Sunday, July 08, 2007

Proposal Daisakusen


After the initial surge of happiness of ep 1's combination of Nagasawa Masami + Sailor Fukuu, this series started getting slow for me. Real slow. The 2nd half of the episodes are usually fun. There's no way they can muck up the whole travel back in time and change stuff up. However, I just find myself fast forwarding the 1st half of the episodes.


Proposal Daisakusen is basically a hatsukoi/koukuhaku series, the staple of 99.9% of romance manga/dorama. And the story is always boy and girl like each other but do not realise/don't dare to admit until the final episode. This series works in the reverse. Ken realises it in the end and goes back in time. So its about getting Rei to accept his koukuhaku.


Except that the audience knows that those two like each other. In fact its so fucking blatantly obvious that it gets so tiresome. Unless every Japanese has a osananajimi who gives them secret presents and longing looks.

The Chibi subplot was slightly amusing.

Best way to describe this show is like Densha without Shiraishi Miho and Sakurai-san. You have two standard main characters beating around the bush for 11 episodes and not even Nagasawa Masami could keep me for clicking on the forward button. Ken is like Densha, a character who doesn't evolve and gets on your nerves after a while. However, Densha had two really good supporting characters and the whole bbs support thing while Proposal Daisakusen has the fairy who gets super boring after watching the same thing at the beginning of every episode.

They could really have given the Mikio side story much more screentime to speed up those slow moments..

The concept of this main character chasing this unchasable girl requires an actor who can
get the audience sympathy. Who has great acting skills to make the repetitious story fun to watch. Who is able internalise and convey pain and frustration that seem real. Only Kinpachi sensei from 101 Proposals managed to do that. But then how many actors are in his level in terms of acting skills? The actor for Ken did an OK job but the way the story is structured basically places the whole weight of the show on his shoulders. How much better would the show be with Tsumabuki Satoshi as Ken, especially after seeing his great acting in Nada Sou Sou.

If Kenzou can't understand you, no one can.

As the story is told through Ken's character, Nagasawa Masami's character doesn't really have a character arch to go through. And I don't think she's explained the whole thing about what Ken doesn't understand during the bridge scene in ep 10. Or maybe I missed it while fast forwarding.


This is one show that would have benefited from cutting it down to 9 episodes. In summary, interesting concept but needed better acting and trimming of a lot of unnecessary stuff.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think there was explanation when she kept saying how Ken didn't understand anything. Maybe I fastforwarded through it too much lol.

I'm just surprised that the rating for this drama didn't plummet below 10%. I guess it's all because of the star power of Masami and Yamapi combination. (And dirty oyajis from Australia and America kept the ratings high. lol)

I'm still looking for that 'must-watch' dorama this season.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of must-watch dorama this new season... LIFE is lookng pretty interesting... it's not your everyday school drama... it's got some nice sick perverted twists. woohoo!

And the Itoh Misaki one is looking promising. And omg, Fukada is looking better than ever... she even managed to slim down her daikon radish calves. Subarashi!

Anonymous said...

I told ya! This drama seemed so promising at first, but I stopped caring and stopped watching. I hate it when good actors in horrible dramas.

Anonymous said...

*cough* Masami and Yamapi are not good actors *cough*

Akiramike said...

Masami's not great but she not bad. Still, someone should realize that Dragon Zakura was good despite having Yamapi cause of Abe Hiroshi.

Anonymous said...

Off topic but since jung mentioned it, Itoh Misaki's drama is called 'Yama onna Kabe onna', a comedy on breast fixation :-) I think our resident blog meister should be in heaven watching this one.