Konkatsu! is the Spring 2009 drama that starred Nakai Masahiro and was Ueda Tatsuya's drama debut as he played Nakai's character's younger brother.
I've found Konkatsu! rather interesting for the fact that it addresses an issue in Japan that probably a lot of people outside the country don't realize even exists. The heart of this issue is the shrinking population of Japan, especially that of the youth, which is the smallest percentage of the Japanese population. To fix this issue the Japanese government has tried many programs to get young people to marry and have children with a small amount of success but really not enough to turn the situation around. Konkatsu! focuses on showing the process of 'marriage hunting' and IMHO rather simplifies the issue, but I also think expecting much more from a drama would be asking too much.
I like Nakai and so far have found him fun to watch in this series. He plays his hapless hero character, Amamiya Kuniyuki, well and plays off well with the other actors, which is a plus for the comedy of the series. The story keeps focus on him for the most part so if you don't like Nakai for some reason then I doubt you'd enjoy the series much at all.
While Ueda doesn't show up much, but at least he seems to get a little screen time for each episode, I know I'm happy to see him. I don't think I've seen nearly enough to judge his acting yet but so far he fills his role nicely, as minor as it seems, and he's nice to look at too. (laugh)
The other characters so far I like as well. There's a few I really like and the others I have no real opinion of. There is also supposed to be a lot of female guest actors for this series, though I don't know many Japanese actresses so I'm not really interested in seeing any of them, but thankfully they seem to be worked into the plot well so their appearences aren't abrupt.
Storywise the first couple of episodes are still mainly setting things up. We get introduced to Kuniyuki, his family, friends and co-workers all rather quickly, but each introduction comes with a name caption to help people remember the name and face.
And for every episode there is an event shown that is one of the typical activities at the actual marriage hunting events in Japan, like the first episode shows off the 'speed dating' where men and women hold quick introductions and conversations with each other before switching partners. By the end of the event those most interested in hearing more from someone are allowed to find that person and see if they will be able to hit it off or not.
It's not the most engaging of stories so far, but I like the characters so far and I think it holds some promise so I'll continue to watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment