Tasogare Yusaku is one of the hardest jdoramas to watch that I can remember. Not because it is an melancholic and funny show about a small time supporting actor played by Kitamura Yukiya but because every episode ends up in a real life food place ala Kodoku no Gurume and the food is amazing.
I always like shows about making doramas and supporting actors and the last one I can remember was Byplayers with the late, great Ohsugi Ren and The Actor Kameoka Takuji starring Yasuda Ken which I need to do a rewatch of one day.
Just want to point out that Tasogare means Twilight and one of my favourite movies ever is Tasogare Seibei which is known in English as Twilight Samurai.
However as a verb it means to be lost in thought or to look melancholic.
At the end of episode, Yusaku will go to his usual bar and the mama will him who are you so lost in thought? Love the wordplay meaning someone who is in the twilight of his career but also refers to the melancholy of the show.
Tasogare Yusaku is basically Otoko wa Tsurai yo with food.
Otoko wa Tsurai yo was a series of very popular movies where this guy Tora-san would travel around, meet a pretty girl in every town and get rejected in the end.
Tasogare Yusaku has really good transition scenes where the title of the show will come up.
Jdoramas are a visual medium and it is things like this that make a jdorama pop.
We need a jdorama about voice actors. Radio no Jikan in a jdorama format.
Really like Kitamura Yukiya since the feel good Mushoboke. He really is a chameleon actor like Yasuda Ken and he can play tough guy and regular guy easily.
The sushi in episode 2 made my stomach rumble like crazy. I want to hop onto a plane to Japan right now.
The little girl who gives Yusaku comments on his acting is funny as.
The yakitori in episode 3 nearly drove me mad.
And the unagi looks so effing good. I was ready to confess to any crime just to eat real unaju.
Thanks to anonymous for recommending this funny and torturous jdorama. I can only watch 1, at most 2 episodes a day because it makes me yearn for real Japanese food! I don't think Tasogare Yusaku has been subbed and thanks to SoulfulSeoul for uploading the JP subs on avistaz.
On an unrelated note, I have finally received by JLPT N2 certificate in the post, 4 months after I took the exam, lol.
@Akiramike
ReplyDeleteKitamura Yukiya is having an absolute purple patch in the last couple of years. Agreed, both he and Yasuda Ken have matured into incredibly versatile actors. Sometimes I am taken aback watching a drama - realising it's them and how different the character they are playing feels to roles I usually associate with them.
I have felt the visuals have suffered in the last couple of years...Jdrama for years have been made on very lean budgets, but you can almost feel even that money getting thinner by the season. One of my favourite scenes that almost defined Jdrama visual style was the opening of ep04 of Haruka no Hikari. Beautiful, simple, takes you for a ride, and just a little trippy.
P.S. I hadn't realised how divorced current Jdrama style had become from its bubble era style. Watching the 1st season of Abunai Deka (thanks to GEO9875's subs) is like a culture shock. I can see why it became such a thing for so many 80's kids -the early episodes are full of swagger and physicality and tinged with 70's brutality that makes it so different to current Jtv. It's also a show that reveals why adult TV transitioned away from taller leads to the current stature of stars.
@Anon
ReplyDeleteRE: "It's also a show that reveals why adult TV transitioned away from taller leads to the current stature of stars."
I'm intrigued by this... can you more fully explain what you've said here?
@Robert,
ReplyDeleteA very rudimentary outline.
When the camera was stationary (predominantly), it creates a very different relationship between actors and the background.
When the camera is fixed, action can only be created by the actors moving, camera panning (pivot side to side) and zooms. This means actors spend much more time in the mid ground - and then moving towards/away the camera often at speed. These cameras were also big and heavy making them harder to set up, so cuts are longer and actors did much of the work on set. This includes some fairly complex ensemble staging (by modern standards) where actors re-group multiple times to reveal new relationships/subtext that is happening in a scene. One of the best intros to ensemble staging is (Every frame a painting's) YouTube video "Memories of Murder (2003) - Ensemble Staging".
Once you see a whole body (mid ground) against real life, size matters. That relative size creates impact, the body isn't dwarfed by the surrounding details, in fact they punch out in space, and when in motion - long limbs and size cover ground quickly and it feels dramatic. Disney theme parks famously play with this scale effect but in reverse. If you watch the scenes in Abunai Deka when the supporting character is shorter, set against the taller cast and the real word they struggle to make not only visual impact but emotional impact.
Japan has always had a deep pool of school dramas and young stars who were essentially adults able to play young. With a static camera, the stars from school dramas didn't automatically transition well into adult roles. The same way very few child stars go on to the same success in teen or adult roles
Once the camera became mobile, the framing and staging became radically different. More often that not, the camera itself, or cuts and editing creates the action, keeping the star more in the foreground. This meant that those school drama stars who had built a fan base early continued as adult stars because they were bankable. In fact their smaller proportions have a number of advantages for the moving camera. Once the lead actors are shorter, the supporting cast and extras follow suit. Watching Abunai Deka, right after a modern drama, you are almost taken aback by how tall the extras are. Most at or above 6'.
P.S. Abunai Deka sits right at the transition of this, The first 10 to 15 episode are heavily static camera and you can see how hard it is to shoot with a moving camera. Also the actors have to be insanely physical. The middle episodes slowly introduce more moving camera, and by the final group of episodes you can totally feel the change. Also notice how the film stock changes with each camera change, the colours in the early episodes are more reminiscent of 70's film and really struggle with low light and being on a vehicle...some of the car shots are just jelly the director must have been pulling their hair out. Towards the end, the colours are very 80's, low-light & night shots are much more resolved and less noisy.
Ok, very interesting. Thanks for the extensive response!
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: Off the top of my head, the visually impressive shows have been EVOL, Kenja no Ai, Kiseki no Hito and Samayou Yaiba but budgets are lean and you can see often they don't even dress up any office scenes. WOWOW shows generally look better because they only have to do 5 or 6 episodes instead of 10~12.
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