Algernon Ni Hanataba O (2015)

Yamashita Tomohisa is THE best part of this drama. He had me sobbing at intervals and all out bawling at the end. This is a MUST SEE; I cannot stress this enough. The story is really interesting and the characters who are friends to 'Algernon' are wonderful to him. The acting is wonderful and the actors all make their characters so believable you become very invested - especially in Algernon; you root for him so much. The cast really give their roles their all; especially the always great Tomohisa and Masataka. All in all this is a really good drama; I didn't really expect much - but my stars, was I so VERY wrong. WATCH THIS, seriously, you won't regret it.

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Knowledge must be shared to prove its worth.

People are often overwhelmed by this delusion that being a genius can make someone powerful and act like God. These intellects tend to think that everything is an experiment and that everyone can be subjects and guinea pigs to experiment and test with. Little did they realize that without the people around, Knowledge is just as useless as being in an island all alone.

I like how the story carry how friendship among varied people of different set of intellect and social status can still survive through the trials of mental capacity, emotional disputes and even between different specie like Algernon , the rodent and his human counterpart Sakuto.

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Commendable Attempt to Adapt

Flowers for Algernon was actually one of my favourite novel during my teenage years as I was given this novel to dissect for my literature class. I remembered the story was very thought provoking though I forgot a lot of details as I have lost the book. But this was a commendable attempt to adapt the literature text as the ML did justice to his role. I really felt for him in all his struggles from someone who has lower IQ to become a top genius.

However, my issue with the adaptation is that a lot of the side character development got neglected. But I guess I understand its hard to develop these characters as the original text was very protagonist driven too as it was written in a first person account. I think its not an issue if its a novel but for a drama, I wish there were more development for the side characters. Also, I feel that the turning point for ML from being cold hearted when he first became a genius to realising his inner warmth felt very abrupt too. Perhaps, the drama would benefit from a longer episode span. I was kinda meh with Haruka's acting too, felt that the actress is having issues with embodying and relating to her character.

The choice of OST was really good, I think it fits the story and a nod to nostalgia since the original text is pretty old. But like many Jdrama, I wish they would have more OSTs for a drama.

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Des apprentis sorciers et un malheureux cobaye...

Je me demandais bien ce que donnerait ce roman à la sauce drama. En fait, je l'ai lu il y a déjà quelques années et n'avais pas du tout accroché à cause de l'écriture à la première personne.
A la lecture de ce que je disais il y a deux ans et demi, le drama, tout en respectant tout à fait l'histoire de Charlie (Sakuto ici)  a rajouté des éléments dramaesque (la riche héritière malade, par exemple, et Sakuto est très empathique, lui.) mais c'est vraiment secondaire et la fin est vraiment poignante, quoique peut-être moins désespérée que celle du roman, dans l'esprit, mais non dans les faits.
Et Yamapi ? Eh bien, comme toujours, il fait le job, et ne s'en tire vraiment pas mal dans un rôle quand même trèèèès casse-gueule !   Il est touchant en Sakuto 1 puis impressionnant en Sakuto 2 puis de nouveau touchant et dans Sakuto 3... Mais quand même, C'est une histoire où il m'a encore une fois été difficile d'adhérer, même si l'idée de base mène à des réflexions très intéressantes sur la différence, et surtout sur le goût immodéré des hommes à jouer les apprentis-sorciers.
Mais je n'aurais pas voulu ne pas l'avoir vu !

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