Saturday 1 June 2013

Currently watching: Haitatsu Saretai Watashitachi

In a time of J-drama drought, the TV channel WOWOW comes to the rescue. This is a charming drama about a man who, after a failed suicide attempt, finds seven letters from years ago and decides to deliver them.

Despite the heavy themes of suicide and alienation, it retains a sense of humour. Each letter has its own little story and I did enjoy episode two, with its tale of hero-worship and adversity. But I do worry that there’s only so many times you can argue about whether there’s a point to life before it gets repetitive.


The music is interesting, too. Mostly trumpet and accordion. It seems like the director is a fan of Mitani Kouki or perhaps European arthouse cinema. It certainly made a change from bland, licensed J-pop and it added to the drama's jolly but slightly unsettling atmosphere.

Also there is one character, a doctor, who is perhaps the first character in a J-drama to react to the beautiful lead actress (Kuriyama Chiaki) in the way any normal person would: with a big old comedy double take. Viewers of Japanese TV series often have to suspend belief and imagine that Inoue Mao or Karina are ugly because everyone keeps calling them that. Finally, there’s someone in J-dramaland who’s noticed how good looking their co-star is.


Plus, for some reason, I really liked the fact that it was snowing in episode one.

5 comments:

  1. Hi,

    thank you for your kind words on this movie. I happen to watch it on the gooddrama website (honestly, for somebody living on another slice of Earth being able to watch recent Japanese TV series is quite awesome !) , but I wish there could be a translation in English of the title as well . Could you provide one, please? Thanx :)

    M.

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  2. The title? It's something like "We, the ones who want to be delivered" or simply "We want to be delivered".

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  3. Thank you! I found a link to a French movie reviews website where they translated/ adapted it as "The Letters of A Hope" :) it seems there's always some sad compromise to do when translating&doing the marketing... but as long as it's done keeping the spirit alive it should be... fine

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  4. "movie reviews French website" ^_^

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  5. Japanese titles don't usually literally translate well, so changing them is almost necessary. That title seems okay.

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