Shudan Sasen was unexpected
I was really going to give this a miss when a saw it was going to be another Kagawa Teruyuki playing another overacting villain in another variation of Hanzawa Naoki.I ended up giving episode 1 a show and luckily Kagawa Teruyuki is not a sneering villain and secondly while it is another Hanzawa Naoki with a banker fighting against overwhelming odds, Shudan Sasen doesn't take itself too seriously and there is a kind of showa innocence with the always positive and ganbaru Fukuyama Masaharu as the main character.
Shudan Sasen is like this fable that as long as you work hard, you will succeed even if your own bank is against you and wants to see you fail.
The standard plot of banking jdoramas is that if you show your sincerity and effort, clients will be impressed.
How much you enjoy the show will depend on how much you enjoy such positivity. On a side note, happy to see Nakamura Anne from Suits in this. Also, I love the theme song. Never heard of Elephant Kashimashi before this but they remind me very much of Ulfuls.
I can see myself getting tired of Fukuyama Masaharu's ganbaru everything solution but at least we've got the mystery of who's the traitor to keep us guessing and I'm 100% sure its not Kagawa Teruyuki.
On the whole, I don't hate Shudan Sasen which was unexpected. Maybe Fukuyama's showa positivity is more conducive to my tastes rather than the always sneering, taking itself too seriously Hanzawa Naoki. If you like your Japanese banking doramas where the odds are stacked so high any sane person would have given up, this show is for you.
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Not another Hanzawa Naoki, But A Whole New One !
At first I thought it was going to be another Hanzawa Naoki. But after watching episode one, I realised that the main character is not as serious as Hanzawa was. This guy is more of a funny and chill person. But eventually he becomes serious as the series gets to its end. And I thought Kagawa Teruyuki was going to be an antagonist in this one. But he had demonstrated himself by picking up and acting another wonderful character like he always does. I'm personally a big fan of Kagawa Teruyuki. Overall, you can get into this one without any hesitation. It was satisfactory for me.Was this review helpful to you?
If Mr. Bean and a horribly corrupt idealist got into a fight... in a bank?
Is my headline confusing? So is this show. I don't feel like I can devote a ton of energy to making this organized if I'm honest; I just noticed this weird show somehow has a totally respectable rating thus far but no one is bothering to say what they like about it or dislike, so I'm going to basically rant a little til I feel better.It starts off seeming okay. You have a bank merger with one of the two having far more political pull/influence and this weirdly corrupt idealist (see, told ya it's confusing) pushing the board of directors who are all in for profit at the cost of the bank itself, even. Corrupt idealist exec is going through this shutdown of all the less powerful bank's branches and transferring their accounts to the others, fine okay, but he's bribing people left and right, talking about giving control to overseas companies, even, to "save the bank?" There's his idealism in a big vision: banks ruled by AI, minimal human knowledge or involvement, computers the superior means for all things monetary in his mind.
I struggled to give this a rating at all because it COULD be genuinely good, really, except good freaking lord, what was this writer thinking when deciding to basically make the lead character a sort of comical Mr. Bean figure always bowing, smiling, everyone robotically following militant sorts of motions that don't EVEN seem like human bodies are moving half the time. Some solid sentimental connection is formed, and I really do like a couple of the actors in this, the ones more subtle in behavior, more... banker-like? Kagawa Teruyuki is by far the best of them in this respect. Some of those banker behaviors are instilled, the whole morning hazaa sorts of let's get em tiger fight the good fight work hard comrades teamwork chants, but he looks human and real. Ah, so does Takahashi Kazuya (who has some of the Mr. Bean but without being so annoyingly non-humanlike). With that said, because there ARE some really sweet behaviors, some sentimental attachments, and while of course a bit on the forced side there are some stories of customers that are delivered in touching and normal ways, I kept watching. Would I watch a second season? My rating speaks for itself. I'd certainly watch the aforementioned actors (along with the youngster Kamiki Ryunosuke) again, but assuming this is not the normal sort of behavior/acting job for the lead, for Kote Shinya who is basically a mobster in a bank office, and for bully with the approval stamp Sakou Yoshi, assuming more aptly they don't make these grotesque over the top facial expressions that sometimes look like someone having a seizure in 'anger' or 'defiance' and other times just look RIDICULOUS... The lead Fukuyama Masaharu seemed to think he was in a comedy. Maybe it is? When he would become 'sentimental' it was a bit like a tiny child cuddling a doll; when Mikami Hiroshi, our corrupt bribery using idealist trying to save the bank through machines, to fire everyone then say it was for their institution that now the experienced bankers will make a valiant sacrifice and bag groceries for the rest of their work years, when he got pissy, it was so much like a spoiled little kid not getting his robot the day it was released it really WAS comical. The problem with that? The content was serious.
