beyond the edge

The holiday season drought is finally over and the new year for J-dramas has begun!

Final Cut
(Kamenashi Kazuya, Kuriyama Chiaki etc) First episode 7.2%
The rumour is this was supposed to be the finally entry to Kusanagi Tsuyoshi’s revenge trilogy (Zeni no Sensou and Uso no Sensou being the first 2) and because of SMAP’s messy dissolution, Kame took over along with a different script-writer. I tried watching Uso no Sensou and had to fast-forward through the first episode…and this is exactly what I did here. The character’s special skill is supposed to be “parkour” but apart from a show-off sequence in the beginning, the parkour does not feature again, which just makes the isolated sequence rather imi-wakanai. I’m not an awfully big fan of Kusanagi’s acting (I think if you have to squint or twitch your eyebrows to show emotion, something’s not done right), but Kame just doesn’t bring the audience into this character. The climax in the first episode was so ludicrous it throws you out of the rhythm (despite it being Kame’s most eye-gripping appearance in the episode). The most appealing thing so far about the series is the two sisters, acted by Kuriyama Chiaki and Hashimoto Kanna. They’re so adorable I can watch them for another 9 episodes…but I really don’t think this drama is for me.

Unnatural
(Ishihara Satomi etc) First episode 12.7%
This is not Ishihara’s first time as a forensic pathologist, if anyone still remember the tonally mild but surprisingly reflective Voice (with Eita and Toma) before she went down the sexy route for a few years. The thought behind this series is that Japan has amongst the lowest referrals to Coroners in the developed world, and a fictional forensic pathology department is created to deal with unnatural deaths. Fortunately it’s fairly light on the visuals of the autopsies and is mostly about case-solving. Ishihara’s character appears to also be harbouring some sort of dark past. The first case, for the premiere episode, was rather unexciting but the pace was good and the characters are easy to relate to. It’s nice (and realistic) for it to show pathologists cracking inappropriate jokes instead of taking a morbid profession too seriously.

Momi Keshite Fuyu
(Yamada Ryosuke, Haru, etc) First episode 13.3%
There’s a lot to like about this drama but the overall direction leaves you scratching your head. At its surface it’s a comedy family drama, and Yama-chan takes to the role with aplomb. Haru and Ozawa Yukiyoshi are also great respectively as the mean sister and self-centered brother. The characters overall are quirky, cute and watchable, and characteristic of the scriptwriter who brought you Sekaiichi Muzukashii Koi. The plot is where it leaves me confused. As a family drama, you’d expect if it were to have a moral message, it would at least be a correct one - but the main character, who is looked down upon by his family for his earnestness, saves the family by doing something unethical and frankly illegal, and yet is rewarded for doing it? In the end it leaves you confused as to what the drama is trying to do or say, and it’s rather worrying when a lawyer successfully convinces a police officer that “family overrules the law”, and a doctor says that it’s okay to steal confidential medical information and use it to blackmail people. It seems like only the bullied main character is “good” but in the end he is forced to compromise on his goodness…it just does not make sense in a comedy.

99.9 Season 2
(Matsumoto Jun, Kagawa Teruyuki, Kimura Fumino, etc) First episode 15.1%
The first episode had the problem that many sequels have, and that’s trying to introduce everyone to new audiences, and trying to appease old audiences with familiar gags, and trying to suggest there are interesting subplots to keep watching for, while trying to fit in a whole story arc in between. There’s more dad jokes in this episode than there was in the whole first season, and they’ve got to pull the reins before it gets ridiculous. MatsuJun and Kagawa are now really comfortable in their roles and with each other, and their banter continues to be the highlight. I do like Kimura, but it feels like this scriptwriter isn’t very good at writing young female regulars - neither Eikura Nana’s role from last season nor Kimura’s this season was particularly interesting especially between 2 quirky men, and Kimura’s role doesn’t delineate from Nana’s role enough to really make you care for the change. Even the female paralegal was more interesting than her… One of the major loose ends last season was Miyama’s father’s story got brought up regularly throughout the show but was never resolved, and it looks likes this season (hopefully) it will get somewhere. Nevertheless, this is the top of my watch list for the season, if only for Kagawa-san trying to terrify MatsuJun in a pink grasshopper bodysuit.

