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CherryBunny
Cherry's Corner ________…………©
Though I did enjoy the drama, there are quite a few reasons that I felt I couldn't rate it higher than 7.5. The first being the ever recurring annoyance of Japanese dramas, which is the seemingly lower budget presentation. While the costumes and locations were beautiful, the rest of the production had a sort of 'cheap' feel, such as cheesy special effects and sometimes shoddy cinemetography. Also, when the Japanese actors had to speak English, you could barely understand them. Add to that the terrible overacting of the Western actors, especially the guy that played Admiral Nelson. He was especially awful!
I much preferred the second half of the drama as opposed to ths first. The first half had more unreal, fantasy elements, plus I feel the acting was more awkward. By the second half, the true history of Ryukyu took center stage with the magical elements making less of an appearance. The actors seemed more comfortable in thier roles and the story just felt more solid.
I would also like to add that I see this as a more mature drama. Meaning, geared more for adults. While there are no graphic scenes at all, there is one in particular during the first half that is extremely suggestive. In fact, it made me widen my eyes considering this was a historial J drama and not a movie.
Special mention about GACKT's role in this. His character is super creepy. Like, icky, skin crawling creepy. Which is pretty cool as he plays it so well.
I would recommend this drama to any adult viewer that enjoys Japanese history. It's interesting and has some wonderful moments.
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All in all, though, it wasn't bad. It was cute and funny, but I just can't help but compare it to You're Beautiful, and in so doing, it just ends up as lacking.
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What is really interesting, also, is that this drama shows how the education system is warped in Japan. How many schools focus only on teaching what is on the exams for the sole purpose of getting the most students into prestigious universities while neglecting to teach other educational material, such as history and physical education for example. This no doubt creates enormous pressure on students to devote themselves to studying, ignoring everything else.
Out of all the high school themed dramas I have watched so far, Taiyo to Umi no Kyoshitsu is by far one of the most realistically portrayed dramas. I highly, highly reccommend this to anyone looking for heartwarming, coming of age drama without all the over the top silliness.
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With all that said, I ended up rating this drama pretty high, considering. That was because of the acting. Kubota Masataka was simply phenomenal as Yagami Light. When I started watching the first episode, I admit to not really expecting much. However, after a while, I became deeply impressed by him, particularly during the last half of the drama. His descent into madness was expertly portrayed, and as I watched him on my screen, he was the mirror image of the Light Yagami from the anime and manga. The one change that was made that I ended up liking was him and his personality. Instead of the sociopathic Light from the original, they made him be a normal kid. He was friendly and good at the start, but his possession of the Death Note and his obsession with creating a new world pushed him down into a spiral of madness. It does make one think. If you found a Death Note, could the same thing happen to you?
Yamakazi Kento's L, in contrast to Kubota's performance, was rather underwhelming. In fact, he was very unlikable at the start. Fortunately, as time went on, he improved. Much of that improvement is thanks to the inclusion of some of L's most poignant mannerisms. At first, none were really there. It was hard for me to see this character as the legendary L. Eventually, though, Yamazaki begin to adopt simple little things into his acting, such as L's famous slouchy posture and his wide eyed stare. Those may seem like very small things, but to me, they made a world of difference. I started to recognize the character and like him.
All of the actors did a decent job. I especially liked this version's Misa. She wasn't as weak.
My final thoughts are about Near. I have absolutely no dang clue what was up with that character at all. I am still unsure if he was still supposed to be a boy, just played by a girl ir if they changed him into a girl and the translation was messed up. I also have no idea what was going through thier heads when they made all the changes to that character. They were all stupid and pointless.
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The acting was decent, and the lead girl pulled off looking and acting like a boy pretty well. Much better than some other actresses have done in the same type of role. There were many funny moments as well as couple of rather serious moments, too but I found everything fit really well.
All in all, I would recommend this drama to anyone looking for a light hearted, fun drama.
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I got all the way to last twenty minutes and then gave up. To be fair, at least the movie is a tad bit better than the book, I'll give it that. Still, though, at it's core, the story is pretty much just about a horny guy who is also emo, as are most of the other characters. I felt no chemistry between any of the characters, and most of them just seemed rather confused the whole time.
Seriously, though, I really feel it fails as a deep, moving drama, which it was meant to be, and instead comes across as a pretentious, whiney teenage melodrama.
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