The Struggle to Find your Place in the World & the Magic of Friendship

Imagine yourself as a teenage student in a foreign country, where you barely know the language, plus that many people are ready to make fun of you. There, your main concern could be to not make mistakes. Moreover, you might want to avoid crowded places, as more people around raises the risk of being ridiculed, plus that higher number of people laughing at you makes your pain more horrendous. It's like that you are in the enemy camp, feeling constant fear and anxiety. But let's suppose that the situation isn't all gloomy, since among that scary crowd, there are right people for you. The question is that how you can make things better. Naturally, the first challenge is to find some individuals looking sympathetic. If things go well, you'll gain some allies, and besides, some space to breathe comfortably. In fact, your life, properly speaking, begins with such a friend. Then, after gaining enough confidence through friendship, it'll be the time to embrace the public properly. This will be your second challenge. Let’s call the first challenge ‘creating a safe haven’ and the second, ‘finding your voice in society’.

The situation with its two challenges is depicted delicately in “Shino can't say her name”, the story of a high school freshman. Shino suffers from a psychogenic speech disorder, such that she's felled by a severe stuttering in front of others. This makes the beginning of her high school a real nightmare. Not giving up, she looks for some hope and in Kayo, a self-possessed and attentive loner classmate, finds what she wishes. Things go well between them, as Kayo does her part as best as you can imagine. They make friends and after the discovery of Shino's beautiful voice by Kayo, our guitarist, 'ShinoKayo'—their music band—is born. With Kayo's support, Shino gradually feels more confident, starting to talk to the world. If she experienced Hell in the first days of school, with Kayo, she’s kind of manages to “bribe God” and “got a passport to Paradise” as she sings Blue Heart’s song, ‘Aozora’. It seems she needs nothing else.

This is the first half of our story, however, things don't keep going smoothly. A classmate guy— Tsuyoshi—joins their band. Kayo sees this just as expansion of their music experience, though it's a different story for Shino. If with Kayo alone, she could easily forget her speech impediment, now, two normal-speaking people are communicating easily with each other before her. As she can't keep up with them, all the painful experience of being the 'outsider' comes back. Nothing is changed with Kayo, but anyway, Shino feels that her safe haven is gone. In her heart, she angrily asks her dear friend: “Why did you let a stranger intrude our space and destroy our heaven?” But she is aware that it's silly and selfish to want Kayo to be only hers. In the face of this complicated and painful situation, Shino runs away to the old shelter, her room. At the same time, their friendship is too precious to say goodbye to this easily. There is a strong gravitational pull from Kayo's side. This is Shino's dilemma.

And here is the second challenge: Shino might have the best time with Kayo but hiding behind her can't work forever. She needs to face the world herself, otherwise even their invaluable comradeship turns to a destructive addiction (How many promising relationships are destroyed due to over-dependence of one side on the other!). In the meantime, as discussed between them before, Kayo writes a song about “the stuff that happened between them” and sings it at the school festival. This gesture of unwavering friendship removes Shino’s last doubts. In front of everyone, she finally talks about her speech problem properly and introduces herself: “I’m Oshima Shino, from now on, forever!” She becomes part of school.

But a story of friendship is incomplete if we only talk about one side. If the togetherness has some magic, it can't work just on Shino, so how about Kayo? However confident she might be, as a teenager and a human, she also has her own weaknesses, most importantly the insecurity about her tone deaf. But as she tries to support Shino, as well as to manage their treasure—‘ShinoKayo’—she herself becomes stronger. It's being with Shino that gives Kayo enough courage to play the guitar outside home and it's for Shino that she sings at the festival, despite the fact that she knows some people will laugh at her bad singing, something that she hated to confront in the past.

Some viewers might find the last scene showing these three 'friends' separately, each doing their own stuff, disappointing. “Why don't they make music together?”; one might ask. However, what is seen is their friendship in full blossom. As for Shino, she told us before what she needed most: becoming "a normal high school student". And this is what we are witnessing: A nice girl, impressed by Shino's self-expression at the festival, wants to be her friend. Shino's world is expanding, and this is one fruit of her strong bond with Kayo. And even this is the case with the annoying guy, Tsuyoshi: His failed but honest attempts to be a member of 'ShinoKayo' made him notice that instead of forcing himself on others constantly, he needs to take some time to find himself: Now we are seeing him in a lonely corner of the school, a spot that Shino and Kayo were before. And the kind soul—Kayo: More determined and confident than ever, she is playing the guitar on the school rooftop in order to follow her lifelong ambition to be a musician. So, their friendship magically put each of them in the exact place that they should be. But no doubt that when its time comes, the trio will remake their band and sing the most beautiful songs for us; this is what their friendship calls for and this is what we wish!

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Aishiteru (2009) is story of a tragedy: A 10 year-old boy kills brutally a younger kid, aged 7. Everything is falling apart. However, taking responsibility in its right sense and showing empathy toward other people involved help both families to move forward. The drama is about this.

