A fantastic tale of the life of a singer

Boogie Woogie is the fictionalized biography of Kasagi Shizuko who was a popular jazz singer from the early 30s through the 50s who was a major muse for the songwriter Hattori Ryouchi. The production made the wise decision to focus on her career as a singer, but Kasagi continued to work as an actress through the early 80s. And so we get to see the life of "Hanada Suzuko" from middle school through her early 40s when she decide to retire from singing and focus on acting instead.

Suzuko is deftly played by Shuri who pretty much nails the acting, singing and dancing that the role demands. The series concludes almost every week's episodes with a production number of one of the actual songs of Hattori. As you can imagine, a Japanese woman singing an American subgenre of jazz had to face some challenges when Japanese nationalism hit its heights during the wars in China and the Pacific. However, her brother was killed in battle, and one of the most moving moments of the series occurs when she sings a song written by Hattori about her brother's service which had been presumed lost until a few years before this production started. More central to her story is the love affair she had with her life partner who fathered her daughter but died of an illness during the war.

Hattori is played by Kusanagi Tsuyoshi, and is one of the more persistent characters in her life. However, like most asadoras the cast is huge, and so we also get to meet many others of Suzuko's family and friends (and at least one frenemy) along the way.

Most biographical asadoras have a hard time with the fact that most lives are not uniformly interesting throughout their span, and so often the series have to resort to significant time leaps to get to the juicy parts. There are indeed a few such leaps in this series as well, but the series does a better job than most at maintaining its pacing throughout the series and limiting this series to Kasagi's career as a singer helped to do so.

If you enjoy boogie woogie as a genre or asadoras in general, then this series is almost certainly for you. I think Japanese drama watchers in general would enjoy the acting of Shuri, and I would place it fairly high in the rankings of assdoras in general. It is certainly well worth watching despite being quite a time investment (like all asadora). Unfortunately, at the time of my writing this review most of the RAWs no longer appear to be available even to torrent. We shall have to wait and see if the RAW again make their way online once all the dvds of the series are out in Japan. In a happier world NHK would make their flagship series available for streaming and downloading internationally for a reasonable price.

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A fabulous melodrama

By the end of the first episode a premise is established, and you might wonder why one would want to watch this show if they are going to stick to this premise to the bitter end. Well, they do stick to the premise all the way, but mange to stick the landing about as well as one could hope. Along the way there are a couple of surprises that are also quite moving, and there are good, uplifting themes that provide warmth and light in what otherwise would make for a pretty dire story arc.

It is the story of a boy named Sun (Taiyo) and a girl named Rain (Ame) who fall in love in high school and promise to meet again once they achieve their respective dreams. Eight years later Ame returns to town and neither of their aspirations have been fulfilled. It is a story of sacrifice and love for the pair at the center of the story and for their families. Over the course of the series they have to face an unquestionably terrible fate in their near future mediated by two mysterious supernatural beings who have been chosen by the heavens to witness the story as it unfolds.

It does end up being a bit of a crying contest between Yamada Yuki (Taiyo) and Nagano Mei (Ame). I prefer Nagano as a comedian, but she can cry on cue apparently effortlessly, and so she often gets booked for these kind of roles. Here she manages to bring her bright personality and charm to the character which goes a long way to preventing this series from being the emotional slogfest that you might expect it to be given the premise. Yamada has the more stoic role to fulfill, and he does match Nagano tear for tear in the scenes that call for it. The pair have a solid chemistry together, and they have a nice romantic arc, but that romance pretty much has to be sexless because of the set up.

It bears mentioning that the series is beautifully shot with consistently excellent blocking and composition. They have chosen a color grading that makes almost all of the daytime shots feel like golden hour which also helps to keep the series from feeling dire and grey.

If you like melodramas, and want a good cry, then this series is probably exactly what you're looking for. I tend to avoid melodramas as a genre and tend to think that they can be emotionally manipulative for little payoff other than the tears. And so I was pleasantly surprised that this series had a bit more depth than merely saying "life sucks and then you die". And so I'd say the series is also well worth the watch for anyone looking for a nice little fable about love and pinky-swears.

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Full of quirk and top of the pops in Classical music

I cannot be objective in my review of this series (and even less so than usual). I can give you eleven reasons why you, a perfectly normal Asian drama watcher, would peg this series as mid even among the usual froth of Japanese dramas. It's series full of quirky characters, fighting the good fight to preserve a community orchestra in a city that could care less. It's a story of a family broken by an incident 5 years ago that struggles to come back together. It's an episodic series in which almost every episode is structured around a famous, overused piece of the Classical repertoire. It's a tepid romance. It has side plots that resolutely go absolutely no where. It has little to say about the realities of orchestral employment and production in the 21st Century. It fetishizes the old masters of the genre presented in a world in which anything composed after the 19th century in Europe does not seem to exist. It accedes a privilege to Classical performers which largely does not and should not be. It promotes stale tropes of following one's dreams and self-discovery. It's Art verses the mundanity of life, man!

But ...

I loved it.

And not just for the Manachan of it all.

Of course we in the Cult of Ashida Mana were going to watch it. She has not won an acting award for a whole six months now and we have, naturally, grown anxious. Sadly she will probably not win one for this role even though she brings her usual prodigious strengths to the role of Hibiki, the estranged daughter of the protagonist Shunpei played by Nishijima Hidetoshi. Both of their performances were fine to excellent, and she had her usual moments of reactions to tear at one's heart. But Hibiki is no tragic heroine, and it's actually cool to have the Manachan playing a relatively normal young woman with a few daddy issues who gets to have a smidge of a romantic arc. Angsty, rebellious Manachan is my spirit animal.

Nishijima anchors the series well. His Shunpei is hopeless and clumsy at everything outside of music, but within that sphere his ethics and insights are pretty much spot on, He brings an old, tired community orchestra to life, and injects joy into what had become rote. He inspires people. He challenges people. He reconnects them to the reasons why they love making music. Yes, those are also tired tropes of the genre, but they also result in fun little payoffs throughout the series.

Surrounding the two are over a dozen quirky characters in the two's family and the orchestra. All the actors are promising up-and-comers or polished veterans, and kudos to the production for placing Nishida Toshiyuki in a tasty role as the owner of the local music café despite the fact that the actor clearly has mobility issues even if his character doesn't. I'd give special shout-outs to Miyazawa Hio and Touma Ami for seemingly having genuine musical talents in addition to fulfilling their roles well. Miyazawa sings a jazz standard in English at one point and his American accent is so good that you'll have to click over to his MDL page to learn that he was born in San Francisco. And Touma does really seem to play the violin even if it's just Twinkle Twinkle Little Star: (I'm not crying: you are!).

The writing in this series resolutely avoids having a plot, or, at least, resolutely avoids resolving the mild stakes it sets up in the ways we expect these things to be resolved. And that's a good thing! Will the orchestra be thrown out of its practice space by the evil mayor? Will the evil mayor learn to accept is daughter's love of music? Will the orchestra win the festival that they struggled to get into to convince sponsors to help keep the orchestra going? Will Hibiki and Daiki fall in love? The answers may surprise you, and honestly I found most of payoffs refreshing.

And so if you enjoy Classical music or even dramas about quirky communities coming together to struggle against the usual entropy of living, then you'll likely find the show to be worth your time. As for me, it pretty much hit all the right notes.

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An Interesting Alt History of Edo Period Japan

I will preface this review by saying I have not read the manga which ran for 17 years, nor watched this year's anime on Netflix, nor seen the prior drama series from 2010, nor the prior two movies. I imagine that one's experience of this series could vary widely based on how much of the prior material you have encountered.

The premise of this drama is that Japan experienced an on-going plague starting in the reign of 3rd Tokugawa Shogun in the early 1600s that reduces the population of men to one quarter of that of women. Thus, part of what Ooku explores, in general, is what that change in demographics might mean to the roles of men and women. What would Edo-period Japan have been like if women were in charge?