I had been meaning to watch this for several years but never got around to it until now. I bought the original book recently with the intention to read it before watching the movie, but I ended up watching the movie before I finished the book.

Even as I read the book, I thought the text would make a much better series than a movie, and the movie confirmed that. There was simply not enough time to make the characters and subtext as interesting and memorable as they were in the book. I thought Ann was en pointe for Shiratori Risa but it was both a waste of her casting and of the character by how short her appearance was.

Without having finished the book - the original story looked at interesting Big Brother themes like government control of DNA profiling that can elicit an alarming amount of detail about a person’s physical, health and psychological attributes, as well as the potential for abuse of a system like that, whether it is through the exploitation of privacy or the use of power and money for cover-up. It also explored self and the definition of being - is it by genetics? Physical traits? Personality? And then there was a futuristic psychotropic addiction which I thought was fascinating, where people became addicted to a device that induced direct brainwave stimulation.

A lot of these were sacrificed to make the movie more like a thriller. There were lots of running and car chases and dangerous stunts that took away time from the story but added some suspense and gave the illusion of pace.

Kagura/Ryuu was always going to be a difficult casting - you’d have to find someone who can manage both Kagura’s arrogance and extreme rationality, as well as Ryuu’s incredible sentimentality and his belief in the intuitive. The Ryuu in the movie is a lot weaker than in the book, and that’s partly due to the way the story was changed. For much of the book it feels like Ryuu mocks Kagura for his narrow-minded dismissal of emotionality. In the movie, Ryuu was the innocent artistic shadow to Kagura’s shrewd logical mind.

In that sense, I thought Nino did an amazing job with the characters that were written for the movie. The segue between Kagura and Ryuu and back in his meeting with the detective and at the final confrontation were two of the most memorable scenes in the movie, and certainly reminds you of why a lot of directors gush about him.

I don’t have a lot to say about the other characters as most of them were pared down to quite thin version of themselves. Mizukami is changed to female, which is curious - and I’m glad Japan can do that without its netizens kicking up a furore like it happens in Hollywood *eyeroll* The relationship between Mizukami and Kagura works for the movie, but again takes something away from the original plot, which is that a lot of Kagura’s grief comes from the loss of his father and Mizukami becomes his father figure.

The choice to change the ending is not something I understand very well, and I wonder if it became that way because of how much plot they had to cut down.

**********SPOILERS AHEAD*************

In the original story, Kagura and Asama confront Mizukami together, and Mizukami was about to kill both of them when Ryuu appears and shoots Mizukami out of grief because of Saki’s death. In the movie, Kagura meets Mizukami alone and during the speech, Ryuu appears and kills her.

In a way I sort of like how that it gave Ryuu a purpose and allowed him to make a choice for the greater good. On the other hand, I think Ryuu (in the book) was someone who really did not care for the outside world, and is in reality a lot colder in his apathy than Kagura. Ironically, it is Kagura who is the more idealistic, and even if he has a God complex, he genuinely wants to make the world a better place.

Finally in the movie, I think the ending is left quite open and ends with an interlaced scene of Ryuu painting Saki and of Kagura being arrested, and it’s not clear which one happens (though it is suggested that Kagura disappears). In the book, it is Ryuu who disappears but Kagura is spared from punishment (in exchange for silence), and it is suggested that he picks up some of Ryuu’s hobbies and characteristics. Again it’s a change that doesn’t quite make sense, but in a way I liked how sweet and almost platonic Ryuu and Saki’s relationship was in the movie.

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I feel like it’s a movie that managed to tell half the story, and I’m honestly not sure I would have understood as much if I didn’t read the book and I honestly think I would rate the movie lower if I hadn’t read the book beforehand. It tried its best to trim what was quite a complex, multi-layered plot about society and people and psychology into something much more straightforward, but that took away a lot of the enormity of the social issues that made this book so worrying. I think the actors did an amazing job with what they were given, but it could have been a much better story over 10 hours instead of 2.

PS: Yes, Nino is gorgeous in it.