bluelovesorange: (ot3)
[personal profile] bluelovesorange
I meant to post this earlier, but then I got sidetracked by OMG, HANA KIMI!

it certainly makes for smashing dramas, doesn't it? Both good and bad. I'm in the middle of a sports drama binge at the moment, which is quite funny as I'm not remotely sporty, but that's entertainment for you. I rewatched Ganbatte Ikimasshoi! (Give it your all!) and just finished watching the subbed episodes of Regatta. Both are about rowing, and can be considered the yin and yang of each other: Ganbatte! is about a high school girl rowing team, while Regatta deals with a university male rowing team. I also watched half of Rough, the swimming movie starring Masami Nagawase, Hayami Mokomichi, and everyone's favorite yakuza gigolo heir, Abe Tsuyoshi. I fast forwarded to the end, because well...the movie kind of sucked - the transitions were off, I didn't really get love triangle between the three, and the mildly cutesy story line - two families in rival cookie empires and both of their children are top swimmers who hate each other, etc, etc. The only thing going for it was the pretty - Mokomichi and Tsuyoshi in swim trunks!



Ganbatte Ikimasshoi is the story of a young woman who falls in love with rowing. Anne Suzuki plays Etsuko Shinomura, a boisterous and big-hearted girl who wears her emotions on her sleeve. A tomboy and an academic slacker, she has a childhood complex of being called Yabane (scary older sister) stemming from getting into fights on the playground. I like her already.

Etsuko is the younger daughter in a family of five: her father, mother and grandmother help run their dry-cleaning/laundromat business, while her perfect older sister goes to university in Kyoto. Coincidentally, the school Etsuko is attending now is the same one her sister graduated from. Etsuko studied extra hard in order to pass the entrance exam.

The story is introduced through flashbacks - a young runaway finds solace in the rowing house and is surprised by the female coach. The coach tells her about the legendary girls' rowing team from three years ago....


Back to Etsuko, it's the first day of high school and she's already caused bad attention by coming in late to the school opening ceremony, coming in late with a boy!, and antagonizing the social cliques. And worst of all, that Boo is in the same school with her. "Boo" is the nickname of Hiroyuki Sekino, played by Ryo Nishikido. It was because he was so chubby when they were children - and naturally, grown up Boo hates his nickname. They live in the same neighborhood, went to the same primary school, ended up in the same class year after year, and now in highschool - it's the same old same old.



The only thing that isn't the same is that Hiroyuki has a burning, full on sincere, quietly simmering under the surface love for Etsuko. Except of course, he won't admit it to himself until it's nearly the end, and she won't get it at first, because her head is full of rowing - and the guy she ran into on the first day of school:


WHY HELLO THERE.


Nakata Saburo. (Who is played by Uchi Hiroki for the first two episodes of the series, and then after that unfortunate business of being caught underage drinking, the role was hastily recast using Taguchi Junnosuke. Which is just not the same.)

Saburo's a strange one, a pseudo Hanazawa Rui type, who strolls around reading novels, spouting vaguely poetic/pretentious comments like how the human cells regenerate every couple of days, so by the end of the week, cellularly, you're a completely different person and to live for this moment - and very guarded - he refuses to comment on whether he has a girlfriend by saying "no comment" and is dubbed 'bad attitude' by the Mean Girls. He's also a soccer/rugby ace.




Great conversation starter, Etsuko - tell a complete stranger that you ran away from home once. She's just so unfiltered!

But! Rowing! Real love of life! Yes, Etsuko falls in love with rowing on the day she runs away from home, because it seems like a world where nothing can hurt her - the open sky, the calming ocean - so she wants to row as a club activity.

Only problem: there's only a boy's team, and they think she's going to be their new manager and do all their dirty work for them, when, no, she wants to be in that boat with them and row too.

A series of embarrassing mishaps occur and Etsuko is disheartened by the apparent lack of interest of anyone in joining a girl's team.





IT'S OKAY. BOO LOOOOOOOOOOOOVES YOU


this is after he calls her big sis and to not give up. And Ryo is pretty adorable in this series.



SEE WHAT I MEAN? He leaves a book on competitive rowing in her desk and then shyly looks over his shoulder and smiles! It is the CUTEST THING EVER!



Even Etsuko's friend Rie thinks so. She'll have a crush on Boo and how it affects her and Etsuko's friendship - well, it's true of most high school girls, I think. Funny thing is that the actress Aibu Saki will later be cast in Regatta as the lead female love interest between Hayami Mokomichi and Matsuda Shota. Lucky Girl. And she'll work with Ryo again in Attention Please! SEE? THE J-ENTERTAINMENT WORLD: SO INCESTUOUS!