This drama is roughly divided into three chunks covering incidents in the lives of the woman who took over the role of the 3rd Shogun, and then 5th and 8th Shogun. The 8th Shogun serves as wrapper for all the episodes as she reads about the lives of these prior two Shoguns. The manga continued through the 14th Shogun, and so this drama does not attempt to cover the entire run of the manga, and, indeed, one presumes Season 2 will cover more of underlying material. Nevertheless, this series (like many other manga and novel adaptations) does suffer a bit from trying to cover too much of the original material.

The cast is huge and the production fairly lavish though we comparatively rarely see what life is like outside of the Shogunal residence in Edo. Like many Roman and Chinese emperors, the Japanese Shoguns in this period seem to be fairly isolated within a system meant to protect them and insure the continuation of their dynasties. And, indeed, the Ooku was the quarters for the Shogun's concubines during the Edo period, and so becomes the quarters for the male concubines in this alternative history, and so part of what the series explores why and how men come to serve as concubines, and how the system works (and sometimes fails) to produce heirs to the Shogun.

The series does address some interesting and perhaps surprising issues over the course of this season, but I do think the quality and interest of the three sections are fairly even though they cover entirely different themes and have have mostly different casts of characters. There are some striking moments scattered throughout the series, and the performances vary from solidly professional to quite good. If you enjoy alternative histories and Japanese period dramas, it's well worth watching.

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Interesting film. Not sure it worked.

After skewering the tropes and conventions of mysteries in last summer's series, Hatsukoi no Akuma, it's clear that Sakamoto understands the genre and could have written a satisfying, bog standard mystery set on a cruise ship. But, instead, he seems to have chosen not to, and it makes me wonder why.

Our intrepid, ersatz detectives are Ubukata and Banjuku who have a meet-cute as the cruise ship is leaving the dock in Hokaido for a 45 day cruise to the Aegean and back. Banjuku is trying to track down the woman she suspects of cheating with her boyfriend and who happens to be Ubukata's girlfriend, and somehow ends up on board with no ticket and no luggage but manages to have a week's worth of fashionable wardrobe to wear throughout the film. There are TONS of little details in the film like that which make no sense at all. None of them are insurmountable, but the filmmakers do not even seem to care. And so do not come to this film expecting to find a tightly woven thriller where every detail was intentional and counts towards the "solution" to the mystery.

But does it work as a romcom instead? Eh... There is SOME chemistry between the two leads, and Ubukata has some character growth, but Banjuku is just sort of an MPDG tugging that growth along, and we really do not get much a backstory and motivation for her other than her suspecting her boyfriend of cheating.

And so it's not much of a mystery and not much of romcom? Is there anything here to salvage the film? Well, you know: it's Sakamoto, and he generally does have things to say. (See, for instance, my coverage of his oeuvre through 2021 here on MDL: https://mydramalist.com/article/a-watcher-s-guide-to-the-series-of-sakamoto-yuji)

In this film, he touches a bit on classism and the divide between the haves and the have-nots who serve them, and, as usual, he questions the reductivism of eat-the-rich, and, while he does condemn all rudeness and abuse, he weaves a bit of complexity into that dichotomy by focusing on the resulting relationships and how they can bridge the gap between social classes.

He also considers at length the importance of people's intentions over their actions. Does it matter if someone intended to cheat, but did not in fact do so? Does it matter if someone intended to murder, but did not in fact do so? I do think Sakamoto intends to say yes and always. But I'm not sure that thesis is enough to bring this film up to his usual standard.

If you're looking for what Sakamoto has to say about mysteries go seek out Hatsukoi no Akuma: it's fun, and the acting is off the charts in that last episode. If you're looking for his views on romance, I'd probably go with Saikou no Rikon even though it's explicitly set after the bloom has come off the rose.

