Episode 4 and General Review
Last Friends.
The last 2 and a half minutes were more intense than anything I've seen before. I was actually tearing up this time. I feel so bad for both Sousuke and Michiru, and I can see myself feeling more and more sympathy for Ruka and Takeru.
So far it looks as though what I thought was going to happen might actually, but I'm not putting highly unexpected plot-twists aside just yet! The next episode is going to be scary as hell. I am not looking forward to watching Sousuke rape Michiru, nor am I looking forward to his attempt at suicide. It's so frustrating... I wish so badly that things could work out between them. That Sousuke would just stop because it seems so much like he suffers just as much as Michiru every time he beats her, and just because there's a willingness on both sides to make it work, no matter how hard it gets. That's so precious, and rare even in healthy relationships, but at the same time their relationship is so fundamentally wrong, so corrupt on every level, that I just wish Michiru would wake up and realize things are not going to change and that, no matter how painful leaving him might be, staying will be innumerable times more painful.
In all honesty, at first I was disappointed with Ryo's approach to Sousuke - he was too stiff, too caught up in his own world. Ryo was acting out an overly introverted introvert, and I almost cringed during the scenes when he wasn't abusing Michiru (which is almost disturbingly ironic) because he just didn't seem to know what to do with himself. Thankfully, though, he seems to have pulled himself together and gotten back into "actor" mode, after being on hiatus for almost 2 years, and he's managed to turn Sousuke into a real, memorable, altogether frightening personnage. I found out recently that Ryo put did a lot of preparing for this role - apparently he read up on DV, met with people who had been victims of and even committed crimes of domestic violence, and discussed passed cases of DV with the director. In short, he's really given himself to this role, and hope viewers, in Japan especially, are feeling everything he has tried to communicate through this role. As a side not, I wonder if the role has actually had a bit of an emotional tole on Ryo - the look in his eyes after Hamada hit him over the head on the last episode of HEY!HEY!HEY! was filled with emotion I don't think we would have seen prior to his taking on this role.
Getting back to the drama, I think this is the beginning of my really, truly feeling bad for Ruka. I realize that this is quite a lame thing to judge by, but Ryo is listed as the 19th character, in order of importance... so I wonder if that means his attempt at suicide next episode will actually be successful because, as of now, his place in the cast credits doesn't make sense - he's at least been as prominent as Ogurin, thus far. I was quite convinced that he was the "death" Michiru mentioned in the first episode, and it certainly seems that things could take that course. Michiru's child is probably Sousuke's, given the rape-scene preview from the next episode, which makes sense. The only other man it could logically belong to would be Takeru. Were it his, though, I don't believe she would be alone, writing to Ruka. But, as I said, I'm not ruling out the possibility of major plots twists. Takeru's story has yet to unfold, but I have a feeling his sex phobia is the result of his having been sexually abused by his sister when he was a child. And am I the only who is slightly frightened by Takeru? At moments I feel he's almost as unstable as Sousuke, but I can't quite figure out why that is. This is not to say I think he'd do anything like Sousuke - I just think they're both highly unstable people who go about dealing with their trauma in different ways.
Sorry for the rant - I hope anyone watching this drama is loving it. <3
The last 2 and a half minutes were more intense than anything I've seen before. I was actually tearing up this time. I feel so bad for both Sousuke and Michiru, and I can see myself feeling more and more sympathy for Ruka and Takeru.
So far it looks as though what I thought was going to happen might actually, but I'm not putting highly unexpected plot-twists aside just yet! The next episode is going to be scary as hell. I am not looking forward to watching Sousuke rape Michiru, nor am I looking forward to his attempt at suicide. It's so frustrating... I wish so badly that things could work out between them. That Sousuke would just stop because it seems so much like he suffers just as much as Michiru every time he beats her, and just because there's a willingness on both sides to make it work, no matter how hard it gets. That's so precious, and rare even in healthy relationships, but at the same time their relationship is so fundamentally wrong, so corrupt on every level, that I just wish Michiru would wake up and realize things are not going to change and that, no matter how painful leaving him might be, staying will be innumerable times more painful.
In all honesty, at first I was disappointed with Ryo's approach to Sousuke - he was too stiff, too caught up in his own world. Ryo was acting out an overly introverted introvert, and I almost cringed during the scenes when he wasn't abusing Michiru (which is almost disturbingly ironic) because he just didn't seem to know what to do with himself. Thankfully, though, he seems to have pulled himself together and gotten back into "actor" mode, after being on hiatus for almost 2 years, and he's managed to turn Sousuke into a real, memorable, altogether frightening personnage. I found out recently that Ryo put did a lot of preparing for this role - apparently he read up on DV, met with people who had been victims of and even committed crimes of domestic violence, and discussed passed cases of DV with the director. In short, he's really given himself to this role, and hope viewers, in Japan especially, are feeling everything he has tried to communicate through this role. As a side not, I wonder if the role has actually had a bit of an emotional tole on Ryo - the look in his eyes after Hamada hit him over the head on the last episode of HEY!HEY!HEY! was filled with emotion I don't think we would have seen prior to his taking on this role.
Getting back to the drama, I think this is the beginning of my really, truly feeling bad for Ruka. I realize that this is quite a lame thing to judge by, but Ryo is listed as the 19th character, in order of importance... so I wonder if that means his attempt at suicide next episode will actually be successful because, as of now, his place in the cast credits doesn't make sense - he's at least been as prominent as Ogurin, thus far. I was quite convinced that he was the "death" Michiru mentioned in the first episode, and it certainly seems that things could take that course. Michiru's child is probably Sousuke's, given the rape-scene preview from the next episode, which makes sense. The only other man it could logically belong to would be Takeru. Were it his, though, I don't believe she would be alone, writing to Ruka. But, as I said, I'm not ruling out the possibility of major plots twists. Takeru's story has yet to unfold, but I have a feeling his sex phobia is the result of his having been sexually abused by his sister when he was a child. And am I the only who is slightly frightened by Takeru? At moments I feel he's almost as unstable as Sousuke, but I can't quite figure out why that is. This is not to say I think he'd do anything like Sousuke - I just think they're both highly unstable people who go about dealing with their trauma in different ways.
Sorry for the rant - I hope anyone watching this drama is loving it. <3