline was actually pretty grown-up, and presented well.
Anyway, yeah. The biggest audience draw for this series, without a doubt, had to be the lead actor who played Kenta - Ohno Satoshi. He blew the world away in Maou and was taking a completely opposite kind of role in Uta no Oniisan, and the addition of his second lead drama role to his bio was an event of awesomeness. However, I'm sadly not sure if this series can ever be taken seriously as a credit to his acting career. Not because it was bad, or because he did poorly - in fact, he did an amazing job making such an over-the-top role look realistic - but yeah, the whole spoofy feeling of the series brings down its respectability level, I guess. The acting was reasonably good overall though, not just Ohno's. Especially Katase Nana as the Uta no Oneesan (sister); she annoyed me at first, but she was supposed to be annoying, by the end she was really kinda cool. And I like Katase Nana anyway, so. ♥
Ok, I guess I've rambled all I can about that. Think it's just about bedtime now.
Oh, by the way, I did get an account at Twitter. And in the 8ish hours since, I've updated it 4 times. Planning to keep it going roughly like that, so if anyone actually cares to see how long I can stick out this frequent one-liner-bombing routine, feel free to stalk.
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 3/16/2009 01:13:00 AM
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