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More Yokai Sharehouse

If you've seen the previous two series, then you know the drill. Mio struggles with self esteem while saving the world with her loyalty and steadfastness and, of course, the support of the monsters in her sharehouse. I strongly disliked S2 because it immediately undid all her character growth from S1, and never even brought her back to the same level of maturity she reached at the end of S1. However, the movie here is somewhere in between the two seasons for me in terms of how much I enjoyed it. It's framed around a topical albeit tepid plot about how AI might reshape our world, and kudos for getting this movie out maybe 9 months after the news about chatGPT and AI art generators were breaking news.

All the usual suspects are here in addition to the five principal characters. Many of the major secondary youkai from the series show up for at least a cameo. The acting remains broad and OTT like the prior series, but Koshiba as Mio anchors the chaos as always and has some moments to shine. The new ML for the movie, Mochizuki Ayumu as Aito, does as well as one could expect in the tropey AI learns what it means to be human role.

If you liked either of the previous series, it is worth checking out, IMO. And if you just want to sample the world, it is comparatively standalone, though personally I would recommend the first season over it.

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Mostly Forgettable

What to Do with the Dead Kaiju is a parody of kaiju movies in general and a couple of the most well known franchises in that genre in particular. The premise is pretty solid: a large reptilian kaiju has just stomped through Tokyo and died at the mouth of a river and the government neither knows why it died nor what to do with the resulting decaying hill of flesh. The government dithers and various ministerial departments seek to score political points while addressing the threat to the environment.

The protagonist is Yukino who is the close aid of the Minister of the Environment and married to Mashiko who is, in turn, similarly the chief flunky of the Prime Minister. Complicating matters is the fact that Yukino is still carrying a torch for Arata who had disappeared in a mysterious white light for a couple years and is now a lieutenant in the Special Forces put together to fight kaiju. The love triangle is neither interesting nor well executed, but it's the only plot linking the scenes together, and so enjoy it to the extent you can.

The humor is fairly low, but not all that effective (but, as always with comedies, YMMV). There are a few slapstick moments that might raise a chuckle. The focus of the film, however, is more on bureaucratic incompetence and malfeasance as issues arise with the decaying mass of flesh. The script telegraphs what kind of ending is coming about halfway through and then sticks with that plan through to a pretty unsatisfying climax. The film is not terrible, but there are better Japanese comedy movies out there.

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What happens to Raise de wa Chanto Shimasu when it drops most of the sex?

If you are reading this review, then you most likely know the deal with RdwCS: it's the sex-positive show that over two prior series and a special explored the love lives of a small company of five young CG artists making animations for TV and film. As ever, the third season affirms a broad spectrum of sexual identities and sexual interests (and non-interests). However, if you've enjoyed the prior series, you might be upset to learn that they've taken our favorite PG-rated sex comedy and produced a season where there is very little if any sex happening. The surprising and fun thing is that doing so has resulted in the best season yet.

There was nothing puritanical about the change in focus for this season: the series retains the same sex-positive tone of the earlier seasons. However, in exchange for the antic sex scenario introductions of the prior series, this season instead goes deeper into the emotional lives of the characters (yes, even Masaru), It fleshes out the back story of Momoe and Ken, but also gives nice arcs to Masaru, Toru and Ume. There are probably as many laughs this season but now also some tears, and the emotional canvass is broader in other ways as well. The show has, surprisingly, grown up just a bit.

The episode structure remains the same with each 30 minute episode divided into two vignettes featuring at least one of the principal characters, and the show continues to resolutely avoid trying to say much of import. Nevertheless, if you have enjoyed the prior seasons, it is quite likely that you will enjoy this season even more. (You need only glance at the comment section here for confirmation).

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A charming and delightful film based on a manga and about manga

BL Metamorphosis is the story of Urara and Yuki (Sunshine and Snow) who build a cross-generational friendship based on their mutual enjoyment of BL manga. Urara (Ashida Mana) is in her second to last year of high school and facing the choice of what college programs to apply for next year. She's working at a local bookstore when a recently widowed calligraphy teacher Yuki (Miyamoto Nobuko) wanders in to escape the summer heat and a finds a popular BL which catches her eye. Urara is an embarrassed secret fan of the genre, and Yuki had no idea such a thing existed but quickly finds that she loves it and seeks out Urara's advice to learn more about it and get her recommendations.

