Kimi wa Pet - Drama Review
I actually found this drama during my first months of being a KAT-TUN addict
How?
I have absolutely no idea. There aren't any KAT-TUN people in it o_O;
Maybe it was MatsuJun's fault; who knows?
Kimi wa Pet, also written as Kim wa Petto, which is more natural to my fingers which are used to Japanese typing
I'd translate it as "You are a Pet", but apparently it can be translated as "Tramps like Us", which I frankly don't understand. Perhaps that's a tagline or something insignifigant, but what ever.
DramaWiki: Kimi wa Petto
The drama centrals around Iwaya Sumire, who is a TouDai [Tokyo University] graduate, which makes her an 'elite' in society. This position causes her a great deal of pressure at her really-big-and-important newspaper company job. After being demoted one day, she finds a bloodied Goda Takeshi in a box like an abandoned puppy, and promptly adpots him as her 'pet', despite her wish to be 'normal'.
For starters, the entire concept caught me as strange. In fact I only started the drama to prove to myself that it wasn't going to be as weird as it sounded. And then it really WAS as weird as it sounded, which caught me off guard. I'm blaming this concept on the fact that it's a manga adaption, and all manga are weird. Coodoz for even attempting a manga-based drama. Although looking at my drama list, that's pretty much 75% of dramas in Japan right now.........
Koyuki portrays Iwaya, a lady I've never heard of up until now despite her role in IWGP. It turns out she's been in more American movies I've watched than Japanese things @_@; She plays Taka in Hollywood production The Last Samurai, and plays some sort of role in Eragon, that one about dragons, and was also in Blood: The Last Vampire. More recently she was in Kamui Gaiden, that movie that was playing at the International Film Festival last year that I really wanted see but the tickets got all sold out >.>; I wanted to see that one for L though xD'
My first impression of Koyuki as Iwaya however was, "she's got a funny face." For the first few episodes that was the only thing I could see in her. Her face structure is a bit unusual, and I'm a bit suspicious of botox, if not plastic surgery. Her character is described as being 'beautiful' however, so I'll have to put it aside.
She's quite convincing as Iwaya's stoic side, but she doesn't quite have enough facial expressions for Iwaya's other more playful side. Her character is also a heavy smoker under pressure, but from what I saw Koyuki did very little actually puffing at the thing, so I respect that. Unless it was just they didn't want her to use up the entire cigarette during the millions of shots for the 1 scene >.>;
As far as character development goes, I'm not quite sure how to call it. She does indeed develop from being a total OL with no life into being someone who's able to somewhat express themselves in private, but the total absurdity of HOW she develops is ridiculous. Why couldn't she just go get an actual dog? If she has enough money to live in a giant apartment by herself surely she can get a place that allows pets. And she never ends up actually achieving anything at the end of the day >.>; I can't relate to her at all...
Goda Takeshi is known better as Momo during the series, and is even more memorable being played by Matsumoto Jun. Being in the middle of HanaYori Dango makes his role a bit hard to decipher, but as far as looks go the stylist did a great job of making him look scruffy! I've always thought of MatsuJun as a kind of odd DUCK, but now he's more of a cross between a DUCK and a DOG. I'm not sure if he should be proud of that or not xD'
I was oddly surprised that Arashi didn't do the theme for this drama. It was still a Johnny, that's true, but.... why not Arashi? Why V6 of all people? 0.o;
Takeshi's conflict is much more relateable than Iwaya's in that it's a much more common problem. Iwaya's problem is that she has too much eliteness around her that she's on the outs of society because of it, whereas Takeshi's is simply a family conflict of interests. Different parents wanting different things from their children is much more common and relateable than too-much-eliteness.
As far as acting goes, I'm not sure if it's my standards of Johnny's or something, but MatsuJun seemed a little off. He wasn't convincing at some points, but others I felt he hit very well. The not-convincing parts seemed to be when he was 'not being his natural self' in the drama, so.... I'm conflicted. Was it less than stellar on purpose or not? D=
Takeshi's character development was a bit easier to figure out. He learnt not to run away from his problems; reeeeaaaally classy right? T_T And yet at the very end he does just that. Again. 0.o;
The conflictor in this drama is Iwaya's old senpai Hasumi Shigehito, who's just come back from Brazil and still remembers his lowly kouhai from forever ago. Not questioning, not questioning..... And to top it all off, he finds her and ends up liking her. Not questioning, not questioning.......
