Summer Nude Review

Title: Summer Nude

Genre: Romance

Episodes: 11

Broadcast period: 2013-Jul to 2013-Sept

Theme song: Summer Nude’13 by Yamashita Tomohisa

Cast: Yamashita Tomohisa, Toda Erika, Karina and Nagasawa Masami.

This is a story about three people changing their lives over a summer.

Chiyohara Natsuki (Karina) is getting married in a small town close to the beach. Prior to the wedding she was chef what she had always dreamed of becoming, but she gladly left it behind so she could be with her fiancé. On her wedding say though, her fiancé decides to run away, leaving her devastated and without anything. Capturing the worst moment of her life is Mikuriya Asahi (Yamashita Tomohisa), a wedding photographer who lives near the beach. After the eventful day, Asahi reluctantly sends the bill for the wedding photos. With the bill he attaches a note saying that he wishes her happiness and hopes that she will find her smile back again. This message makes Natsuki call Asahi, to thank him, but as friend’s restaurant is without cook, Asahi asks for Natsuki’s help. Thinking it’s only a day, Natsuki agrees, only to be met by expectations to stay an entire summer. After meeting the people of the town, and being persuaded by Taniyama Hanae (Toda Erika) Asahi’s best friend, and who has a 10 year one-sided-love for Asahi, but was always disregarded because Asahi can’t get over his first love Ichikura Kasumi (Nagasawa Masami).

Asahi had waited 3 years for Kasumi to return but in vain, so Natsuki decides to help Hanae out and get them two together, only to start something she wasn’t expecting..

I don’t know, I really don’t. I mean what the hell was it about, no idea, who was I rooting for, no idea. The drama has heart - I think - but it somehow ends up being too ‘celebrity preoccupied’, I mean no one in their real mind would shift this fast to another love story, if they cared for their characters. It’s like a game of ping pong, seriously hitting the characters back and forth as if they are really nothing more than puppets. It really loses all form of reality, and everything in that sense. There is no way people bounce that fast, and there is no way they can be THAT easy to fall in love with. I don’t know. Maybe I was expecting a bit much. I was hoping for a good Yamapi love story :( but got some bad ping pong game instead…

☆☆☆ / 3 out of 5 stars

♥♥♥ / 3 out of 4 hearts

GOLD Review

Title: GOLD
Genre: Drama, Family, Sport
Episodes: 11
Broadcast period: 2010-Jul to 2010-Sep
Cast: Amami Yuki, Nagasawa Masami, Mikami Kensei, Matsuzaka Tori, Takei Emi and Sorimachi .

Saotome Yuri (Amami Yuki) owns a major sports gym and aesthetic salon. She is famous for the way she raises her children and is often called on TV shows to talk about her point of view, which are also written in books that she writes. Her older brother was an athlete, almost going to the Olympics, but unfortunately ends up in an accident. This leaves Yuri with the desire to fulfill his greatest wish to get gold, so she raises all her children to become athletes, be it swimming or running, just so that they can get gold. This sounds rough said so bluntly, but the wish to get gold is not only Yuri’s dream, it became the dream of her children as they grew up under her strict rules and ways of living.
Their lives change when suddenly situations happen of which they had not expected…

I started this drama mainly because of the cast: Amami Yuki (BOSS, Queens Classroom, Kaiji) and Sorimachi Takashi (GTO) are two of my favorite ‘non-idol’ celebs and actors. It was like those typical Japanese dramas with the typical touching speeches occasionally, so didn’t really expect much of it. Seriously, this drama caught me off guard. It really didn’t expect it to be so mature and tough, like really. It’s very serious, and very harsh sometimes, made me go like ‘whaaaat?’. On the other hand, it had its downs, like sometimes the actors weren’t really expressing the character that mainly happened in the beginning, but towards the end it became somewhat crazy. I mean wow, I thought they would all end up in some mental institution if they continued… I actually am not sure whether or not to recommend this, because the drama is, especially for j-dorama fans, very serious (like Last Friends kind of serious, maybe one or two inches more). And if you don’t have patients you’ll stop watching it, like immediately.

☆☆☆☆ / 4 out of 5 stars

♥♥♥½ / 3½ out of 5 hearts