Ouroboros: nipiki no ryou
I don't know if I'm getting jaded with age (although I have to say spending a stint in ED usually makes me more jaded by the week LOL) but it's been a while since I've watched a drama that's really moved me.
And that is to say, Ouroboros wasn't one of them.
Yes, it had 3 of my top favourite Japanese actors and actresses. It had an interesting set up. It had some very likeable supporting characters. It had character development. It had plot. But somewhere, somehow, all these things fell apart.
I think I finished watching the whole thing purely based on how much I adore Toma and Shun and Ueno Juri, as well as the "middle-aged trio".
In the end, it continued to be a much warmer story than Maou - the woman whose death underpinned all this was a living character - unlike the main character's unfortunate brother in Maou. The main girl Hibino wasn't an orphan, and that in itself was important.
In the end, I think this is a far more human story than Maou. The theme of family is the undercurrent that drives everything along, creating little eddies of plot everywhere it turns. Hibino and her father, Ryuuzaki and Danno, Ryuuzaki and Danno and Yuiko-sensei, Konatsu and her father, Nachi and his search for his sister, the middle-aged trio and the way they watch over the younger trio, the final boss...
Everywhere there were broken families, but despite that it was oddly tender the way people tried to form a family out of these broken pieces.
It was what made the drama more sentimental and more human than something more cerebral and focused on blind justice like Maou. The story is driven by sentiment, by yearning, by the human need for warmth and cohesion and family, and I think the moments about family are some of the sweetest and best-written in the series.
The rest of the plot frays upon close inspection. It's the problem with translating something from 20 volumes of manga over to a 10 episode drama. You don't quite give it enough time and space to set up the gravity of the underlying conspiracy - there's not enough horror that goes into the overarching plot about the orphanage being a front for an organ transplant farm. In a time where such human rights issues persists in the world, it feels like the drama has bitten off more than it can chew and as a result feels like it's overly nonchalant about what should be a viscerally (no pun intended) disturbing plot.
I do like Toma and I do think he's generally a good actor, but his performance in the last 2 episodes have been a bit jarring, and I wonder if it's a directorial choice. Especially in the pivotal confrontation against the final big boss, the emotional weight doesn't seem to quite be there. The disbelief and horror is, but there's a lack of sense of betrayal or mortification or sadness that you might expect from someone so connected to him. I feel the whole character of Ryuuzaki might have been written a bit unsteadily, given how much variability he has, and his "secondary personality" was never really explained.
I have nothing bad to say about Shun or Juri, both doing incredible jobs with their rather archetypal characters. The arc with Hibino's father was beautifully acted, managing to keep Hibino's subdued personality while neverthelessly being heartbreaking.
I don't know if the manga will end the same way. I feel it's probably a little unnecessarily morbid, although this final choice might be because the relationship between Ryuuzaki and Hibino never really developed. In the end, Ryuuzaki's choice was his "kazoku"...given how Japanese revenge dramas usually go, I'm not surprised, but I guess I wished I was.
(Aside: DAMN IT SHUN AND TOMA CAN YOU GUYS BE LESS CUTE TOGETHER)
And that is to say, Ouroboros wasn't one of them.
Yes, it had 3 of my top favourite Japanese actors and actresses. It had an interesting set up. It had some very likeable supporting characters. It had character development. It had plot. But somewhere, somehow, all these things fell apart.
I think I finished watching the whole thing purely based on how much I adore Toma and Shun and Ueno Juri, as well as the "middle-aged trio".
In the end, it continued to be a much warmer story than Maou - the woman whose death underpinned all this was a living character - unlike the main character's unfortunate brother in Maou. The main girl Hibino wasn't an orphan, and that in itself was important.
In the end, I think this is a far more human story than Maou. The theme of family is the undercurrent that drives everything along, creating little eddies of plot everywhere it turns. Hibino and her father, Ryuuzaki and Danno, Ryuuzaki and Danno and Yuiko-sensei, Konatsu and her father, Nachi and his search for his sister, the middle-aged trio and the way they watch over the younger trio, the final boss...
Everywhere there were broken families, but despite that it was oddly tender the way people tried to form a family out of these broken pieces.
It was what made the drama more sentimental and more human than something more cerebral and focused on blind justice like Maou. The story is driven by sentiment, by yearning, by the human need for warmth and cohesion and family, and I think the moments about family are some of the sweetest and best-written in the series.
The rest of the plot frays upon close inspection. It's the problem with translating something from 20 volumes of manga over to a 10 episode drama. You don't quite give it enough time and space to set up the gravity of the underlying conspiracy - there's not enough horror that goes into the overarching plot about the orphanage being a front for an organ transplant farm. In a time where such human rights issues persists in the world, it feels like the drama has bitten off more than it can chew and as a result feels like it's overly nonchalant about what should be a viscerally (no pun intended) disturbing plot.
I do like Toma and I do think he's generally a good actor, but his performance in the last 2 episodes have been a bit jarring, and I wonder if it's a directorial choice. Especially in the pivotal confrontation against the final big boss, the emotional weight doesn't seem to quite be there. The disbelief and horror is, but there's a lack of sense of betrayal or mortification or sadness that you might expect from someone so connected to him. I feel the whole character of Ryuuzaki might have been written a bit unsteadily, given how much variability he has, and his "secondary personality" was never really explained.
I have nothing bad to say about Shun or Juri, both doing incredible jobs with their rather archetypal characters. The arc with Hibino's father was beautifully acted, managing to keep Hibino's subdued personality while neverthelessly being heartbreaking.
I don't know if the manga will end the same way. I feel it's probably a little unnecessarily morbid, although this final choice might be because the relationship between Ryuuzaki and Hibino never really developed. In the end, Ryuuzaki's choice was his "kazoku"...given how Japanese revenge dramas usually go, I'm not surprised, but I guess I wished I was.
(Aside: DAMN IT SHUN AND TOMA CAN YOU GUYS BE LESS CUTE TOGETHER)