Acting is reacting, and, as ever, Ashida's reactions are on point, expressing all the embarrassment and social awkwardness of a young woman who has not found herself yet. Yes, she has a crush. But he's already dating the tall, popular, beautiful Eri, and what would happen if he or, worse, THEY ever found out she's into BL? Nevertheless, Urara guides Yuki into the world of BL fandom, and Yuki encourages Urara to try making a manga of her own.

The film is quite smart with lovely parallels drawn between the manga that the two are reading, and the other things happening in their lives. The score and song choices help to propel the story along and as whole the film feels much shorter than its two hour runtime.

It is, indeed, rare for a film to center on a friendship between two people with an age difference of over 60 years, and this film does so lovingly and well. Ashida, if she chooses to, will be Japan's breakout star in the coming years and Miyamoto is a good solid veteran actor. Together their scene work provides all the warm-fuzzies you could want.

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If You Liked The Series, This Is More Of That

All the boys and their cats are back for a tepid continuation of Neko Bukken. If you enjoyed the chill nature of the series, you will likely enjoy this movie that continues from where the series left off. The acting and production quality are pretty much what you saw in the series, but the writing is ... well, let's just say that it's what you might expect for the worst episode of any episodic television series that you like. The script pretty much reverses the character growth of all the housemates in order to bring them back together, and presents a plot objective and obstacle pulled from the dustiest bin of tropeville which the protagonist Yuuto proceeds to address in the stupidest way possible. Because of the wisdom of cats, or some such nonsense. Abetting him as usual is the long-suffering Yumi who manages to get a backstory that is nearly as ridiculous as the larger plot of this "film". And in the end, the people of the Cat Property all come together to live happily ever after. Yay?

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OTT in a good way

The premise is completely absurd and the writing is barely functioning connect-the-dots to reach the visual moments that the writer/director Miki Satoshi wanted to achieve. But those visuals are worth it, and the direction is lively, inventive and original.

It is a comedy, and, as ever, YMMV, but there were several bits that genuinely made me laugh. Expect the kind of humor and set pieces as a Stephen Chow film though we can argue about whether Miki is as successful at executing them.

It is a story of Sin ... who in this case is the mysterious lead singer of a heavy metal band who has been injecting illicit drugs directly into his vocal cords to achieve the volume and range that the music demands, and it is immediately clear that his throat cannot take much more of the abuse. Abe Sadawo nails the stage presence and has a fine comedic turn in the role as an artist who knows his career is almost done and is looking to pass the torch.

The singer he chances upon in a midnight scooter rampaging meet-cute is Fuuka (Yoshioko Riho) who is talented, but whose issues prevent her from singing barely above a whisper.

The film is not really a musical. There are only two songs (or three, if you count Shubert's Ave Maria). But, surprisingly, it is kind of a romcom with most of the expected story beats seen through a broken kaleidoscope.

Will the couple kiss? Will Fuuka sing out loud? Will Sin be redeemed? Watch the movie and find out.

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A high-concept asadora let down by subpar writing

The grand idea of this series was to have an asadora that would span 100 years of Japanese history through the stories of the lives of three generations of women: Yasuko born in 1925 who is the mother of Rui born in 1941 who is the mother of Hinata born in 1965.

Yasuko's story (episodes 1-35) is actually quite good if utterly tragic. She is born into a family of confectioners in Okayama, and at age fourteen falls in love with a rich college student. But, don't worry, she isn't married and pregnant until age 16. All of her blood relations (except her unreliable older brother) as well as her husband are all killed in the war, and her mother-in-law irrationally blames Yasuko for her son's death in combat and chases her out of the household. Yasuko tries to raise Rui alone by selling sweets on the streets of Osaka, but when she breaks an arm in a traffic accident she's forced to return to the mansion of her dead husband. A rather ineptly written love pentagram results in her older brother absconding with her savings and fleeing to Osaka chased separately by Yasuko and, yes, independently 6-yearold Rui. Both return return to the mansion in Okayama where Rui tells Ysauko "I hate you" and so Yasuko flees to America with a tall blond officer from the American occupying forces. No, none of that week's episodes makes any sense at all.

