Long Vacation (1996)

Outstanding Love Story

tl;dr - An amazing and unpredictable love-story that will be hard to put down. Worth giving a chance!

I was hooked on this story and could not get enough of it. Its a great romance where the Sena (Takuya Kimura) and Minami (Tomoko Yamaguchi) both complete each other, and how supportive each of them are to their dreams/lives. The story starts out with each of them at the lowest point of their lives - Sena is a pianist but is missing something that holds him back from being a professional, so he gives up and becomes a piano teacher for annoying kids; Minami is about to be married but left at the altar and finds out her would-be husband just ran off with a younger, more attractive woman and on-top of that, her modeling career is coming to a close as she loses opportunities to her age. Both Sena and Minami start filling in the gaps and lift each other up in odd ways, and its a love-story of 2 people at rock bottom who both make an incredible comeback.

Something I loved about this one is that usually for romances, its relatively easy to predict how the male/female love interests will respond to certain events - for example, when a guy finds out the girl he has a crush on likes someone else, you predict he'll be upset and maybe take out his frustrations on one of them. In this drama's case, the personalities are unique, you can't predict how each of them will react to the situation and that makes it that much more enjoyable.

Music is great, I still listen to some of the tracks of the drama to this day, and probably will still continue to. The acting is also top-notch as well.

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What is his was pretty good. It was short and sweet. I really like the overall concept of the series. How do you know the series revolves around a female who is left at the altar and ends up living as a roommate with her ex fiancé‘s roommate. The two developed a unique friendship that transforms overtime. What I like most about the series was that was unique and showed the struggle of an individual with dreams, how they are motivated and demotivated and how that affect their lives. It was like a series about your personality, your character and making the most of it.

But at least not like about the series with that the female lead was super annoying and borderline immature. Although somethings were done when she was somewhere in suffocated it still seemed like she should’ve known better. This type of thing happened only once but her character was too much. Just imagine going somewhere and meeting someone that is over the excited , overly talkative and has a problem with speaking with boundaries.

I absolutely think the series could have been better if there was a modification to the female lead behavior. But because she was annoying in a please shut up kind away I with a little bit put off.

Overall the plot of the series seemed really great, the builder of events for the male lead was really good. If you can tolerate the female lead doing random things that a teenager would do then you may like this.

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A Classic for a Reason

I recently started watching Jdramas and this drama kept getting recommended to me as a must watch classic. Everyone was right -- this is one of the best dramas I've ever watched in any language. The story itself is pretty basic: an aging model gets ditched on her wedding day and ends up moving into her ex's old apartment with his former roommate, a classical pianist whose career is floundering. It's a slow burn opposites attract romance. But the execution is truly special.

A lot of people have already shouted out KimuTaku and the rest of the cast for their stellar performances and also the OST which is wonderful but I want to spend some time talking about the directing because it's incredibly good and makes it feel more like a film instead of a drama.

The drama mostly takes place in the apartment building where Minami and Sena live. It's a real apartment building not a set and the production took full advantage of the location. After a while ago you'll notice that certain emotional beats take place in certain parts of the building and street. For example almost all of their fights take place in the cramped apartment. But they draw closer when they are on the rooftop or on the basketball court adjacent to the building. Whenever Sena is feeling lost, lonely or contemplative he tends to stand alone on the path overlooking the river.

There are some iconic scenes that illustrate how the director used the site. One is when Sena throws Minami's glitter ball three stories down to the street and then catches it when it bounces back to him, symbolizing the ability to bounce back after setbacks. Another is when Minami tells Sena that she's planning on marrying her boyfriend, after she exits the building she can hear Sena playing her favorite song followed by the wedding march (heart wrenching!). Another one is a spectacular shot that starts with Sena standing alone in the apartment after Minami has moved out and then pans out across the river until he's out of sight to illustrate how lonely and isolated he feels now that she's no longer living with him.

Another thing I noticed was the hair styling and costuming. When the drama starts Sena wears a tweed jacket that seems to symbolize how trapped he feels in his life. Even his hair is styled in such a way to look stiff and unmoving. Minami wears trendy clothes in loud colors and a lot of makeup. But things change as they start to fall in love with each other and to emotionally mature. Sena stops wearing the blazer and is usually in tees when he's spending time with Minami and his hair becomes softer and looser. Minami starts wearing jeans and cotton shirts and very little makeup. She also starts to wear white shirts which are associated with Sena since he's often in a white shirt when teaching and performing.

These are just a few examples but honestly you could easily do a shot by shot analysis of this drama. Just how they use the visual space in the apartment in different scenes tells you so much about what's going on with and between the characters at different parts of the story.

This might sound dry and technical but it shows the care and attention that the production team put into all the details of the drama. And as a result you end up falling in love with the characters.

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Um Clássico Fora dos Padrões

Como uma boa amante de J-drama eu não poderia deixar este clássico dos anos 90 fora da minha lista de assistidos.

Compreendo completamente porque este drama tem seu lugar garantido na lista dos mais assistidos do período Heisei (Janeiro de 1989 a 30 de Abril de 2019). O drama é completamente diferente dos J-dramas atuais, até parece uma série americana.

Em Long Vacation você irá encontrar uma protagonista com um comportamento e atitudes bem ocidentais, que fala o dá na telha sem esconder seus sentimentos, ou seja, uma mulher completamente diferente dos padrões vistos nos J-dramas. Talvez seja esta a razão do sucesso do drama, afinal, não é todo dia que os japoneses veem na TV uma personagem assim, não é mesmo?

Gostei da OST e das atuações, os protagonistas fizeram um ótimo trabalho juntos. A história é simples, mas funciona e desenvolve bem. O ponto marcante do drama é realmente o comportamento totalmente fora dos padrões mostrados nos dramas japoneses para uma personagem feminina.

Se você assim como eu gosta do Takuya, este drama não pode faltar em sua lista de assistidos.

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