Basically, Gambatte is more of a gen story about friendship, and teamwork than a straight up romance - it bubbles underneath the surface at times, but it's more Bad News Bears/League of Their Own - a drama about creating a family among five misfits: the unfiltered, heart on her sleeve tomboy, the Straight A, Type A perfectionist, the Moody 'Bad' Girl, a chubby dreamer, and an adorable mastermind, who's used to sitting on the sidelines for anything deeply physical because of her small stature.



Also: really cute ending credits - they reshot this with new footage of Saburo v. 2.0 later.









awww, BFF forever!



Just kind of sad that this yukata/hanabi scene never actually made it into the show, because it's a high school drama! There should be a school festival episode!





Ah, we hardly knew ye, Uchi.



EVERYONE KNOWS YOU TWO ARE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER, OMG, JUST GET OVER IT ALREADY.



So Ryo.





OTP shot.





he may be short, but he's STRONG!



moment of truth here





He throws rocks at her window. Man, it's so a John Hughes moment.

Ganbatte Ikimasshoi can be downloaded with hard subs at Pretty-Boys.Net, and with soft subs at the usual suspects: [livejournal.com profile] jdramas and Silent-Regrets.com

More caps of the cuteness can be found at my mixed j-drama lj gallery.
I'll make a separate post about Regatta, Rough and other bad movies later.

Date: 2007-05-22 09:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kitsune714.livejournal.com
Oh, Uchi. Uchi is so very pretty. And he can pull off the Hanazawa Rui-esque air of mystery much better than Taguchi can. Much as I like KAT-TUN, Taguchi...well, the kid needs a Ritalin from time to time, you know? And Uchi is just so pretty. (He's so pretty I had to mention it twice.) And I like the idea that in this drama, Ryo used to be fat. For some reason, that just makes me really hysterically giddy, for some reason.


He throws rocks at her window. Man, it's so a John Hughes moment.


...and then Jake Ryan Takeshi Kaneshiro Uchi pulls in front of her house in his red Porsche!
From: [identity profile] calledinvain.livejournal.com
for Seito Shokun and Sexy Voice, and Taguchi...that kid's a blinker. But cute, in his own special way. I like to think of Boo as Duckie, only happier. "Fat" and Ryo in the same sentence just makes me think of that interview where he made Jin cry. Oh, Evil Ryo! Never Change!


I haven't seen Attention Please! and probably won't, but if the confession scenes in 1 liter and Ganbatte are anything to go by, he gets some really nice ones - so much more than the standard 'su ki da' moments.

Also, have you seen the newly updated Hana Kimi cast?
From: [identity profile] kitsune714.livejournal.com
I love the interview where he makes Jin cry! If only it was on TV or was viewable on YouTube. And yes, Taguchi...well, the kid is always on, you know? He's giddy. That's...yeah, that works, sometimes, but not if you're trying to be all Hanazawa Rui-esque.

I haven't seen more than the Attention Please SP (I just wanted to get a feel for Ryo as an actor), but it seems cute and fun. And yes, I did see the newly upated Hana Kimi cast, but I'm not too familiar with the manga, so I'm not sure how to react.
From: [identity profile] calledinvain.livejournal.com
The manga is very fluid with the sexuality. But mostly, it is very gay and yet straight at the same time.

It's also too damn long (IMO) at 23 volumes, but the ending's happy, so at least there's some kind of pay off for all that setup.

Date: 2007-05-23 12:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dangermousie.livejournal.com
OMG. I love you. Where do you find ganbatte? Because it totally looks like something I saw a clip of a long time ago and have been wondering about ever since!

retrying this because LJ fails!

Date: 2007-05-23 06:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] calledinvain.livejournal.com

heee, you have too many dramas already!

Just to warn you: it does start out slow, but it's a slow burning kind of series, you start caring about the characters and the little hints of Boo/Etsuko and then the rowing, which is just cool to watch.

Ganbatte Ikimasshoi can be downloaded with hard subs at Pretty-Boys.Net/pbfansubs, and with soft subs at the usual suspects: jdramas and Silent-Regrets.com

Profile

bluelovesorange: (Default)
bluelovesorange

August 2011

S M T W T F S
 1 23 456
78910111213
14151617181920
21 222324252627
28293031   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Aug. 1st, 2025 06:05 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios