maaaan this must be one of the weirdest shows i've ever seen because it simply defies categorization. drama? ish. comedy? sort of. mystery? i guess... etc. starring Kohinata Fumiyo, who's been a supporting actor in so many dramas i can never recall which ones (one of those characters that make you go, "i know him! ... why do i know him?"), "Ashita no Kita Yoshio" follows a man through his last eleven days in life--Kita Yoshio has decided to kill himself on the eleventh anniversary of his friend's death. oh yeah, eleven's his unlucky number, yadda yadda.
this isn't something i'd pick up for fun, so here's where the eye candy comes in: the fantabulous Matsuda Ryuhei (the first NANA's Ren plays Kita Yoshio's savior (or not? you'll see...). he actually has a smaller role in the show than advertised (see banner above), since the cast comprises of five or six supporting characters of roughly equal importance and he's just one of them. i was hoping to see more of him, since what little i have seen has been from NANA and that yakiniku movie on the airplane, and he was pretty great in both of them.
there're a lot of funny moments that seem out of place considering the general serious tone of the story. it's almost as if the creators didn't know how to proceed with this show and just threw in a whole mix of elements hoping that the viewers wouldn't notice. the soundtrack itself ranges from sad piano songs to random-sounding jazz. maybe it'll just take some getting used to, but i'm not there yet.
hmm now one thing i'm REALLY not used to is the pseudo-romance between the twenty-year-old Shinobu and Yoshio. first of all, she's younger than i am by a couple months. Yoshio is, what, forty?
actually, Yoshio isn't unlike Naruto, now that i think about it. both of them are sort of stupid and naive, and while people were always after Naruto, they usually ended up *CHANGED* or having some great epiphany after fighting him (and losing). Yoshio is far from strong but all the people trying to kill him for insurance money seem to be accidentally sympathizing or caring about him because he's just the kind of nice guy that draws people to him.
this scene makes me laugh: Matsuda Ryuhei's character, in a fit of rage, hurls a soda can vaguely in the direction of a trash bin. a kid nearby starts screaming and his mom quickly covers his mouth. Matsuda, seeing the kid's reaction, looks kind of guilty and walks over and throws the can into the trash bin. just a week ago, without having met Yoshio, his character would not be the recycling saint that he is now! :D
