Akimahende!: cute adolescent Nino and a bunch of really annoying people and situations
I decided that when I’m not working this summer, I should try to catch up on dramas. Like, from scratch. And maybe because it’s June, I went for a super-old Nino drama, Akimahende! (1998), which I'm not exactly recommending (but maybe I was just in a bad mood all week? Maybe this actually is a decent drama?). The exclamation point is part of the title, not my enthusiasm.
The title is the main character’s favorite Kansai catch-phrase and means something like an all-purpose ‘you shouldn’t do that!’ She uses it a lot because she’s constantly scolding someone about their behavior. And while the family may think she's the housekeeper, she's got a secret!
The main character is Katsura, a sixty-something Osaka oba-san who reencounters the long-lost love of her youth and they heat up the old soup. She never married, instead devoting herself to her ten siblings, while Junichiro went to Tokyo to start a towel factory.
He did not apparently pine over her, since he married three different wives, who each popped out a kid or two and then died. Sounds like a great guy, though he probably can’t really be held accountable for his wives’ mortality rate - that’s probably the fault of the horrible children. Or maybe it is his fault, since apparently he’s never home, and he never calls to speak to the children while he’s gone during the drama.
Katsura decides she can’t give Junichiro a definite answer until she’s spent time with the children whose stepmother she will become, so she arranges to join the Aoki household undercover as a housekeeper for a few months while Junichiro is in Europe on business. The series is thus punctuated with a lot of Katsura looking pained when one of the kids retorts something like, ‘You’re not my mother, just a housekeeper, so butt out!’ But probably they’d say something pretty similar if she joined the household as a stepmother anyway, for they are not great kids.
The eldest, Ayame, is actually married, but stomps back to daddy’s house every couple of days when things don’t go her way in her husband’s family.
She was a model before getting married (and still is, though she ‘chooses her jobs very carefully’), but her husband’s comically overbearing sister a) thinks Ayame should work in the family restaurant like a good subservient wife, but b) thinks Ayame is stuck-up and completely useless for anything not ornamental. This is not untrue. The husband is cute but crumbles under either woman’s pressure. The sister is a trip - clad in flashy cheongsam and eye-smarting feather boas and wielding equally feathery fans for her insult-hurling appearances in the Aoki family living room.
Sumire, the child of the second wife, at first seems a little better because she’s working at a bank and thus seems marginally more responsible. Except that she’s dating her married supervisor, who is a total schmuck who always growls her name in exaggerated lustfulness and lurks all over Yokohama in a beige trench coat with the sash tied and the collar popped. Icky.
Sumire cannot seem to get through her head that the guy is not worth it, even when she runs into a totally adorable, nice, young, and single college friend who is absolutely interested - instead, she uses cute guy to strong-arm her supervisor into getting divorce papers. But she goes back to him before he actually files them, so she actually didn’t really make any advances there.
Sumire spends a lot of her time drunk (on Zima?), and the series lets this whole affair go on way too long, almost as though condoning the relationship. Bad.
Nino plays Daiki, a high school high achiever who hates women after growing up with these two. How unsurprising.
Except that he falls head over heels for a widowed restaurant owner and decides he’s going to drop out of school to become an Italian chef and help her run her restaurant. (So that’s at least four dramas in which Nino plays a chef of some sort.)
His role is pretty minor - we’re clearly supposed to be more interested in the love troubles of the older sisters. But at least his stupid love troubles don’t make me want to smack him.
He is unfortunate to be living in the same house with these women.
Daiki’s only full sister is Satsuki, a friendless twelve-year-old who basically only trusts her brother - they’re kind of cute together. (It’s a tiny Suzuki Anne - remember her? Where did she disappear to?) Satsuki totally cannot take her sisters’ heartless teasing, and Daiki’s only supportive when he’s not being a self-absorbed teenager, so she’s kind of hung out to dry a lot. Consequently, she storms off to her room all the time to complain to her pet mouse.
Did I mention the brother-sister cuteness?
So this is what Katsura has to deal with, but she does make some headway in teaching them to be more like a family, in a Sisyphusian kind of way -- as soon as they seem to accept her meddling, they turn around and get mad at her interference. I think we’re supposed to appreciate her folksy Osaka wisdom, but her exaggerated dithering, grating voice, and general demeanor are horribly annoying. Not to mention all her moonfaced daydreaming about Junichiro (we’ve only seen the back of his head and heard a disembodied voice on the phone - at least he calls her while he’s gone!). Old ladies giggling like schoolgirls. Unpleasant.