Rui's story (episodes 36-77) begins after a time leap to her adulthood where with no motivation given whatsoever she leaves the rich household and cuts off all ties with her family. The generation that chased her and her mother out of the house are now dead and she has a perfectly fine relationship with her uncle who is now the head of the household. In Osaka she finds new joy as a laundress, and falls for customer who is a jazz trumpeter, Joe. He wins a bizarre one-off trumpet competition and lands a recording contract in Tokyo. But, unfortunately, his lips break while recording his debut record (as a former trombone player, I have to say that this plot point is utterly bizarre). He distances himself from Rui, and tries to end his life, but she saves him through the power of Satchmo. They get married, move to Kyoto, obviously, and start a shop that only sells kaiten yaki since that's the only recipe she managed to learn from her mother, and, apparently, it's impossible in the 60s to learn any other recipes. They have Rui and later her brother Momotaro. Joe is happily unemployed for 20-odd years until he suddenly has the bright idea of trying to play another instrument. No, that does not make any sense at all.

Hinata's story (episodes 78 - 112) has her finding a love of samurai dramas as a child and becoming an employee at a local studio's tourist trap where she is given the mission to "save period dramas" in Japan. She has an extended courtship with a samurai drama extra which does not work out after an 8 year time leap in which nothing changed whatsoever in their relationship. Eventually, an American film company comes to town looking to make a big budget Hollywood film in Japan and so Hinata saves the period drama in Japan by serving snacks like any good office lady and speaking the English she has learned via the same radio show that Yasuko and Rui used to study English. The final two weeks of episodes bring all three of women back together in a way that makes even less sense than the rest of the series.

A "drama that spans a century" seems like a solid concept, but the writing utterly fails the concept throughout this series. Like most asadoras there are many fun and interesting side characters, and the performances of the actors are up to the usual high standards for these productions. But the motivations of the characters for the various plot points are FREQUENTLY incomprehensible or non-existent throughout this asadora, and the necessary time leaps almost always reveal zero change in the characters lives in the intervening years. Much of what happens throughout would make sense if the particular arc took place over a year or two, but absurd plot points are spread out sometimes over decades in ways that truly ruin this series.

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Slightly sweet, slightly sad but very formulaic

Wada Masao is the bass player for the popular rock fusion group Gesu no Kiwami Otome under the stage name Kyūjitsu Kachō (Weekend Manager). In 2018 he appeared on the Netflix reality show Terrace House for the end of its Opening New Doors series where he wooed one of the housemates by making his clam curry for her. In 2020 he released a cookbook which formed the basis for this series.

Each episode follows the same structure. The show begins with a cold open of the young salary man Wada Masao at work or rehearsing with his band. He then goes to the local grocery when its about to close where he encounters a sales clerk and a stock boy (played by the real Wada Masao who has, maybe at stretch, a dozen lines over the course of the series). Back at home he prepares a meal. Most of the ingredients and timings are mentioned, but I'm doubtful that these scenes would suffice for someone to execute the recipes. At that point, a woman who he has encountered recently appears at his apartment, eats the meal with him and praises his cooking ... and then disappears because these nightly fantasies are all he has going at this point. He then calls his childhood friend Tomoko who is working in New York and there are some final credit scenes with his band or work.

So, in part, this series is about the formation of Gesu no Kiwami Otome. (The diegetic music played by the band is a couple of their songs though Masao's other band Dadaray provides the title and credit tracks for the series.) And, in part, the series is about Masao becoming more assertive, deciding what he wants to do with his life and choosing between a conventional work life and pursuing music more seriously. The series has a few good moments and the last couple of episodes work quite well. The acting is mostly understated and the vibe of the series is quite chill. (You were expecting action scenes in a series based on a cookbook?) All in all, I found the series mildly enjoyable, and the series ends with a nice little crescendo.