When Iwaya and Hasumi enter a relationship, Takeshi becomes nothing more than someone/thing to rant at and to vent random emotions to. Much like my mother is to me >=D Hasumi proves to have little to no deep thought process throughout the series. First he doesn't see that Iwaya liked him so long ago, then he doesn't see how being around him makes things awkward for her, then he doesnt' realize he's being stalked, then he doesn't catch onto Iwaya's 'pet' thing, then he dives into a deeper relationship without checking what kind of relationship they were in before, and then SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER *facepalm* Usually oblivious people are cute, but he's just pathetic. And his complete character-flop at the end made me to a double-take. Suddenly he's NOT oblivious? 0.o?!
The actor that portrays him is one Tanabe Seiichi, yet another unknown in my books. The only thing I can link him to that might ring a bell is Kami no Shizuku. He has an interesting array of facial expressions that I found he used quite well. He has quite an interesting mouth line. It reminds me of a cat somehow =D I will blame his character's lack of mental consistancy on the script.
The drama's relationship-thing centers around the weird ways people can be in love, emphasized and explained properly by a random psychologist guy who pops out of no where sometimes. They way he handled the dog he always has borders on minor animal cruelty, but Japan's never been too big of those kinds of things anyway.
I was going to compare it to Suppli when I realized it already has been. Suppli and Kimi wa Pet were competeing manga titles at one point, which compared and contrasted different versions of how OL ladies deal with their enviroments. Which is only a TAD bit weird...........
One learns very quickly not to question Asia; it just gives unnecessary headaches >.>;
Overall it was cute, but defiantly not memorable. Even though I enjoyed watching it, I'll admit I was a bit disappointed when Takeshi's wounds healed so quickly. I was also a bit disappointed that his asthma didn't take a random role. Usually when we're told more than once that a character has asthma, it means they'll have an asthma attack at some point. Apparently not in this drama *sadism has been let down....*
Plotline: 4/10 - character driven plotlines are judged on whether the character development was signifigant and whether it was an improvement on their lives. For Iwaya, it made her a weirdo, for Takeshi it made him dependent, and for Hasumi it made him a loser. Still, there was SOME development present, so it gets credits for that.
Emotion: 6/10 - I couldn't really connect with any of the characters except for MatsuJun's, but I'm not sure if I'm just being biased or not 0.o I want to say it was because he was the only character that an average person could relate to, but that's not being fair. Even still, there were no moments that I truly felt any sort of attachment to. Except maybe to Hasumi and his Stalker, if only because it reminded me of Real Life xDD'
Acting: 7/10 - Tanabe makes up for Koyuki's lack of experience here. Iwaya was her first lead role, so I have to give her a biiit of a handicap... just a bit though. Tanabe's acting really stood out the most of me though
Script/Writing: 6/10 - The fact that it's based off a manga only leaves so much room for the writer to be creative with, but I can't judge it just on that, esspecially since most of the time I don't know if it's based off a manga or not until much after I've watched it *coughSUPPLIcough* Iwaya had her deep epiphanys here and there though... It really got me how different Hasumi was in the last episode(s). It almost seemed out of character some how.........
Entertainment: 7/10 - although I enjoyed it, I easily left it for a week without obsessively seeking it out again, which says something about how much I really cared at all about it. While it did entertain me for quite a few hours, again, it wasn't really all that memorable... But it did indeed kill some time, so as long as I wasn't bored to death it gets at least a 7 xD'
Overall: 60%, which places it somewhere in C land.
I have learnt that I need to wait at least a week after finishing a drama to write a review, otherwise I'm biased to the fact that it's still too fresh in my mind. xD'
I totally thought I'd be writing HanaKimi's review next, but the SP isn't working on my computer, and I'm waaaaay too lazy to attempt to convert it again. It almost killed my computer @_@; So until I watch that, I can't review it.
That goes for any drama though: I have to finish EVERYTHING before I review it. Except if it's a whole other season; seasons are reviewed separately *already planning ahead for Liar Game*
I'm almost finished Tokyo DOGS with ma mother, so chronologically that SHOULD be next. No guarenteez though >.>;
Amaya out~