You know she’s winning them over when they start slipping into Kansai dialect or appreciating Osaka foods.
I have, however, been learning all sorts of things about love relationships from this drama. For example, a husband shouldn’t let his wife clean the loo, lest she become less beautiful. Or, what matters in love is how much he’s willing to spend.
Okay, to be fair, Katsura does help Ayame and Sumire see that these ideas are silly, but she definitely insists on a wife’s subordination to her husband and she certainly doesn’t train the sisters out of all the annoying poses they strike for their men. I swear, these women cannot talk to a man without making pouty faces and whiny voices. Even the little girl does it. Even Katsura does it when she’s on the phone with Junichiro! Arrrgh! The restaurant owner doesn’t pout at Daiki, but then, she kind of laughs at his adoration; I’ll bet she pouted at her deceased husband.
Still, I finished the series, in vain hopes that Sumire would ditch the balding adulterer and Daiki would also find someone his own age (they are clearly seeking parental substitutes). And maybe in the last episode Katsura would say, ‘Junichiro, your children are all shits - let’s get an apartment of our own and maybe just take the littlest one with us!’
Fun points, though:
The pearls of wisdom about relationships traded between the older sisters are really pretty hilarious when they’re not utterly frustrating. Also watching the model sister just eat vitamin pills at every meal.
The thousands of times Katsura slips and calls their father by his given name and then manages to dither her way out of the questioning. Annoying that she dithers so much, but the suspicious glares are amusing.
The theme song sounds like it was lifted straight from Gravitation -- and the chorus chants ‘A-K-I-M-A, na na na na na, H-E-N-D-E, na na na na na,’ which is ridiculous.
Random break-dancing by Nino - as though the director thought they needed to make some use of special Johnny’s talents (the ones that can be shown on television), even though break-dancing is totally out of character for Daiki.
Network announcer who occasionally appears in cap and gown to provide footnotes to the characters' lines about the yen shortage, Imelda Marcos, or Yokohama sights.
Fabulous late-nineties clothes and hair. And Zima product placement (see above -- does Zima still exist?)
Actual open-mouthed kissing between the legitimately married characters (we never really see Sumire and her baldy kiss at all, even though we know they’re having sex behind that closed door).
Speculating which of the older sister actresses fifteen-year-old Nino banged. And not really blaming any of them.
Nino was really terribly cute back then. &hearts
Not that very much has changed, even with quite a few intervening birthdays. But I'm very glad that the general quality of his drama opportunities has changed. Very glad.
The title is the main character’s favorite Kansai catch-phrase and means something like an all-purpose ‘you shouldn’t do that!’ She uses it a lot because she’s constantly scolding someone about their behavior. And while the family may think she's the housekeeper, she's got a secret!
The main character is Katsura, a sixty-something Osaka oba-san who reencounters the long-lost love of her youth and they heat up the old soup. She never married, instead devoting herself to her ten siblings, while Junichiro went to Tokyo to start a towel factory.
He did not apparently pine over her, since he married three different wives, who each popped out a kid or two and then died. Sounds like a great guy, though he probably can’t really be held accountable for his wives’ mortality rate - that’s probably the fault of the horrible children. Or maybe it is his fault, since apparently he’s never home, and he never calls to speak to the children while he’s gone during the drama.
Katsura decides she can’t give Junichiro a definite answer until she’s spent time with the children whose stepmother she will become, so she arranges to join the Aoki household undercover as a housekeeper for a few months while Junichiro is in Europe on business. The series is thus punctuated with a lot of Katsura looking pained when one of the kids retorts something like, ‘You’re not my mother, just a housekeeper, so butt out!’ But probably they’d say something pretty similar if she joined the household as a stepmother anyway, for they are not great kids.
The eldest, Ayame, is actually married, but stomps back to daddy’s house every couple of days when things don’t go her way in her husband’s family.
She was a model before getting married (and still is, though she ‘chooses her jobs very carefully’), but her husband’s comically overbearing sister a) thinks Ayame should work in the family restaurant like a good subservient wife, but b) thinks Ayame is stuck-up and completely useless for anything not ornamental. This is not untrue. The husband is cute but crumbles under either woman’s pressure. The sister is a trip - clad in flashy cheongsam and eye-smarting feather boas and wielding equally feathery fans for her insult-hurling appearances in the Aoki family living room.
Sumire, the child of the second wife, at first seems a little better because she’s working at a bank and thus seems marginally more responsible. Except that she’s dating her married supervisor, who is a total schmuck who always growls her name in exaggerated lustfulness and lurks all over Yokohama in a beige trench coat with the sash tied and the collar popped. Icky.
