Enjoyable Watch Despite Flaws
This Japanese effort is a reworking of the Korean original. While it corrects some flaws of the original it has a few of its own.
The basic story remains the same hitting the key plot twists in fewer episodes. This version improves on the original by moving faster, so better pacing, and by eliminating the weird direction imposed on the original acting, in particular the weird facial expressions. It a bit less in that there's less music.
Like the original the switched gender deceit isn't taken seriously and I mean that anyone looking at the lead would know she's a she however she is identifying. She doesn't attempt to change her voice. In Japan females tend to speak with a higher than their normal voice, and males lower. They also tend to use different words e.g. pronouns and phrases, much more so than in English. So to be realistic at a minimum the lead would not only have to carry herself differently, but would use a lower voice, keep to male word choices etc. If taken seriously that would be interesting to watch. In both the Korean and Japanese versions the producer/directors are more concerned to make sure the female lead presents as cute than able to pass as a male.
An irritating aspect is that while in the early episodes the subtitling was average towards the last several episodes the translating appeared to be a tossed word salad. Someone got the right verb and a few words to go with it and called it good enough leaving a confusing jumble of a sentence that required active puzzle solving adding the proper order, and discovering the needed tense given the context.
Possible Spoiler Below
I looked forward to how this version would handle the twin reunion and was disappointed because it follows the sin of the original in that they don't meet or communicate. Throughout the story, the girl never talks to her brother by phone which would be so easy to do. Towards the end, when he returns to Japan, it is inconceivable that they would not get together to exchange information. As she uncovered certain truths and secrets regarding their common past, it is extremely unlikely she wouldn’t tell him. It was therefore necessary to deal with the fact that she would contact him and he would have reactions to these truths which would impact his presence in the rock group. At a absolute minimum there should have been at least a few lines, perhaps a phone call, in which she indicates she told her brother something of these important details, e.g. their mother is in fact dead, how she died, THE MOTHER’S NAME! The script, perhaps because of budget issues and time constraints, left these gaping holes and kind of too hurriedly finished things up.
And the ending felt even more truncated than the original regarding the end point for the leads.
The basic story remains the same hitting the key plot twists in fewer episodes. This version improves on the original by moving faster, so better pacing, and by eliminating the weird direction imposed on the original acting, in particular the weird facial expressions. It a bit less in that there's less music.
Like the original the switched gender deceit isn't taken seriously and I mean that anyone looking at the lead would know she's a she however she is identifying. She doesn't attempt to change her voice. In Japan females tend to speak with a higher than their normal voice, and males lower. They also tend to use different words e.g. pronouns and phrases, much more so than in English. So to be realistic at a minimum the lead would not only have to carry herself differently, but would use a lower voice, keep to male word choices etc. If taken seriously that would be interesting to watch. In both the Korean and Japanese versions the producer/directors are more concerned to make sure the female lead presents as cute than able to pass as a male.
An irritating aspect is that while in the early episodes the subtitling was average towards the last several episodes the translating appeared to be a tossed word salad. Someone got the right verb and a few words to go with it and called it good enough leaving a confusing jumble of a sentence that required active puzzle solving adding the proper order, and discovering the needed tense given the context.
Possible Spoiler Below
I looked forward to how this version would handle the twin reunion and was disappointed because it follows the sin of the original in that they don't meet or communicate. Throughout the story, the girl never talks to her brother by phone which would be so easy to do. Towards the end, when he returns to Japan, it is inconceivable that they would not get together to exchange information. As she uncovered certain truths and secrets regarding their common past, it is extremely unlikely she wouldn’t tell him. It was therefore necessary to deal with the fact that she would contact him and he would have reactions to these truths which would impact his presence in the rock group. At a absolute minimum there should have been at least a few lines, perhaps a phone call, in which she indicates she told her brother something of these important details, e.g. their mother is in fact dead, how she died, THE MOTHER’S NAME! The script, perhaps because of budget issues and time constraints, left these gaping holes and kind of too hurriedly finished things up.
And the ending felt even more truncated than the original regarding the end point for the leads.
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