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bluelovesorangeor possibly, littlest hobos!
yes, FINALLY, a post about the other drama I'm watching this season, one that I love, one that makes me happy, one that doesn't necessitate me having to think very carefully about my words and the greater social construct behind them: Atashinchi no Danshi is pure sugary funbliss. It's not a deep show, doesn't pretend to be a deep show, it's a fantasy comedy/family-home situation involving an ex-homeless girl on the run from her father's creditors, who stumbles into an arranged marriage, widowhood a month later, and then becomes the executor of her late husband's estate with one caveat: Become the mother of his six adopted sons.
It is basically a show that not only suggests you suspend your disbelief, readjust your WTF meter, throw out any preconceived icky notions (think Anna Nicole Smith? Try Charlie & the Chocolate Factory meets Hogwarts instead) but that you also sit back and enjoy the primary colored hijinks, because lord, there are a lot of them. It is RIDONK, in the best sense of the word.
Fast-paced, the Littlest Hobo (my unofficial name for this drama a few months into finding out about it) features robots, a walking surveillance camera that looks just like a maid, weird inventions, kidnappings, mysterious pasts, day-glo colored outerwear, a Real Scottish Castle, the minimum of over-acting (but if you watch any TWdramas, this should be cake.), shady authority figures, otakus and weird people, and a motley family made up of a fashion model, a host, a motorcyle gang member, a shut-in, a precocious hacker, and a drifting Renaissance-man.
And then there's their new mama.....
Chisato is having a bad hair day. And possibly a bad life, in general.
you see, she's on the run from some creditors
because her dear father cosigned her name as a guarantor of his debts and so now Chisato owes 100 million yen to some shady people
Not that Chisato is just going to stand there and take it - if she can't evade them by her cunning disguise (almost as cunning as Clark Kent for Superman, because let's face it, you can't hide Maki's pervasive adorableness under artfully applied smudges and flannel and a bad fright wig. I mean yes, costumers have dowdied her up on several occasions, but the ADORABLE SHINES LIKE A BEACON) she's going to give them what for. And really, it's quite amusing to see two grown yakuza/credit sharks get their asses handed to them by a wee girl running around in boots.
And then there's this guy:
HE HAS HIS OWN HELICOPTER.
AND A CAPE.
and he owns a toy company with a BAT LOGO. DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS, PEOPLE.
Chisato is non-plussed.
And in exchange for Shinzo-san (for that is Cape Man's name) paying off her 100 million yen debt, Chisato signs an IOU....of sorts.
It turns out, Chisato really needs to read the small print, because her IOU actually is a marriage registration consent form.
Turns out Shinzo-san's only got one month left to live and having never been married before, he wants a wife to spend his remaining days with.
Before you all flee from the icky December May implications, it's all done in flashback and Chisato comes off less as a wife and more like a girl Friday, helping Shinzo with his inventions and learning more about his life -
Namely, he has six adopted sons, who were all failed heirs. And being that this drama is from the producing/writing team of Hana Kimi, of course there has to be random bouts of nudity.
Meet Masaru. He's the fashion model who is afraid of women. And wears eye makeup in the sauna. And has matchy matchy nailpolish on.
Way to make a first impression on your new stepmom, Masaru!~
Satoru, who when he's not communicating solely by computer (he's a shut in) lives in a dungeon of his own devising, wearing incredibly colorful outwear
Chisato's guide to parenting:
When one of your new children won't come out of his room, what do you do?
and if that doesn't work....you FREEZE HIM OUT.
a handy cheat guide to knowing your children!
Your kids won't sit down together for a family meal? No problem!
SUPER GLUE THEM TO THE CHAIRS.
hours of fun!
Because Mama believes in tough love
And apparently the way to get a model's attention, especially if he's afraid of women is TO MAKE A TRAP USING A BANANA.
Well, he didn't respond to my text message.
Satoru thinks Masaru is just faking it for the attention.
Masaru has other ideas.
Want to find out what your third son is doing on his off hours?
Have your geek squad find out his particulars and then run into your second son and get caughtstalking following him!
Of course Chisato has MINIONS.
She also has a SEKRIT GRANDSON. Because yes, Sho (third son) has a little boy.
When your second son gets kidnapped by the Yakuza?
More family bonding!
Masaru has just been picked up by the cops and Chisato has to go collect him.
