 Another slice-of-life series, initially looking at the love life (or
lack of it) of a young woman. I'm used to this sort of show focussing
on high-school kids, so here's hoping the step up an age group makes a
difference...
1 - Hakodate - Akanegi Atsuko - pt 1
Meet Atsuko - 20 years old, and spending her time helping run her
mother's fish market. She'd quite like to have a little romance in her
life, but work gets in the way - that, and her pending arranged
marriage to Minoru. He's the owner of a nearby hotel & a successful
man, but she's just not interested. Now Kurata, local music nut &
age 40+, on the other hand... Hard times ahead away from her love life
as well - they're behind on their loan payments & the bank wants
their money back - and her mother's way of solving the problem is to
bring forward her marriage to Minoru so she can use the betrothal money
to repay the loan...
2 - Hakodate - Akanegi Atsuko - pt 1
Atsuko runs to Kurata's flat, somewhere to escape from her mother's
plans. Too much drink & she's confessing her love to him, but he
sensibly rejects any advances. Next morning it doesn't take Minoru too
long to figure out where Atsuko has gone, at which point he becomes Mr
Domineering & demands she return home. Atsuko stands her ground,
however, despite learning of Kurata's ex-wife & kids back in Tokyo.
It takes some time for Atsuko to sort out her feelings...
That's the end of Atuko's story - from here it moves on to another
story featuring another girl & so on for the show's 12-episode run.
It's part slice-of-life, part coming-of-age, and certainly for this
story the characters were fleshed out enough that you could relate to
what was going on. Problem was, that for reasons I couldn't quite put
my finger on, it didn't drag me in much - possibly bad pacing, possibly
not.
Overall, then, it's a show I probably won't be continuing with -
with so much other stuff coming out at the moment, it's good, but no
quite good enough to make it onto the "must watch" list. |
