okusama wa tori atsukai shui

A newly married wife starts getting tired of the stay-home life and puts her skills from her hidden past to good use to right the injustices around the neighbourhood.

To be honest, when I read that description, it totally didn't interest me at all until I found out the scriptwriter (Kaneshiro Kazuki) is the same person who wrote Border and Crisis, both incisive police dramas that painted a world of disappointing systemic fallacies. To do a romantic comedy seems to be a complete jump from Kaneshiro's comfort zone, but his experience in suspense-based dramas is right up my alley.

From the outset, it positions itself early in the episode to say this is not your usual rom-com, with the heroine starting out tied to a chair and ending the scene kicking every male ass in the room.

I haven't watched Border, but Crisis wasn't overly memorable in terms of its characterisation, and that was something that worried me.

Fortunately, Okusama does 2 things right - it casts Ayase Haruka, who is probably the only Japanese actress her age that I can think of who can pull off sweet and deadly with conviction. In several scenes, she doesn't even have to raise her voice or change her smile for you to feel a sense of threat.

The 2nd thing which I feel Kaneshiro deserves kudos for is that Isayama Nami remains fully her own heroine, without the need for any male knight in shining armour to do the hard work for her. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be a feminazi here, but one of the persistent tropes with Japanese media (manga and drama) is that their women need saving, that even the best women aren't as good as the men or need a helping hand from men.

On the same note, the only disappointment of the first episode was how little Nishijima Hidetoshi featured, and it seems a bit of a waste of his pretty face an excellent cast member to relegate him to a role that consists only of walking through the door every evening. I'm hoping there's a big twist where he's more than he appears to be as well! Perhaps where Kaneshiro's shortcomings begin to show is the dearth of actual interaction between Ayase's and Nishijima's characters, and honestly Nishijima's body language around Ayase is so stiff they don't look like a married couple at all. He had wayyy more chemistry with Takeuchi Yuko in Strawberry Night.

Hirosue Ryoko is unsurprisingly comfortable as the "more experienced" of the 3 married women, and as usual Honda Tsubasa's acting leave much to be desired but at least she isn't as sour as she was in Jimi ni Sugoi.

A surprisingly watchable drama in a genre that usually bores me to tears, probably because it's written by a guy who usually writes the type of crime thrillers I like watching. For people who like easy rom-coms, some of the scenes might be too tense, but for everyone else who can put up with a bit of intensity (and blood), this is definitely worth trying!

It'll be interesting to see where the script takes the story to, because the first story was a bit too textbook in how it portrayed the domestic violence. If you ever had a quiz on DV, you'll find all the main points there, and that part of it did come across as a little contrived.