More of Episode 3's brilliance:
It's a bird, it's a plane! It's SUPER-HOBO!
Seriously, though.
This show.
IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY.
yes, FINALLY, a post about the other drama I'm watching this season, one that I love, one that makes me happy, one that doesn't necessitate me having to think very carefully about my words and the greater social construct behind them: Atashinchi no Danshi is pure sugary funbliss. It's not a deep show, doesn't pretend to be a deep show, it's a fantasy comedy/family-home situation involving an ex-homeless girl on the run from her father's creditors, who stumbles into an arranged marriage, widowhood a month later, and then becomes the executor of her late husband's estate with one caveat: Become the mother of his six adopted sons.
It is basically a show that not only suggests you suspend your disbelief, readjust your WTF meter, throw out any preconceived icky notions (think Anna Nicole Smith? Try Charlie & the Chocolate Factory meets Hogwarts instead) but that you also sit back and enjoy the primary colored hijinks, because lord, there are a lot of them. It is RIDONK, in the best sense of the word.
Fast-paced, the Littlest Hobo (my unofficial name for this drama a few months into finding out about it) features robots, a walking surveillance camera that looks just like a maid, weird inventions, kidnappings, mysterious pasts, day-glo colored outerwear, a Real Scottish Castle, the minimum of over-acting (but if you watch any TWdramas, this should be cake.), shady authority figures, otakus and weird people, and a motley family made up of a fashion model, a host, a motorcyle gang member, a shut-in, a precocious hacker, and a drifting Renaissance-man.
And then there's their new mama.....
Chisato is having a bad hair day. And possibly a bad life, in general.
you see, she's on the run from some creditors
because her dear father cosigned her name as a guarantor of his debts and so now Chisato owes 100 million yen to some shady people
Not that Chisato is just going to stand there and take it - if she can't evade them by her cunning disguise (almost as cunning as Clark Kent for Superman, because let's face it, you can't hide Maki's pervasive adorableness under artfully applied smudges and flannel and a bad fright wig. I mean yes, costumers have dowdied her up on several occasions, but the ADORABLE SHINES LIKE A BEACON) she's going to give them what for. And really, it's quite amusing to see two grown yakuza/credit sharks get their asses handed to them by a wee girl running around in boots.
And then there's this guy:
HE HAS HIS OWN HELICOPTER.
AND A CAPE.
and he owns a toy company with a BAT LOGO. DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS, PEOPLE.
Chisato is non-plussed.
And in exchange for Shinzo-san (for that is Cape Man's name) paying off her 100 million yen debt, Chisato signs an IOU....of sorts.
It turns out, Chisato really needs to read the small print, because her IOU actually is a marriage registration consent form.
Turns out Shinzo-san's only got one month left to live and having never been married before, he wants a wife to spend his remaining days with.
Before you all flee from the icky December May implications, it's all done in flashback and Chisato comes off less as a wife and more like a girl Friday, helping Shinzo with his inventions and learning more about his life -
Namely, he has six adopted sons, who were all failed heirs. And being that this drama is from the producing/writing team of Hana Kimi, of course there has to be random bouts of nudity.
Meet Masaru. He's the fashion model who is afraid of women. And wears eye makeup in the sauna. And has matchy matchy nailpolish on.
Way to make a first impression on your new stepmom, Masaru!~
Satoru, who when he's not communicating solely by computer (he's a shut in) lives in a dungeon of his own devising, wearing incredibly colorful outwear
Chisato's guide to parenting:
When one of your new children won't come out of his room, what do you do?
and if that doesn't work....you FREEZE HIM OUT.
a handy cheat guide to knowing your children!
Your kids won't sit down together for a family meal? No problem!
SUPER GLUE THEM TO THE CHAIRS.
hours of fun!
Because Mama believes in tough love
And apparently the way to get a model's attention, especially if he's afraid of women is TO MAKE A TRAP USING A BANANA.
Well, he didn't respond to my text message.
Satoru thinks Masaru is just faking it for the attention.
Masaru has other ideas.
Want to find out what your third son is doing on his off hours?
Have your geek squad find out his particulars and then run into your second son and get caught
Of course Chisato has MINIONS.
She also has a SEKRIT GRANDSON. Because yes, Sho (third son) has a little boy.
When your second son gets kidnapped by the Yakuza?
More family bonding!
Masaru has just been picked up by the cops and Chisato has to go collect him.
