scottishlass | [jdrama] Concerto Review (Reply)

summary:
In Concerto Kimura Takuya plays Takakura Kakeru, a young, idealistic architect. He and his girl-friend Hana (Miyazawa Rie) are poor but seemingly happy with each other. Hana seems supportive of him but secretly hates being poor.
Their happy situation changes when Kakeru rescues Ebisawa Kosuke (Tamura Masakazu), a famous architect and brings him home from the beach. The two men become friends and work colleagues as the sempai takes on the younger man to work for him. Unfortunately, Ebisawa falls for Hana and she respectively for his wealth (or how else can you explain her dumping HOT Kimura Takuya???).
Kakeru's beginning to realize that Hana is driftng away from him and that she hates being poor, gives up on her out of love and also out of the urge to keep working with Ebisawa, whom he idolizes. The series continues with the constant struggle and competition between these two men and how much someone is ready to give up before compromising his or her whole character and reputation ...

my review:
OMG! What a load of bollocks!!! This series is a typical case of I was young and needed the money. In Kimura's case it is more a Johnny's made me do it but I learnt a lot of how NOT to act from my fellow cast mates.
Even for a hard-core fan of Kimura Takuya like myself the whole series was painful to watch. I haven't ffwd'ed so much as in this series EVER!! The idea for the plot about two very different men in love with the same woman AND sharing the same profession and competing with each other could have been interesting if not a bit cliched but I don't know what the script writers have been thinking. Each episode was badly scripted, each had poor plotting and unneccessary scenes while key scenes seemed to be missing IMHO. Key scenes like the motivation behind Kakeru's and Ebisawa's almost obsessive love for Hana. She is neither really beautiful nor is she really smart. She is a gold digger and connivining and has a streak for the melodramatic. I really disliked her character, not because she was the woman who dumped Kakeru but because it was so badly acted on the actress' part. She didn't have any expression other than that of express boredom.
I give that with a script like Concerto, you couldn't do much more but at least Kimura really gave his best and you can see that he has great potential, even though it is underused in a character like Kakeru. This series could have been easily the end of his acting career, it is THIS bad. But fortunately, the KimuTaku sensation was still in full fling and he had given such a lovable and convincing character in Long Vacation of the same year, that it didn't end here.

The whole series has one big fault: it lacks motivation, starting from the characters, the script as well as the actors (apart from Kimura) and it definitely inspired in me a lack of motivation to feel for and with the character as well as perhaps wishing for further episodes to watch.
On the other hand it could have been really interesting, if the writers had given the underlying homosexuality of the whole situation between Kakeru and Ebisama more focus. Them being in love with each other instead of Hana and competing with each other AND the whole sempai/kohei thing? Very interesting. Unfortunately, the writers didn't go for it.
All in all it was painful to watch and I'm glad I didn't buy the drama off Ebay for lots of money and downloaded it instead. For the sake of completeness, I'll keep the series on DVD but I'm glad I don't have to watch it again anytime soon.