Sumire cannot seem to get through her head that the guy is not worth it, even when she runs into a totally adorable, nice, young, and single college friend who is absolutely interested - instead, she uses cute guy to strong-arm her supervisor into getting divorce papers. But she goes back to him before he actually files them, so she actually didn’t really make any advances there.
Sumire spends a lot of her time drunk (on Zima?), and the series lets this whole affair go on way too long, almost as though condoning the relationship. Bad.
Nino plays Daiki, a high school high achiever who hates women after growing up with these two. How unsurprising.
Except that he falls head over heels for a widowed restaurant owner and decides he’s going to drop out of school to become an Italian chef and help her run her restaurant. (So that’s at least four dramas in which Nino plays a chef of some sort.)
His role is pretty minor - we’re clearly supposed to be more interested in the love troubles of the older sisters. But at least his stupid love troubles don’t make me want to smack him.
He is unfortunate to be living in the same house with these women.
Daiki’s only full sister is Satsuki, a friendless twelve-year-old who basically only trusts her brother - they’re kind of cute together. (It’s a tiny Suzuki Anne - remember her? Where did she disappear to?) Satsuki totally cannot take her sisters’ heartless teasing, and Daiki’s only supportive when he’s not being a self-absorbed teenager, so she’s kind of hung out to dry a lot. Consequently, she storms off to her room all the time to complain to her pet mouse.
Did I mention the brother-sister cuteness?
So this is what Katsura has to deal with, but she does make some headway in teaching them to be more like a family, in a Sisyphusian kind of way -- as soon as they seem to accept her meddling, they turn around and get mad at her interference. I think we’re supposed to appreciate her folksy Osaka wisdom, but her exaggerated dithering, grating voice, and general demeanor are horribly annoying. Not to mention all her moonfaced daydreaming about Junichiro (we’ve only seen the back of his head and heard a disembodied voice on the phone - at least he calls her while he’s gone!). Old ladies giggling like schoolgirls. Unpleasant.
You know she’s winning them over when they start slipping into Kansai dialect or appreciating Osaka foods.
I have, however, been learning all sorts of things about love relationships from this drama. For example, a husband shouldn’t let his wife clean the loo, lest she become less beautiful. Or, what matters in love is how much he’s willing to spend.
Okay, to be fair, Katsura does help Ayame and Sumire see that these ideas are silly, but she definitely insists on a wife’s subordination to her husband and she certainly doesn’t train the sisters out of all the annoying poses they strike for their men. I swear, these women cannot talk to a man without making pouty faces and whiny voices. Even the little girl does it. Even Katsura does it when she’s on the phone with Junichiro! Arrrgh! The restaurant owner doesn’t pout at Daiki, but then, she kind of laughs at his adoration; I’ll bet she pouted at her deceased husband.
Still, I finished the series, in vain hopes that Sumire would ditch the balding adulterer and Daiki would also find someone his own age (they are clearly seeking parental substitutes). And maybe in the last episode Katsura would say, ‘Junichiro, your children are all shits - let’s get an apartment of our own and maybe just take the littlest one with us!’
Fun points, though:
The pearls of wisdom about relationships traded between the older sisters are really pretty hilarious when they’re not utterly frustrating. Also watching the model sister just eat vitamin pills at every meal.
The thousands of times Katsura slips and calls their father by his given name and then manages to dither her way out of the questioning. Annoying that she dithers so much, but the suspicious glares are amusing.
The theme song sounds like it was lifted straight from Gravitation -- and the chorus chants ‘A-K-I-M-A, na na na na na, H-E-N-D-E, na na na na na,’ which is ridiculous.
Random break-dancing by Nino - as though the director thought they needed to make some use of special Johnny’s talents (the ones that can be shown on television), even though break-dancing is totally out of character for Daiki.
Network announcer who occasionally appears in cap and gown to provide footnotes to the characters' lines about the yen shortage, Imelda Marcos, or Yokohama sights.
Fabulous late-nineties clothes and hair. And Zima product placement (see above -- does Zima still exist?)
Actual open-mouthed kissing between the legitimately married characters (we never really see Sumire and her baldy kiss at all, even though we know they’re having sex behind that closed door).
Speculating which of the older sister actresses fifteen-year-old Nino banged. And not really blaming any of them.
Nino was really terribly cute back then. &hearts
Not that very much has changed, even with quite a few intervening birthdays. But I'm very glad that the general quality of his drama opportunities has changed. Very glad.