Taiyou no Kisetsu thoughts...
Apr. 13th, 2007 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieI have been watching Taiyou No Kisetsu (Season of the Sun), an off-beat jdrama starring Takizawa Hideaki and Ikewaki Chizuru.
Anyway, I am not very far in, but I love it.
The plot follows Tatsuya, a reserved and persistently odd college student (you get the sense of unease about him…not really serial killer unease but that there is something wrong) who hangs out with a crowd of rich kids, and is especially close to Shuji, the ‘leader,’ son of a prosperous banking family who seems like a very nice guy.
Tatsuya (side note: Takki has never looked dishier) lies to everyone that he is from a rich family, but the truth is he is grindingly poor. His lie is not something as senseless (and harmless) as just wanting to fit in with the ‘cool’ kids. For whatever reason, Tatsuya has done it to get closer to Shuji and he wants to wreck his life, to take the most important thing in Shuji’s life away from him, for reasons unspecified, but probably having something to do with Tatsuya’s (hinted at but not yet explained) family tragedy. I wonder if the bank took all the family’s money or similar and his father did a Kurosagi?
The most important thing in Shuji’s life happens to be his fiancée, the lovely, slightly spoiled, and not particularly interesting daughter of another prominent family. So Tatsuya sets out to steal her away. The thing is, however, that underneath the mask you sense that there is a nice guy buried there somewhere, and with every action he takes to further his plans, not only does Tatsuya is getting filled with more and more self-loathing, but he isn’t getting any counterbalancing joy of it either. We get the hints that he wasn’t like this in high school, before whatever happened to his family happened (his former classmate remembers Tatsuya protecting him from bullies, in stark contrast to Tatsuya’s hands off approach now).
The screen is filled with the images of Tatsuya’s isolation and disconnect. He does not communicate with his Mom though he sends her money every month. He pushes away that high school friend. I think it’s significant he is often shown running, lone figure. And the way he has to repeat his lie like a mantra also shows that this is hard.
Somehow, this reminds me if Kurosagi in that it seems that Tatsuya is trying to stay emotionally frozen and uninvolved, in order to achieve his goal. He is close to succeeding, even if destroys him.
But then there is Eiko.
That is another thing that reminds me of Kurosagi actually. The frozen damaged boy and the girl, who is open and cheerful and somehow the one person able to get through the barriers, his one chance to be healed and be back to normal.
Eiko is a stranger into whom Tatsuya literally bumps on the street. She is a pianist (and composer), who in her own way is as isolated as Tatsuya. In her case, the isolation is physical: she can barely walk with a limp as a result of a childhood car accident (I wonder if there is some symbolism about Tatsuya being a phenomenally fast runner and Eiko limping. Especially when she mentions to him at one point that she doesn’t mind walking slowly because that way she doesn’t miss seeing the beauty around her). Her isolation is also emotional: Eiko’s physical condition placed her in great dependency on her creepy, possessive, over-controlling mother and the equally creepy and controlling maid-servant. They monitor her every move (up to which piece of music she plays) and treat her as a doll with no life of her own. One of the most hurtful scenes in the drama is when her mother tells her the composition is childish and she should give up writing music and tears up the notes.
This isolation has also left Eiko sheltered, almost childlike in her naiveté. Even though she’s the same age as Tatsuya and all the women in the group of people he hangs out with, she looks as if she is from a different planet: simple dress, no haircut to speak of, or make-up. It’s the clothes and hair of a child, almost. But being so sheltered also left her very open, emotionally.
But yes, meeting. As Eiko is on the way to the hospital for her regular check-up and Tatsuya is on the way to school, someone accidentally knocks her sheaf of notes from her hands. Eiko is trying to pick all of them up, a difficult task as there are a lot, and she has to dodge between busy crowd (no easy task with her disability). And Tatsuya is the only person who stops to help her. And I think in a nutshell that says so much about the whole situation. When he is not with his ‘friends,’ having to pretend, when the person in question is a total stranger who he will never see again, the basic decency he buried really really deeply, is allowed to come out.
And he picks them up and gives them to her, and you see how there are sparks, especially when she bows and thanks him and smiles. And also, somehow, maybe it was the slight figure trying so hard, or the friendly smile (she is incredibly open) or the sheer fact that he doesn’t have to worry about seeing her again. Somehow, she gets past the barriers. They click.
Only to walk their separate ways. Neither thinks they’ll see each other again, but we as the audience know better. Of course, so does the future-Tatsuya who is doing the voice overs (note to self: Except for Tattakoi, any drama with a voiceover means heroine death. You hear a voiceover, you run away. Somehow they are always as here ‘I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you and lost you’ and never ‘little did I know we were going to get married and have triplets and there I’d be making this sappy wedding video as our silver anniversary present’).
