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dorama: Trick, eps 1-3
Sep. 18th, 2006 12:16 amsigh. So, I'm well aware that I have an extremely onbsessive/addictive personality(comes with the ADD) but I thought I'd be taking a longer break from doramas than this...
Ah well, I DID get in 2 movies and a disc of anime, so it's not like I plunged straight into this after Musashi...
Anyway, this show is, thankfully, about as far from Musashi as you can get. I say thankfully because I'm not prepared to dive into that level of obsessiveness again for a bit(when I do, it will will not involve subs...Damo is the longest dorama I plan to get involved in anytime soon, and it's 14 eps.)
This one is a comedy with a little bit of romance thrown in...the kind where it's obvious to everyone but the characters themselves, who are oblivious.
It's about a professor named Ueda Jiro(Abe Hiroshi) who is extremely intelligent and booksmart(and became a black belt in karate through a correspondence course...) but not very life smart. As a result, try as he might to be otherwise, he's rather gullible when it comes to tricks...he knows they can't be real, he just doesn't know HOW, and he always gets sucked in. The daughter of a colleague got involved in a cult led by a spiritualistic who claims to have powers, and when he went to try to get the girl back, the spiritualist placed a curse on him and said he would die in ten days. He doesn't believe it, of course....until he gets to his office and sees her floating 2 feet off the ground. His logical mind doesn't cope well with the illogical, so he puts an ad out for someone to convince him that the supernatural exists.
Yamada Naoko(Nakama Yukie) is a stage magician who's father was a famous magician who exposed the tricks of other magicians. She just lost her job and is two months behind on rent, so she answers the ad for the promised reward, and fools him with a simple stage trick. She reveals what she did later, of course, and how, and he has her try a lot of other tricks on him, each of which he falls for. While he's booksmart, she's people smart, as is a master at detecting tricks and reading people. But she also has interpersonal interaction problems, and never knows how to act with people.
The first 3 episodes are one story, where they go to the cult and she exposes all their tricks, only to have the spiritualist use another trick to get the same result. It's rather clever and very funny, more wit than slapstick(though there is some of that) There's only 10-11 episodes, do if I reach the "can't stop" stage, I'm not in TOO much trouble...on the flipside, it's apparently very popular in Japan and has 3 series, a TV movie, and possibly a theatrical movie...I'm not sure. From what I can tell poking around online, they' stopped making them by choice, not because it wasn't profitable to keep going indefinately. Plus, given what I understand about doramas, the actors were probably ready to move on to new roles.
Now a bit on the OTP...
First of all, Abe Hiroshi is TALL! Nakama Yukie always looks small when placed close to other actors. Normally, though, it's more a case of her being rather slight than being really short. However, the top of her head just barely reaches his shoulders. Maybe it's because I'm 5'1", but I'm a sucker for tall/short pairings. Anyway, while they're equally smart, they're smart in different ways, and they always bicker. A large part of it is because he always falls for her tricks, while he's always able to logic/maneuver her into doing whatever he wants. They're the kind odf pairing who'll be together for years and date people but be clueless as to why they can't ever get serious about someone else, and any time someone tries to tell them why, they'll go "Huh?"
There's also a lot of touching...not affectionate/cuddly touching, more like, he forgets she's a girl when he gets caught up in things(for example, he takes a shower in her room and gets so caught up in the case that he doesn't make it past putting on his underwear before wandering around, talking about the case, and is clueless about why she's very pointedly not looking at him, and when she points out that he should go because it's her room and not his, he leaves, having completely forgotten that all he's wearing is his underwear) and ends up clapping her on the shoulder or hovering...he's so tall and so easily distracted/caught up in things, I keep expecting him to use the top of her head as an armrest or something. Though, he's already carried her on his back once, and tucked her into bed(they were sequential...they had to walk back to town and she passed out from exhaustion, so he carried her on his back, all the way to her apartment...he has great endurance)
I already knew Nakama Yukie could be very funny and adorable because of Gokusen(and she made a great sad beauty in Musashi) but it was nice to see that Abe Hiroshi is also good at comedy(Ueda is nothing like Gion Toji, who Abe Hiroshi played in Musashi...heck, if I didn't know, I almost wouldn't have recognized him...it would have bugged me and I would have investigated)
Ok, I think I have time for 2 more eps before sleepy hits.
