Juhan Shuttai! (2016)

It was a great watch. On the surface, this drama can (very) easily be seen as a typical cheesy happy-go-lucky Japanese drama. And essentially it is one, however, it has many points that make it memorable, that dig deeper into society and into our characters' psych. It has a hugely talented cast, and though some were underused overall it was great seeing them going at it ;)
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One of the points that makes it a substantial drama is its characters. Kokoro is your typical happy-go-lucky girl, a point mentioned throughout the drama as a joke. What makes her different though is that she never imposes her solution on others. Her job in the drama is to watch the people around her, as we the viewers do until the characters find their own solution. This brings us to another great point in the drama, where even though it seems we have a weekly lesson learned, problems are ongoing and don't get magically solved by the end of the episode it got introduced. We do get the episodic focus, but issues do get revisited later as we see where the characters are headed. This gives us better-paced character development, as the characters make decisions about their work and their lives. Another element I'd like to mention is the way the drama peaks into the characters' lives'. We don't get a full explanation and detailed background about them, we just get enough to know how this is affecting their current lives, views, and work. We only know what we usually know as we get closer to our colleagues at work. To this end, this is a drama about work and career.
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I feel this drama represents not only how publishing works in Japan, but how the entertainment industry works there overall. It is what makes Japan produce these artistic works while hand-in-hand producing the usual predictable easy-to-sell works. The episode focused on Yasuda Ken's character Yasui-san emphasizes it most, but we do explore that theme more than once. I won't go into detail as to what it is exactly, I will leave it for the viewers to discover. I'd just like to add the way the drama itself is produced is representative of that idea. As I mentioned earlier, it looks and sounds like those typical dramas, but just by peeling that layer off, you find something deeper, as each episode goes by.
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I have to mention how much I loved all the characters here; Takahata, Yasui, Numata, Wada-san, Mikurayama, Koizumi the lovely Iokibe to name a few, and the cast did an outstanding job no matter how much or how little we saw of them, but my most favourite by far Nakata Haku the disturbed aspiring manga artist. Nagayama Kento played him to perfection. The whole cast did an outstanding job, but I just love how that character was handled. I wish we had seen more of Narita, the character played by Kaname Jun.
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Do give the drama a try, and give it at least 3-4 episodes and you will understand the gem I'm talking about. If anything the eye-candy in here will sure keep you entertained ;)

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