That's not to say you can't take serious content and deliver it with a lot of comedy. I finished Special Labor Inspector (Kdrama) not long ago and it was funny, sharp, and also managing serious stuff. Heck, even Doctor Detective has funny moments. This seemed more up the Radiation House alley-something to take very seriously as if the lives of all you serve depend on it. In both a hospital and bank that is entirely true. If your money OR your health disappear, the other is soon to follow, so it's not like we can survive without both being managed well and safeguarded. Had it been approached LIKE Radiation House-some sweetness, sentiment, some brilliance, some dumb moments of despair/shame, and a sharp contrast between the 'do it quick and make money' folks and the 'do it right the first time and follow through thoroughly' ones, it could honestly have been great.
Summary: I don't honestly know if the actors were TOLD to be so unnatural (ie if it's a failed comedy) or if the writer's directions were not clear/precise or if they gave leeway for the actors to interpret it, but the director at the very least BOMBED this because it was like I was watching six different shows, actors who had read six separate scripts thrown together. That'd be fine were they tourists in a hostel all acting wildly different, but not in a bank, especially not in a single branch of a bank. It was just too peculiar to enjoy and I ended up frequently speeding up the ABUNDANCE of dead time, time when a scene could have been done in 2 minutes but took 10. It was just poorly made. I feel sad for the ones who DID work hard because it's clear they didn't gel in the end. Failed comedy, failed business centered semi-serious drama about economic issues of the day, failed study of what ACTUALLY makes a person heroic? Who knows. They clearly wrote for the lead to be persevering the whole way through. The problem is the lack of evolution of that character and-even if it was the intention-how unbelievable it was for someone completely underqualified and not especially skilled, your base level clerk, to suddenly jump up several tiers in order to fail then behave like a basic clerk but everything turn out alright? Eh, perseverance isn't enough and the message gets lost with a guy who can always be outwitted and who ultimately would realistically have been attacked and hospitalized in almost any other drama; they fired and bullied and hurt others, threats left and right, but a guy with a wife and child at home is going to just take the threats and go? Unbelievable is definitely a good word.
Like I said, I like the idea of this grunt worker just running his way around (no transit bankers have enough $ there I suppose?), though he is running apparently 15km a day from how they make it seem, all in dress shoes and a suit, no changing outfits for the sake of not being sweaty for clients (but I guess women don't fart and bankers don't sweat if they're honorable?). I like a lot of its ideas. The problem is I cringed so so much I am angry for how much more my wrinkles set in with a mere 540 minutes. I feel jaded that it took 450 minutes of lousy acting by the ones that were in that comical Bean universe that sometimes felt like I was watching a fight between (The Simpsons) Mr. Burns and Ned Flanders, the lead the obvious Flanders and the paper stamper/approval process slower downer and stopper the Mr. Burns. That leaves Takahashi Kazuya to be Mr. Bean since he has the best resemblance!
Ah, and it's normal, I know, but when a show already makes you grit your teeth, those ads thrown a few places in them really make your fist feel like punching something sometimes. They do serve as times to unclench a jaw that is really sad to see something promising go from drain to sewer to waste treatment plant in 10 hours then just end with a stench you never can quite stop smelling even after it's theoretically 15km away, running alongside our protagonist who somehow turns from a cog they'll use and dispose of to a master who beats them despite knowing almost nothing about what's happening in his own institution. Should've maybe let someone else be the voice of inspiration. This guy just made me want to slap him too often with his fast furious bows and running and loud shouting and other comedy troupe suited behaviors that don't translate well on TV.
Sorry I ranted. I got mad all over again at myself for watching it through, but with 10 episodes, it feels like an insult to not see something through (oh heck, for me there can be 25 hours left and I'll still not be able to stop watching most that I start if I've gotten even 5-6 hours into it). This has been a confession for your holiness to forgive my impudence and all that. I at least can go watch them be cute, handsome, sweet, tender, or villanous elsewhere, hopefully in sync with their fellow cast members next time.
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