jdrama: Kekkon Dekinai Otoko
Spent today marathoning this one(as in, cuddled up on the floor with my pillows sniffling). Got it mostly for Abe Hiroshi, but the whole thing rocked. It's essentially about the bizarre courtship between Kuwano, a perfectionist, set-in-his-ways architect and Natsumi, a frank but tolerant doctor at the hospital owned by his brother-in-law's family.
Before I get to the cut:
dangermousie, the two main female characters spend a lot of time at a manga library, and one of them was reading Red River throughout the series, so I kept thinking of you the whole time.
First of all? They spent WAY too much time showing Kuwano cooking and eating food...made me really hungry. Especially for okonomiyaki. (that looks so yummy in general, really...)
Kuwano is a nice but difficult architect(think of Jack Nicholson's character in As Good As It Gets, except endearing and you can actually reason with Kuwano...he also makes me think of Ueda from Trick, if someone tried to housebreak him and thought they succeeded so they let him loose on the world, except really, they failed) who values his solitude, has never planned to and intends to never get married, prefers to eat food he cooks and is very devoted to his career...designing houses. He also likes to listen to classical music and pretend to be a conductor, and one night, he and his neighbor Michiru, who sometimes gets loud while playing with her dog, Ken, engage in a sound war and when Michiru finally gets fed up with the noise she goes to ask him to stop...only to have him collapse on her from stomach pains. When she takes him to the hospital they meet Natsumi, a doctor in her late thirties who put her personal life on hold to pursue her career back in medical school but is considering restarting it. Even though Kuwano is...well...Kuwano to her, she does what she can for him even though he ignores her advice.
Pretty soon, Natsumi and Michiru become friends, and they also meet Kuwano's assistant, Eiji, and his...agent? contractor?(blurred mind didn't quite process her job title, but she gets him his jobs and serves as mediator between him and his clients) Sawazaki and the four start spending all their free time talking about Kuwano and his odd habits and peculiarities, and all five get more and more involved in each others lives. It's obvious right away that Kuwano and Natsumi are perfect for each other from the first episode, and they're like an old married couple by the third episode...it's just a question of whether or not they'll figure it out before the end credits roll for the last time.
A few random bits:
-There's this little old man Kuwano works with who he always annoys and who tries to strangle him as a result, and I swear Abe Hiroshi has to bend down just so he can reach
-Kuwano is about a foot taller than the peephole in his door.
-Michiro's dog, Ken, is so ugly that he's about the most adorable thing ever.
-The music and comedic timing rock.
-Kuwano's niece, Yumi, is one of the few dorama kids to have more than a couple scenes or just an episode or two who doesn't annoy me.
Also, I adore the episode titles:
(yes, I apparently am still too tired to do truly proper and detailed writeup/squee)
And yes, I shall start My Girl tomorrow...I just got sidetracked...