Full of quirk and top of the pops in Classical music
I cannot be objective in my review of this series (and even less so than usual). I can give you eleven reasons why you, a perfectly normal Asian drama watcher, would peg this series as mid even among the usual froth of Japanese dramas. It's series full of quirky characters, fighting the good fight to preserve a community orchestra in a city that could not care less. It's a story of a family broken by an incident 5 years ago that struggles to come back together. It's an episodic series in which almost every episode is structured around a famous, overused piece of the Classical repertoire. It's a tepid romance. It has side plots that resolutely go absolutely nowhere. It has little to say about the realities of orchestral employment and production in the 21st Century. It fetishizes the old masters of the genre presented in a world in which anything composed after the 19th century in Europe does not seem to exist. It accedes a privilege to Classical performers which largely does not and should not be. It promotes stale tropes of following one's dreams and self-discovery. It's Art verses the mundanity of life, man!But ...
I loved it.
And not just for the Manachan of it all.
Of course we in the Cult of Ashida Mana were going to watch it. She has not won an acting award for a whole six months now and we have, naturally, grown anxious. Sadly she will probably not win one for this role even though she brings her usual prodigious strengths to the role of Hibiki, the estranged daughter of the protagonist Shunpei played by Nishijima Hidetoshi. Both of their performances were fine to excellent, and she had her usual moments of reactions to tear at one's heart. But Hibiki is no tragic heroine, and it's actually cool to have the Manachan playing a relatively normal young woman with a few daddy issues who gets to have a smidge of a romantic arc. Angsty, rebellious Manachan is my spirit animal.
Nishijima anchors the series well. His Shunpei is hopeless and clumsy at everything outside of music, but within that sphere his ethics and insights are pretty much spot on. He brings an old, tired community orchestra to life, and injects joy into what had become rote. He inspires people. He challenges people. He reconnects them to the reasons why they love making music. Yes, those are also tired tropes of the genre, but they also result in fun little payoffs throughout the series.
Surrounding the two are over a dozen quirky characters in the two's family and the orchestra. All the actors are promising up-and-comers or polished veterans, and kudos to the production for placing Nishida Toshiyuki in a tasty role as the owner of the local music café despite the fact that the actor clearly has mobility issues even if his character doesn't. I'd give special shout-outs to Miyazawa Hio and Touma Ami for seemingly having genuine musical talents in addition to fulfilling their roles well. Miyazawa sings a jazz standard in English at one point and his American accent is so good that you'll have to click over to his MDL page to learn that he was born in San Francisco. And Touma does really seem to play the violin even if it's just Twinkle Twinkle Little Star: (I'm not crying: you are!).
The writing in this series resolutely avoids having a plot, or, at least, resolutely avoids resolving the mild stakes it sets up in the ways we expect these things to be resolved. And that's a good thing! Will the orchestra be thrown out of its practice space by the evil mayor? Will the evil mayor learn to accept is daughter's love of music? Will the orchestra win the festival that they struggled to get into to convince sponsors to help keep the orchestra going? Will Hibiki and Daiki fall in love? The answers may surprise you, and honestly I found most of payoffs refreshing.
And so if you enjoy Classical music or even dramas about quirky communities coming together to struggle against the usual entropy of living, then you'll likely find the show to be worth your time. As for me, it pretty much hit all the right notes.
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Realistic
This is one of the best dramas of the season. At the beginning I had big doubts, because all the shows with a theme reated to an orchestra are writte so naively that anybody in conctact with a real orchestra and real music cannot bear watching it.But this is so much different! The constrast e.g to 'Reversal Orchesra' cannot be larger, even if they start with a similar dilemma. "Goodby Maestro" is greately written and directed: they avoid almost all situations where they cannot make it near to realistic. The actors are also doing a great job, not only the well known names, but also the young actors!
The music is carefully chosen: the classical one and the modern inlets are great and perfectly suited to the moments they have to appear. It is impressive that some of the big actors wentso far that they learned a few German phrases - it is not obvious at all for the big shots. On the other hand, the "German" and "Italian" actors were really bad...
This show is 100% worth watching it and even more if you like classical music and orchestras.
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This review may contain spoilers
Being quite a big fan of Classical Music, it was of course with pretty high expectations that I started watching this "Sayonara Maestro - Chichi to Watashi no Appassionato".I'm glad to be able to say that I really liked it, although the ending was a bit of a let down, honestly. More on that in a jiff.
The script was pretty good, the cast simply great (honorable mentions for Nishijima, Ashida and Nishida), and the music of course lovely (though the pieces selection got worse towards the ending, as far as my taste goes). The setting is beautiful and the production value top-notch.
So why didn't I give this a perfect 10? SPOILERS AHEAD, stop reading now if you wanna avoid those.
***********
The series had been, up to the very end, a beautiful and very inspired story of how a broken family could repair itself through mutual understanding and selflessness. Therefore, the ending felt such a terrible let down!!! After the beautiful letter sent by the ML's mentor from his dying bed (in which the old man basically told his pupil to cherish his loved ones and put them before everything else!), the "ML goes back to Europe to pursue his career" ending felt *completely* out of place!!! >________<
If I had written this, my ending would've been as follows:
They gather for their last concert in the contest. The major is moved to tears by his daughter's performance, and later (through some fast flashbacks) explains why he had so fiercely opposed the orchestra: his wife's death had been caused by her passion for music (it could've been anything, seriously...like for example, that she got run over by a car while crossing the street in a hurry so as not to be late to a concert...). But now he understand he's been wrong the whole time, and to make himself forgiven he decides to start supporting the orchestra, which can therefore go on without disbanding. As for the ML, he chooses to stay with his family (the wife going back with them too) precisely because of his mentor's letter. And as for the ML's agent, he can go back to Austria and who knows, maybe become Conchita Wurst's agent instead. So everybody lived happily ever after! ^____-
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