Ah well, I DID get in 2 movies and a disc of anime, so it's not like I plunged straight into this after Musashi...
Anyway, this show is, thankfully, about as far from Musashi as you can get. I say thankfully because I'm not prepared to dive into that level of obsessiveness again for a bit(when I do, it will will not involve subs...Damo is the longest dorama I plan to get involved in anytime soon, and it's 14 eps.)
This one is a comedy with a little bit of romance thrown in...the kind where it's obvious to everyone but the characters themselves, who are oblivious.
It's about a professor named Ueda Jiro(Abe Hiroshi) who is extremely intelligent and booksmart(and became a black belt in karate through a correspondence course...) but not very life smart. As a result, try as he might to be otherwise, he's rather gullible when it comes to tricks...he knows they can't be real, he just doesn't know HOW, and he always gets sucked in. The daughter of a colleague got involved in a cult led by a spiritualistic who claims to have powers, and when he went to try to get the girl back, the spiritualist placed a curse on him and said he would die in ten days. He doesn't believe it, of course....until he gets to his office and sees her floating 2 feet off the ground. His logical mind doesn't cope well with the illogical, so he puts an ad out for someone to convince him that the supernatural exists.
Yamada Naoko(Nakama Yukie) is a stage magician who's father was a famous magician who exposed the tricks of other magicians. She just lost her job and is two months behind on rent, so she answers the ad for the promised reward, and fools him with a simple stage trick. She reveals what she did later, of course, and how, and he has her try a lot of other tricks on him, each of which he falls for. While he's booksmart, she's people smart, as is a master at detecting tricks and reading people. But she also has interpersonal interaction problems, and never knows how to act with people.
The first 3 episodes are one story, where they go to the cult and she exposes all their tricks, only to have the spiritualist use another trick to get the same result. It's rather clever and very funny, more wit than slapstick(though there is some of that) There's only 10-11 episodes, do if I reach the "can't stop" stage, I'm not in TOO much trouble...on the flipside, it's apparently very popular in Japan and has 3 series, a TV movie, and possibly a theatrical movie...I'm not sure. From what I can tell poking around online, they' stopped making them by choice, not because it wasn't profitable to keep going indefinately. Plus, given what I understand about doramas, the actors were probably ready to move on to new roles.
Now a bit on the OTP...
First of all, Abe Hiroshi is TALL! Nakama Yukie always looks small when placed close to other actors. Normally, though, it's more a case of her being rather slight than being really short. However, the top of her head just barely reaches his shoulders. Maybe it's because I'm 5'1", but I'm a sucker for tall/short pairings. Anyway, while they're equally smart, they're smart in different ways, and they always bicker. A large part of it is because he always falls for her tricks, while he's always able to logic/maneuver her into doing whatever he wants. They're the kind odf pairing who'll be together for years and date people but be clueless as to why they can't ever get serious about someone else, and any time someone tries to tell them why, they'll go "Huh?"
There's also a lot of touching...not affectionate/cuddly touching, more like, he forgets she's a girl when he gets caught up in things(for example, he takes a shower in her room and gets so caught up in the case that he doesn't make it past putting on his underwear before wandering around, talking about the case, and is clueless about why she's very pointedly not looking at him, and when she points out that he should go because it's her room and not his, he leaves, having completely forgotten that all he's wearing is his underwear) and ends up clapping her on the shoulder or hovering...he's so tall and so easily distracted/caught up in things, I keep expecting him to use the top of her head as an armrest or something. Though, he's already carried her on his back once, and tucked her into bed(they were sequential...they had to walk back to town and she passed out from exhaustion, so he carried her on his back, all the way to her apartment...he has great endurance)
I already knew Nakama Yukie could be very funny and adorable because of Gokusen(and she made a great sad beauty in Musashi) but it was nice to see that Abe Hiroshi is also good at comedy(Ueda is nothing like Gion Toji, who Abe Hiroshi played in Musashi...heck, if I didn't know, I almost wouldn't have recognized him...it would have bugged me and I would have investigated)
Ok, I think I have time for 2 more eps before sleepy hits.