Of Swords and Parasols

Yasuko to Kenji is about Yasuko, a 16-year-old whose parents died when she was 7. Her brother, Kenji, led a biker gang, but dropped out to raise her when they were orphaned, and became a shoujo mangaka (he made 2 of his friends from the gang be his assistants) because wee!Yasuko liked pretty, girly things, and is now superpopular. He’s also psychotically overprotective (I use “psychotically” in the sense that his sister issues would keep a therapist busy for years) and has umpteen billion rules in place for her “protection.” The teenaged Yasuko is far less enchanted by this than wee!Yasuko was. Her first crush is Jun, a transfer student. This would already spell death for Jun, but his older sister, Erika, once led a rival biker gang and was in love with Kenji, despite the mortal enemies bit.

This is a seriously cracked out and over-the-top jdrama, somewhat along the lines of Gokusen or My Boss, My Hero (lots of crack and over the top-ness, but also lots of heart and declarations of tough-love-style commitment/feelings). Both pairings play out close to being parodies of standard shoujo tropes. They’d probably annoy me if played completely straight, but are a blast as shown here. Yasuko and Jun are about as deep into “clumsy, dim, sweet girl with crush on perfect, smart, nice school prince” (She frequently has daydreams of him as a fairy tale prince in a field of sunflowers-Erika owns a flower shop, and Jun gave her a sunflower the day they met-with Disney Princess themes running in the background.) as you can get, but the absurd plot they’re living through saves them. Erika and Kenji’s yankee mating rituals are seriously the highlight of the series. Not so much because of the pairing, but because both Hirosue Ryoko and Matsuoka Masahiro both have amazing comic timing and some of the best facial expressions ever. Erika and Kenji are like the tsundere and bad boy who were supposed to hook up and didn’t, and are 10 times worse as adults. Kenji was about mentally 5 when they were 17, and has mentally advanced to about 16, save for where Yasuko is concerned. Erika is generally much more mature and well-adjusted, but reverts to being ultra-violent when having trouble discussing her feelings, or when Kenji acts like they’re still rival gang leaders. About ¾ of their scenes result in their trying to kill each other with invisible laser beams from their eyes. (The closest thing I can think of to compare them to is an older Sunako and Kyohei from Wallflower, but that isn't really accurate, either.)

I prefer the first half of the drama, where the episodes typically focused on Yasuko dealing with her odd, overbearing life with Kenji, and every episode ends with Yasuko (and usually Jun) being harassed in a warehouse and Erika and Kenji showing up to rescue them (in gangster duds), revert to teen gangsters, take out an entire gang while Kenji makes over protective tough love speeches, and then they fight and Kenji threatens Jun with death if he ever touches Yasuko. The second half was still fun, but the sibling relationship and character dynamics often ended up playing second fiddle to silly things like plot, and Erika and Kenji became a bit less fun, as the approach to their relationship became a bit closer to conventional. (Though I suppose that was the only way to get any resolution out of those two.)