OOOOOoooooowwaaaaadaaaaaaaAAAAAA
cast:
Sakai Masato - Hanzawa Naoki
Ueto Aya - Hanzawa Hana
Oikawa Mitsuhiro - Tomari Shinobu
Takito Kenichi - Kondo Naosuke
Kitaoji Kinya - Nakanowatari Ken
Kagawa Teruyuki - Owada Akira
Seen as Ive trapped a nerve in
my neck so bad I can’t move from this spot, Im going to do this review. It’s
hard to type but it’s even hard to get up and do anything else so a one and a half handed
review of Hanzawa it shall be.
I wanted to do this review because
the show was so popular – everyone has heard of it and felt some sort of buzz
around it – so for those of you like me who get put off watching things
surrounded by hype, I
thought I would try to dispel those dismissive thoughts.
It is a highly spoofed show, and I saw many skits of
Hanzawa scenes before I even saw the program they were referring to.
The reason
it has been a source for comedy skits so much is because it is so tense and melodramatic – the acting somehow is so
stupid but so amazing at the same time – I still can’t quite work out how they
got such a perfect mixture of realistic emotion and downright ridiculous bleeding
heart over acting.
The famous lines quoted from the drama are said in the most tense of moments and the kneeling of Owada (most
commonly spoofed scene) I couldn’t help but enjoy through my laughter.
It’s the kind of show that you
take seriously and laugh at the melodrama all at the same time.
I really can’t
explain how that works but one minute you are shouting ‘no! He can’t do that! What a
bastard!’ then you are laughing in
the most serious angry tense moments at their immensely super-serial serious facial expressions… I don’t know, it’s really enjoyable. I felt the same while watching
Hagetaka, which im considering
reviewing also.
The acting and direction of Hanzawa is what makes it
compelling.
The story is good, if not a little too confusing for my simple
brain, but it’s the warmth of Hana and Naoki, the adorkable friendships of the three stooges
Naoki, Tomari and Kondo, and the love to hate bastarding genius of Owada the froggiest
toad in the pond…
I
think everyone was kind of a caricature of a real type of person, and played so
well, that it really held up as one of the best dramas this season.
After epics
like City Hunter, Iris, Maou, and Orthos no Inu,
Im pretty used to this kind of crazy
huge destroy your faith rebuild then destroy again then mug you while youre
lying on the ground
kind of feeling from an intense drama show, but Hanzawa is not so heart
breaking, so actually it’s easier to watch.
Maybe that’s why you can laugh
along with their seriousness. Its
tense and some parts are genuinely emotional, but generally it sits pretty easily in that nice middle ground, covering all the bases and satisfying
all those things we want fulfilled from our beloved tv shows.
It might help I guess to outline
a bit of the plot, but it’s a bit too confusing for me to keep track of. Its
following bankers – we all
know I can’t handle anything even slightly to do with numbers, my brain
switches in to major dyslexia mode.
Basically it’s all perverse backstabbing underhand devious
betrayal and corporate blackmail and bastardry.
And that might just be the
banker’s wives.
I don’t know, I can’t really
explain the plot. Sh*t
happens, Naoki has to try to fix it, he wants to take some kind of justice
revenge issue out on the people who destroyed his father, he saves the world
one bankrupt business at a time, and has the cutest wife ever who I love and
want to be. I love both Sakai Masato and Ueto Aya in this show and it’s just happy joys to watch them
together like this.
I love his friends Kondo and
Tomari. Their gang, originally
whispering in the office then suddenly the entire office is involved
surrounding them trying to help in their own ways, is so cool.
They do symbolise everything that people want to
be but don’t have the courage.
They are like the goonies trying to do their
best in the face of evil
pirate thieves -which
is not really far off what the bad guys are.
It’s worth just watching in
spite of yourself, enjoying the super serial faces, crying along with the sad
parts and raging that it’s not over yet and we will have to wait an age for
series 2.
Get down on the ground
in slow motion every
time your favourite cereal isnt on the shelf at the supermarket,
scream Owadaaaaaaa every time you are short changed
in the corner shop,
and vow to multiply
your revenge by a higher percentage each time when you threaten your payback to the kids that crash into you
when they run in the street.
You can defeat them all. You are a justice
warrior. You are a banker.
~
No comments:
Post a Comment