More of Episode 3's brilliance:
It's a bird, it's a plane! It's SUPER-HOBO!
Seriously, though.
This show.
IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 01:49 am (UTC)And you're forgetting that Not!Impregnor also DRESSES LIKE SHINEE. Which is probably why I'm warming to him.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 04:48 pm (UTC)And only the writers of Hana Kimi can find a way to make these horrible little beasts (<--my opinion on children in general, ikemen are no exception) utterly ADORABLE. Like, only outdone by Maki's cuteness. Ah, this show is a painkiller, I tell you.
PS: I'm liking Kento. And his character's constant fail at getting Chisato's attention. XD
I know, right?
Date: 2009-05-06 05:11 pm (UTC)(in all seriousness, while I don't mind children in general, my former experience working in retail has given me a rather skewed and harsh view on parents and children in that they both lack manners and common sense these days and there's too many entitled brats running around and we're all an illiterate mob.)
This show is SO HAPPY INDUCING. While I am studying Japanese (slowly, painfully, with long stretches between intervals) I realized it would just be better for me to wait for subbed versions of episodes - with one exception. I've watched almost all of Maki's dramas when they hit the internet RAW, Hana Kimi being my first big raw/love experience, and I think the littlest Hobo will be the second. Because it's not a procedural, and some of the humor broad and universal, and the emotions so very clear/and with context/my own built knowledge of j-culture, it's easy for me to follow along, even without subs. And you know, it has to be a good/entertaining show if it's funny even RAW.
Kento's character is adorable. Poor Heiji. It's not his fault that Chisato's completely oblivious to any sort of male attention.
But yes, Kento is totally going on the newly improved Imaginary Boyfriends of Jdrama list!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-06 05:28 pm (UTC)I like watching AtaDan raw for precisely the reasons you've said--it's not hard to guess for someone like you or me, already pretty used to the j-drama formulae and j-culture nuances. And years of watching subbed anime has made the language sound very familiar. And dang, I still laugh like heck even though it's RAW. That's saying something.
I thought either Satoru or Akira of the unknowns cast into this puppy would catch my attention, but I'm really eyeing Kento now. Heiji's single-minded hopefulness is just utter love.
I had only watched Seto Koji
Date: 2009-05-06 05:41 pm (UTC)I've definitely warmed up to him in this, because he's got a normal hair color, and he's so oddly endearing even in his exasperating teenage sullenness (though it makes me laugh that he's the same age as Maki.)
But I definitely applaud Fuji's casting choices here, because while it's not all unknowns, this type of show has that HK power to break out actors on the verge into something bigger - because I still maintain, without Hana Kimi providing the push, actors like Hiro, Yusuke, and hellllooo, TOMA, and Junpei wouldn't nearly be as big as they are now. HK was that foot in the door moment. I'm so pleased that so many of the ikemen have gone on to bigger projects.
Er, Koizora in general was pretty...
Date: 2009-05-06 05:55 pm (UTC)But I definitely agree that the casting choices were good for this one. It's disappointing for some because fans tend to want more familiar faces, but in Fuji's point of view it's a really good mix of unknowns and not-too-well-knowns... who are fully capable and some even pretty experienced. The sons are pretty easy to categorize, actually--there's Mukai and Okada, who have been around but who are pretty easy going (i.e. they don't seem to have this mad hunt for big roles); Kaname Jun and Yamamoto Yusuke, who are on the rise ('been seeing them everywhere lately' type of thing), and Koji and the chibi, who are not well known yet, but will definitely have attention now.
Fuji: ikemen employment agency! y/n?
They're the number one broadcasting station in Japan
Date: 2009-05-06 06:02 pm (UTC)Koizora: FOR THIS IS THE POWER OF MY LOVE.
Oh man, that was *our* catchphrase for about a few months in HY-land, and we would both crack up whenever the other one said it.
I would group Kaname Jun with Okada and Mukai actually, as he's in the same age group and has started around the same time as Okada - and has been a pretty solid performer, in both starring and supporting character in all of his dramas. Though there was that amusing run of roles where he seemed to be playing the lovable idiot bishounen.
But yes, Fuji definitely is an ikemen employment agency!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-15 10:04 am (UTC)"AND A CAPE."
xD
Ahh, Atashinchi. I will cry once this series end, because I will miss it so much. Where else can you see guys running around half-naked in every episode?! ROFL.