Ai no Uta ep 5

In Ai no Uta, Kanno Miho plays Yoko, a negative, grumpy woman who's given up on life and tries to commite suicide. She fails, pretends to have amnesia and attempts to start a new life as Ai-Chan. Tamaki Koji plays this ex detective who helps her.

Let's look at what's bad about this show. Firstly Tamaki is essentially playing his Mr. Nice Guy character from Konna Koi no Hanashi. It worked in that show cause he was playing off Hiroyuki Sanada. I read somewhere that this is the first time he's not the main male lead and its pretty obvious why: his acting is fucking boring. There's no depth and unrealistic.

Yes, I know jdoramas are not realistic but his performance is very 2D. As Ai-chan says in the dorama, he looks like an idiot smiling all the time.

The one point that can save his character is that he was supposedly a pretty mean cop before something happened but it took up to ep 5 to show us a small glimpse of it. And I just found out the writer of the show wrote Beach Boys, one of the most overrated and super boring jdoramas ever. There goes any expectations of the story picking up.

Mmmm.. I love women in uniform....

The second problem is how pedestrian this dorama seems. The sets are awfully dull and empty. It seems like those low budget doramas like Tails of Happiness, not that there's anything wrong with low budget doramas. Its just that there doesn't seem to be much effort put into it.

Narimiya Hiroki just feels so miscast as well, like he was in Ima, Ai Ni Yukimasu. Maybe its just how bloody boring the acting of the male actors are.

Of course the best thing about this show is Kanno Miho. This show is about her pulling off as many sour and moody expressions as possible. Her character of Yoko/Ai-chan is a blast to watch and Wakui Emi's role is pretty funny too.

Kanno Miho in maid uniform. At least they're catering to the Otakus...

Its great to see Kanno Miho play something different and she really makes some ugly facial expressions. lol. So unless you're clamoring for more Kanna Miho give this show a miss. If you haven't seen her acting before, go watch Koi Ga Shitai which IMO is her best show I've seen.

Props to Chiisana_Tantei, ar-a-mach and gryzze for uploading the series. Big props to Haruspex for subtitling the series. One can never get enough of Kanno Miho! :)