“Gou” and Ueno Juri’s acting receive harsh criticism
“Gou ~Hime-tachi no Sengoku~“, this year’s taiga drama on NHK starring Ueno Juri had a promising start with ratings coming in around the 22% mark, but after the fifth episode the ratings started to crumble and the critics finally started to pounce on all the various flaws of the drama.
The viewership dropped below 20% after the fifth episode which also marked the last episode of Toyokawa Etsushi playing the character of Oda Nobunaga as part of the main story. Oda Nobunaga is a very popular historical figure, but whether the lack of his character’s screen time influencing the ratings is debatable. Unfortunately, you can’t deny the decrease that continued on with the seventh episode that only reached 18.5%.
However, the drama has many more flaws that have been consistent since the very first episode. Many critics have already pointed out that the script is lousy and the background research for the characters are more than sloppy. Yet the person who has to deal with most of the criticism is the leading actress, Ueno herself. First off, most people think that it’s unreasonable to have a 24 year-old portraying a character that is merely 9-10 years old as yet, but there are also direct attacks like: “she doesn’t know how to act in a historical drama” and “the way she’s talking doesn’t fit at all”.
Entertainment critic Hiruma Masaaki tried to put it in a nutshell:
“Her acting is poor. No matter what she does, she always looks like ‘Nodame’. It was a very successful role for her, but she isn’t able to put enough weight into her characters as it would be appropriate for a woman living in the Sengoku period. Others like Suzuki Honami are doing a great job, but Ueno’s ‘Nodame’ acting makes her character look more like a moronic princess. She does have a big face and big eyes by nature, but nothing of that is needed for a historical drama. Her performance makes her look like a girl from Shibuya, not like a princess. Viewers judge a character depending on the person who is playing it, but since her image from ‘Nodame’ is still too prominent, it was a mistake to cast her for a taiga drama in the first place. “
He further criticized the wrong historical facts throughout the drama:
“You are free to interpret history in different ways, but you must not bend historical facts. People will stop watching it, because they don’t buy what’s going on anymore. You just don’t call Nobunaga ‘uncle~’, it doesn’t fit into the Sengoku period. I’m done with it, it’s a pure waste of time.”
Do you think the criticism is warranted?
Source: Tokyohive | J-Cast