Having just finished watching the series, I can happily say it was WELL worth the effort, for the Tsubasa Honda goodness was even MORE wonderful than I expected, with Tsubasa playing an eccentric and quirky girl named Azusa Hada who, after crashing into him one morning, falls in love with her misfit next door neighbor Tomioka (Teppei Arata), and does EVERYTHING she can to get into his graces!
Once again Tsubasa completely destroys my heart, with one of her cutest and most loveable characters EVER with Hada- when they say a character has their heart written on their sleeve, this is the kind of girl they are talking about!
As you follow her journey, you can see every emotion she has as she’s slowly falling for the schleppy but good-hearted Tomioka, through the highs (like when he acknowledges and praises her)...
...and the lows (when she’s feeling like he doesn’t like her or is (gasp!) even irritated by her…you just wanted to HUG her to BITS!!!
So many disarming cute moments- like how "stalkerey" she gets when she is in Tomioka's apartment for the first time...
...or how the two basically begin their courtship talking through the walls at each other...
....or how every time she hears Tomioka leave, Azusa just HAS to scramble to the rail and peep out at him...
This is Tsubasa at her absolute adorkable BEST, and for THAT aspect of the drama, Wanitokagegisu is a wild success!
But on the OTHER hand- I had been warned that the show would have a shift in tone halfway through, and even though I was bracing myself, I was still taken aback by how graphically VIOLENT the show suddenly becomes.
For while one side of the show follows Tsubasa and her romance with the guy, there’s another, darker storyline about a guy who is in love with a Yakuza’s girl and her plans to rob her pimp.
They hint at how bloody things will get with a jokey premonition of their fates, but it gets real all too soon and suddenly people are being violently assaulted and brutally killed at the drop of a hat!
Even STRANGER is the way that every time it cuts back to Tsubasa and Tomioka’s story, it becomes cute and lovey-dovey again, a STARK contrast that even the most adventurous j-drama watcher would have a hard time staying with!
Really wish they could have toned down the violence to better match the light hearted parts...It would still have worked perfectly even if they did the yakuza parts in a slapstick way....
Really wish they could have toned down the violence to better match the light hearted parts...It would still have worked perfectly even if they did the yakuza parts in a slapstick way....
Stil, Tsubasa stole the show (for obvious reasons) and despite its drawbacks, still ended up one of the BETTER dramas I’ve seen recently, and has forever cemented her as one of my BIG faves and brand new "Crushes"!!
Now off to watch her movie "Remote de Korosareru"which I just downloaded the other day!!!
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PS: You know what Wanitokagegisu was like? A Haruki Murakami Novel! This had ALL his classic tropes: The misfit older guy who just doesn’t fit in, living his eccentric life- when suddenly a wide-eyed young girl enters his life and falls madly in love with him. Unwittingly the two get tangled up in a daring crime with abductions and murders peppered throughout, all wrapped up with a so-so ending that seems more surreal than factual!
Heck, they even had one guy obsessed with a girl he saw on a commercial once and has been looking for ever since, this is pure Murakami characteristics if I ever saw it!!
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PS: You know what Wanitokagegisu was like? A Haruki Murakami Novel! This had ALL his classic tropes: The misfit older guy who just doesn’t fit in, living his eccentric life- when suddenly a wide-eyed young girl enters his life and falls madly in love with him. Unwittingly the two get tangled up in a daring crime with abductions and murders peppered throughout, all wrapped up with a so-so ending that seems more surreal than factual!
Heck, they even had one guy obsessed with a girl he saw on a commercial once and has been looking for ever since, this is pure Murakami characteristics if I ever saw it!!