Of course, it turns out some of their papers got mixed up. He ended up with some of her composition and she ended up with his scholarship application. Eiko, who isn’t blind, and can fully appreciate that her helper wasn’t just sweet but utterly HOT, finally nerves herself to wait for him on that corner to exchange papers, to be truthful largely to try to get her composition back (but not just entirely for that).
After some time waiting, Tatsuya does walk by. Unfortunately for Eiko, he is with his ‘friends’ and when she approaches him, he acts like Peter who denied Jesus (this was a random comparison) and basically roughly tells Eiko to go away, stop pestering him, he doesn’t know her etc etc, leaving Eiko utterly hurt and also quite puzzled.
It’s so interesting to me, it’s as if Tatsuya is trying to prove to himself, more than to anyone, that he is a jerk. And because he wants to keep any genuineness, any normalcy away from the part of his life that revolves around ‘friendship.’
But you know what is so awesome? Eiko got to him. He cannot keep it up. His perfect cool and control are slipping. When one guy of their gang remarks that Eiko would be cool to date because she’s cute and who cares about the limp, it would make the dater look like a good person, and keeps making comments like that, Tatsuya snaps (and you can tell by how taken aback everyone is, he doesn’t ever) and then stalks out.
And then he is running to the intersection, looking for her, hoping she’d still be not too far away because just like in Kurosagi he wants to lock her out but he can’t really and eeeeee!
But of course she is gone.
But the awesome part? Next day (?) she is walking across that intersection and *hyperventilates, has trouble breathing* she looks up and he is there, and he is holding up her composition and smiling tentatively and he is wearing a dress shirt and…OK, I better stop before my drool short-circuits the keyboard.
And he apologizes for his behavior and she doesn’t seem to care or mind too much (she is very sunny and I don’t think she expects anything in life, very like Tohru in Fruits Basket) and tells him she doesn’t have his paperwork (to which he says he doesn’t care) and she smiles and thanks him and is about to walk off and eeeee! Eeeeee! He is the one who is unable to let go that time and asks her if she wants to talk more and this gorgeous scene follows where they are in the park and are just talking and it’s the first time you see Tatsuya actually relax and act like a guy his age and it’s awesome. Not so awesome is the fact that skuzzy guy (who thought dating a limping girl would be cool and whom Tatsuya threatened) saw.
And they part and she promises to play him her composition when it’s done though Tatsuya thinks it’s unlikely they’ll meet again. I think part of the reason he allows himself to hang out with her this time is because he really thinks it’s not permanent. Other part is…*shippery squee*
Anyway, I am not very far in, but I love it.
The plot follows Tatsuya, a reserved and persistently odd college student (you get the sense of unease about him…not really serial killer unease but that there is something wrong) who hangs out with a crowd of rich kids, and is especially close to Shuji, the ‘leader,’ son of a prosperous banking family who seems like a very nice guy.
Tatsuya (side note: Takki has never looked dishier) lies to everyone that he is from a rich family, but the truth is he is grindingly poor. His lie is not something as senseless (and harmless) as just wanting to fit in with the ‘cool’ kids. For whatever reason, Tatsuya has done it to get closer to Shuji and he wants to wreck his life, to take the most important thing in Shuji’s life away from him, for reasons unspecified, but probably having something to do with Tatsuya’s (hinted at but not yet explained) family tragedy. I wonder if the bank took all the family’s money or similar and his father did a Kurosagi?
The most important thing in Shuji’s life happens to be his fiancée, the lovely, slightly spoiled, and not particularly interesting daughter of another prominent family. So Tatsuya sets out to steal her away. The thing is, however, that underneath the mask you sense that there is a nice guy buried there somewhere, and with every action he takes to further his plans, not only does Tatsuya is getting filled with more and more self-loathing, but he isn’t getting any counterbalancing joy of it either. We get the hints that he wasn’t like this in high school, before whatever happened to his family happened (his former classmate remembers Tatsuya protecting him from bullies, in stark contrast to Tatsuya’s hands off approach now).
The screen is filled with the images of Tatsuya’s isolation and disconnect. He does not communicate with his Mom though he sends her money every month. He pushes away that high school friend. I think it’s significant he is often shown running, lone figure. And the way he has to repeat his lie like a mantra also shows that this is hard.
Somehow, this reminds me if Kurosagi in that it seems that Tatsuya is trying to stay emotionally frozen and uninvolved, in order to achieve his goal. He is close to succeeding, even if destroys him.
But then there is Eiko.
That is another thing that reminds me of Kurosagi actually. The frozen damaged boy and the girl, who is open and cheerful and somehow the one person able to get through the barriers, his one chance to be healed and be back to normal.