Specifically, the sympathy of the victim's mother toward the perpetrator's mother is out of this world, reminding 'Yui' in Haha ni Naru (2017). This doesn't mean that in the end, there is total forgiveness and peace between the two families. It's not supposed to be like that. But the sympathy helps everyone understand their own role, as well as others', rather than only blaming 'enemies'. Now, instead of living in the dark, they know why the tragedy happened: There is some prospect for getting over it and having a brighter (less dark) future.

I don't know what percentage of Japanese people can act like this in the horrible situation, but it seems to be a meaningful difference between the Japanese society and many other countries. I like to think in this way.

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'Asuko March!' is the story of Nao: Because of a silly mistake, she has to enrol in an almost all-boy technical school. First, she is unhappy with both her classmates and technical training she gets there. However, she gradually changes.

Overall, it's a light, and heartwarming drama. To me, the best thing is its main theme: Problems a girl might experience in such an unfamiliar territory. And surely, it's nice to see Nao overcome them one by one with the support of her male classmates. But I have a 'problem' kind of related to character development:

As far as school and friends is concerned, we witness Nao's process of maturation, such that her final choices are massively different from the initial ones (kind of revolution!). However, regarding her romantic life, she shows no important change. In the beginning, she immediately chooses a guy for all the superficial reasons, and then, while, during her time in the school, many things happen that suggest that she should go for another guy, she sticks to her first choice to the very end. And it's not clear why and for what reason. In reality, this kind of things (bad and unreasonable decisions) can happen, but the least the drama could've done was to make it clear why Nao chooses that guy. Regarding her other decisions (turning down the offer by the other school and making friends with the her classmate) the drama does a good job in showing Nao's motivations and reasons, but about her romantic decision, the drama falls short. And in any case, Nao's romantic decision is disappointing: We want to see Nao learn and choose all good things.

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I watched the series, "Our House (2016)" mainly for Mana Ashida; to see how the 12-year-old Mana-chan plays.

And I got shocked by how cold and un-Japanese the series is. After all, it's about a Japanese family, a unit supposedly with strong bonds.

Basically, the family replace each other more easily than one might change clothes. Only six months after the death of the mother, the father re-marries; in the meantime, the kids' big worry is to decide who can be their new mother. And then when they make a wrong choice, they are quick to go back to the alternative option. And despite all this, the series insists on convincing us that they love each other, WTF!

IMO, Mana does an excellent job to save the series, but the story is too ridiculous to be saved even by the greatest acting. Instead it's Mana's reputation that is damaged.

I hope in the future, Mana will play somewhere she deserves, so can show her amazing skills once more.

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Beautiful movies! I'd like to say two things:

1. It's about a couple: The husband, Mikio, got major depression and his wife, Haruka, tries her best to help him. It's not unusual, I can see that everywhere in the world, especially in countries that family plays a big part, this might happen. However, what I find interesting is that here, we have a beautiful combination of emotional investment and scientific approach in Mikio. At least I can say that the second element is more or less lacking in my country: people would show lots of emotions in such situation, but it's not backed with some scientific knowledge. In fact, many times, bare emotions produce more harm than benefit. I think Japan is one of the best in combining heavy emotions and exact science. The conclusion is that be ready to learn one thing or two about depression while you watch a romance. It doesn't happen everyday!

2. We all know how much the Japanese emphasize hard work. In any occasion, whether it's called for or not, you can see them saying Ganbarre! Otsukaresamadeshita! ... I like this, however, this movie gave me an interesting insight. Unlike her husband, Haruko is not that hard-working, but she has a good reason for that. She thinks putting too much pressure on yourself can be problematic. This makes her husband mad, but Haruko knows better! And in fact, it's her husband's approach that causes problems: He feels so much responsibility at work that at some point he has no energy to keep going. Like many hard-working Japanese people, he got depression and the rest of the story. Working hard can be counter-productive.

So, it was interesting to me to hear for the first time in a Japanese film this: "Do not work hard"! "I don't work hard!" and things like that. This should sound weird to Japanese ears!

All in all, I'd recommend this beautiful movie with two memorable moments: When Haruko finds Mikio kind of trying to commit suicide in the bathroom and when in church and before their friends, they talk about life with depression: Mikio's speech is amazing.

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I love this drama for many reasons, one of them is this cute little girl, Kazumi!
However, if the story is taken seriously, it conveys a wrong, in fact, dangerous message. The teacher basically becomes a big bully to teach kids how to deal with bullies. She does all terrible things to her students, making an atmosphere in her class that encourages bullying. And when a student is bullied by her classmates, she does nothing with the excuse that if she does anything, it just makes the situation worse. Bullies are free to do whatever they want and all the pressure and blame is on bullied kids to do something.
So, the whole idea is to make the situation for these 12-year-old kids so horrible that makes them do something about it. Maybe this was the traditional teaching method in the far past, but now, it's more for psychopaths. I hope no one takes this aspect of the drama seriously.
To be fair, as said, there are many good things about the drama. Especially, I really enjoyed the sisterhood between Kazumi and her older sister. I really wish I'd had such a sister!
To summarize, it's highly recommended to watch, but not as a serious stuff on teaching methods!

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