Hitotsu Yane no Shita 2 (1997)

Now I know why this was the lesser-known sequel to the original

The first and original season of "Hitotsu Yane no Shita" is not only one of the writer Shinji Nojima's best work but also one of my favorite J-dramas too but unfortunately the second season wasn't fully available and translated at the time, so I had to make do watching his other works at the meantime. I've seen a lot of his other known dramas, but none were as good as Hitotsu Yane No Shits 1 with maybe the exception of "Miseinen" which I considered it to be his second-best dramas series. It still baffled me why the second season was known as the lesser-known sequel even despite being one of the highest-rated dramas that aired in the 90s even more so than the original but took such a long to subbed...until I finally watched it a few years and after completed watching several dramas later. Which all I can is how ironic that a sequel to one of my favorite dramas is one of my worst J-dramas that I've ever seen which you couldn't tell from the ratings while slightly lower it couldn't be that bad for a sequel right? Well, it is if you're a fan of the series that honestly really didn't a sequel or at this case was not fully ready to make one in the first place.
What made the first season so special was the balanced storytelling between the main storyline about reuniting the family together and each of its 6 family members' own story arc and how they all successfully come together in full circle at the end of the story (Note: The Drama's opening is actually the ending). But while the story of this sequel appears to be about the 6 members of the Kashiwagi it's really about 5 as one the more interesting, most difficult, and most important family member of the series was written off at the first episode only to conveniently reappear at the last few episodes just to bring a conclusion to a story arc that spanned from the first season with disappointing results. Because of that sole reason the story's balance was completely off and to make up for most of this character's absence they added 2 new roommates to live with the Kashiwagis who are not bad characters but are just weak replacements overpopulating the drama's already large cast. My only theory as to why the actor's role was reduced was possibly because despite how huge the original drama was, it's still pretty rare to make a full season follow-up with the same cast because of how popular and busy the main cast are especially with someone like Nori-p unless it was for a special or a movie maybe. Honestly if f they couldn't have that actor commit to a full season, they shouldn't have made this disappointing sequel in the first place.

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