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Non's Sophomore Effort Is Slow But Charming

This is Non's second film, and this time she "only" wrote, directed, edited and starred in it. It's an art film about art which is always dicey territory, but Non manages to keep the story from being pretentious or self-indulgent by grounding the narrative in the mundane lives of its characters while limiting her representations of the impulses of creativity to brief but necessary moments of cgi and practical images of ribbons.

Set at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, it captures the stress of the time and the way it forced us to isolate. Here the stress is compounded for Non's character Itsuka and her friend Hirai as their art school is being put on hiatus right before their graduation and their final projects and exhibitions are canceled. Itsuka shelters in her apartment alone and utterly fails to find a way to continue painting even though she routinely had done so there in the past. It is a story about reconnecting to that creative impulse through the not always welcome intrusions of friends and family.

The film has a larger budget than her first film, Get To The Punchline, and her editorial skills have improved, but the film is a bit slow and probably does not merit it's 2 hour runtime. That being said, it has some solidly funny moments, a beautifully moving climax and a satisfying denouement. The cast is solid and Non exhibits a greater range as an actress than she has in her prior roles.

All in all, it's a good journeyman effort and a surprisingly satisfying next step for this interesting young filmmaker.

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A Love Story Between Two Musicians

Yell is the story of Yuichi and Oto who managed to meet, fall in love and marry at a time in Japanese history when most marriages were arranged. The series is a relatively faithful biography of the composer Koseki Yuji whose music is showcased throughout. (There is a one-week arc where the series cheerfully veers into the paranormal, and the historicity of that particular week may be in doubt.) The series follows Yuichi from his childhood where he was bullied for having a stutter through to a happy retirement following a long and successful career in the music industry making hit songs in the pre-war era, writing propaganda songs during the war, and composing the music for radio serials, film and stage productions after the war. Kubota Masataka plays this mild and gentle soul from high school through retirement.

Yuichi's soulmate is Oto, the second daughter of a Christian family who had a small business making saddles. She encounters a famous operatic soprano when she is young and decides to become an opera singer. Oto is played by Nikaido Fumi whose voice is surprisingly convincing in the role.

The focus of this series is centered more on Yuichi than Oto mostly because the roles of wives and mothers were comparatively limited in early to mid century Japan, and so there are fewer family anecdotes about her to be incorporated into the series once they settled down and had their daughter Hana. Nevertheless, the show is pretty balanced between the two characters until the war when Yuichi's stories tend to dominate. There are also many lovely side stories involving the couple's siblings, friends and daughter.

The height of this series is Yuichi's involvement in the war. Yuichi proudly writes music for the war effort until late in the war when he makes a fateful morale trip near the front lines in Burma where he is confronted with the consequences of his support of the war - to the point that he stops composing for a period, and eventually writes a now beloved and haunting song for peace. The script really does not pull any punches in its portrayal of wartime Japan , showing the country's military fervor and its dire consequences, and this section of the series is quite moving.

Other than the war years, the tone of the series is pretty light with the dramatic obstacles being those usually associated with trying to establish oneself in the music industry and the expected parental objection to the match of Yuichi and Oto. The series was in production when the pandemic hit and for the first time in decades NHK had to put its asadora on hiatus for a few weeks. I don't think that the hiatus had any noticeable effect on the quality or the story, but the series ended up slightly shorter at 24 weeks instead of 26. A bigger impact on the length of the series arose from the decision to move from six episodes per week down to five, but I believe that decision was made prior to the pandemic and will remain true for the asadoras from Yell on. Thus, Yell has 120 episodes when prior asadora typically had 156.

Yell is an above average asadora with a few a particularly stellar weeks. The last week is a bit of a hodgepodge trying to complete a final romantic arc, doing the final payoff to a setup in Ep. 1, and building to a fanciful denouement in Ep. 119 to match the unusual opening scenes of the series. Ep. 120 is a final concert of Koseki's music with Nikaido concluding the series with a lovely performance of The Bells of Nagasaki.

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