Eiko is a stranger into whom Tatsuya literally bumps on the street. She is a pianist (and composer), who in her own way is as isolated as Tatsuya. In her case, the isolation is physical: she can barely walk with a limp as a result of a childhood car accident (I wonder if there is some symbolism about Tatsuya being a phenomenally fast runner and Eiko limping. Especially when she mentions to him at one point that she doesn’t mind walking slowly because that way she doesn’t miss seeing the beauty around her). Her isolation is also emotional: Eiko’s physical condition placed her in great dependency on her creepy, possessive, over-controlling mother and the equally creepy and controlling maid-servant. They monitor her every move (up to which piece of music she plays) and treat her as a doll with no life of her own. One of the most hurtful scenes in the drama is when her mother tells her the composition is childish and she should give up writing music and tears up the notes.
This isolation has also left Eiko sheltered, almost childlike in her naiveté. Even though she’s the same age as Tatsuya and all the women in the group of people he hangs out with, she looks as if she is from a different planet: simple dress, no haircut to speak of, or make-up. It’s the clothes and hair of a child, almost. But being so sheltered also left her very open, emotionally.
But yes, meeting. As Eiko is on the way to the hospital for her regular check-up and Tatsuya is on the way to school, someone accidentally knocks her sheaf of notes from her hands. Eiko is trying to pick all of them up, a difficult task as there are a lot, and she has to dodge between busy crowd (no easy task with her disability). And Tatsuya is the only person who stops to help her. And I think in a nutshell that says so much about the whole situation. When he is not with his ‘friends,’ having to pretend, when the person in question is a total stranger who he will never see again, the basic decency he buried really really deeply, is allowed to come out.
And he picks them up and gives them to her, and you see how there are sparks, especially when she bows and thanks him and smiles. And also, somehow, maybe it was the slight figure trying so hard, or the friendly smile (she is incredibly open) or the sheer fact that he doesn’t have to worry about seeing her again. Somehow, she gets past the barriers. They click.
Only to walk their separate ways. Neither thinks they’ll see each other again, but we as the audience know better. Of course, so does the future-Tatsuya who is doing the voice overs (note to self: Except for Tattakoi, any drama with a voiceover means heroine death. You hear a voiceover, you run away. Somehow they are always as here ‘I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you and lost you’ and never ‘little did I know we were going to get married and have triplets and there I’d be making this sappy wedding video as our silver anniversary present’).
Of course, it turns out some of their papers got mixed up. He ended up with some of her composition and she ended up with his scholarship application. Eiko, who isn’t blind, and can fully appreciate that her helper wasn’t just sweet but utterly HOT, finally nerves herself to wait for him on that corner to exchange papers, to be truthful largely to try to get her composition back (but not just entirely for that).
After some time waiting, Tatsuya does walk by. Unfortunately for Eiko, he is with his ‘friends’ and when she approaches him, he acts like Peter who denied Jesus (this was a random comparison) and basically roughly tells Eiko to go away, stop pestering him, he doesn’t know her etc etc, leaving Eiko utterly hurt and also quite puzzled.
It’s so interesting to me, it’s as if Tatsuya is trying to prove to himself, more than to anyone, that he is a jerk. And because he wants to keep any genuineness, any normalcy away from the part of his life that revolves around ‘friendship.’
But you know what is so awesome? Eiko got to him. He cannot keep it up. His perfect cool and control are slipping. When one guy of their gang remarks that Eiko would be cool to date because she’s cute and who cares about the limp, it would make the dater look like a good person, and keeps making comments like that, Tatsuya snaps (and you can tell by how taken aback everyone is, he doesn’t ever) and then stalks out.
And then he is running to the intersection, looking for her, hoping she’d still be not too far away because just like in Kurosagi he wants to lock her out but he can’t really and eeeeee!
But of course she is gone.
But the awesome part? Next day (?) she is walking across that intersection and *hyperventilates, has trouble breathing* she looks up and he is there, and he is holding up her composition and smiling tentatively and he is wearing a dress shirt and…OK, I better stop before my drool short-circuits the keyboard.
And he apologizes for his behavior and she doesn’t seem to care or mind too much (she is very sunny and I don’t think she expects anything in life, very like Tohru in Fruits Basket) and tells him she doesn’t have his paperwork (to which he says he doesn’t care) and she smiles and thanks him and is about to walk off and eeeee! Eeeeee! He is the one who is unable to let go that time and asks her if she wants to talk more and this gorgeous scene follows where they are in the park and are just talking and it’s the first time you see Tatsuya actually relax and act like a guy his age and it’s awesome. Not so awesome is the fact that skuzzy guy (who thought dating a limping girl would be cool and whom Tatsuya threatened) saw.
And they part and she promises to play him her composition when it’s done though Tatsuya thinks it’s unlikely they’ll meet again. I think part of the reason he allows himself to hang out with her this time is because he really thinks it’s not permanent. Other part is…*shippery squee*
