Ok so, while doing my random browsing of youtube today i went back and ended up listening to Goose House, which is an incredibly amazing group you should take a listen to if you haven’t, you really are missing something amazing if you don’t know about them. But getting back to my point, which you probably have already deduced from this post is, i was listening to them do a cover of Konayuki from 1 litre of tears. And since lately i’ve been in a more mellow mood and because i decided i wanted to, i’m doing more indepth analyses of some of my more personally top rated dramas, and so this triggered me to decide to write about 1 litre of tears next.
before you continue though, play the video, i feel like personally i’d want to read this with music in the background anyway 😛
So for those of you who do not know what 1 litre of tears is, it is a drama that aired in 2005 and has become one of the undisputed most loved and favorited drama of many. It has spawned such a reaction and created such a stir there is hardly a drama fanatic i know or have seen that has not at the very least watched much less heard of this drama. There are so many reasons why this drama is pure insanity of amazing, and why for the longest time until my discovery of certain other dramas, this held the top spot of my favorites for a very very very long time.
To start off with, dramas in japan i have found to be very, shall we say, streaky. Unlike Korean Dramas which many find to be of consistent at least quality wise, japan is very hit or miss. Of the japanese dramas i’ve seen, they have either been a smashbox hit, or a titanic disappointment, i have really not seen that many that were middle of the ground average. This drama was far from a failure, if anything this likely exceeded the expectations of many. I personally when i started this was a bit skeptic as to how impressive it would be. I was sure it would be good, but this just went so far beyond anything i had ever expected that i was floored by the end of it. There is certainly a reason why this has garnered the fanbase it has, in fact, there are many reasons why this drama has managed to stand atop so many peoples’ lists.
The first which i will discuss is the plot. This plot is (and good god i hate the fact i say this every time i make one of these), PURE DRAMA GOLD. The moment your curiosity gets the best of you and you look for a quick synopsis (don’t lie, i know you looked/read one before watching it), it said something like this:
15-year-old Ikeuchi Aya was an ordinary girl, the daughter of a family who works at a tofu shop, and a soon-to-be high schooler. However, odd things have been happening to Aya lately. She has been falling down often and walks strange. Her mother, Shioka, takes Aya to see the doctor, and he informs Shioka that Aya has spinocerebellar degeneration – a terrible disease where the cerebellum of the brain gradually deteriorates to the point where the victim cannot walk, speak, write, or eat. A cruel disease, as it does not affect the mind in the least. How will Aya react when told about her disease? And how will Aya live from now on? (taken straight from d-addict’s dramawiki site, no plagarizing claims pl0x <3)
BAM, super heavy hit, you know this is not your happy go lucky love drama, it will not make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. This drama from the get go it is clear will shake you to the very core. And that is exactly what some people are looking for sometimes, a drama that hits it home, gives them a heavy gut check and shoves reality back into their face that life is not always nice, happy lucky events in love happen, but so do tragedies and things that can downright depress and bring you down. Cutesy lovely this is not, life-jarring and stunning it is by a MILE. I can tell you that personally the moment i finished it, i sat there. And sat there for a good 30 minutes just sitting there, thinking, stunned, letting it all begin to hit me. This was honestly the first drama i had seriously watched (not a bad one to start eh?), and it was from this drama that i began to realize how much i loved stories like this, things that i could just delve deep into and analyze. And this did not disappoint me at any moment. The plot of this drama and how it was presented was so amazing and masterful that the title was well named, it did bring tears to many a watcher’s eye. How they cleverly pulled you along, had you follow the story and feel yourself as event after event happened, this was brilliance at a peak. It gave you sadness, but not so much to depress, but to remind us. One should take from this drama to cherish every moment, that life is a very precious thing. It was not meant to make you feel life is hopeless, what is the point, no, this is meant to inspire humanity to take life and love it. I sat there for 30 minutes thinking how selfish i was and began to feel like i should cherish what i am given and have, and this drama made me feel like i should fight to hold onto everything rather than lose it without trying. That is why this drama has inspired and gained such a fanbase, that is why this drama has stood out, for the message it presented.
This drama also does better than most dramas i have ever seen, its soundtrack. This soundtrack felt like a breath of air. I grew up listening to classical music, so i adore instrumentals and completely enjoy immersing myself in music. This soundtrack is one that i love just putting on and then closing my eyes and just sitting there engrossing myself in the sound. This was so carefully and amazingly orchestrated that it fits exactly the scenes that it backgrounds. As you watch, the music takes the scene to unimaginable heights, from ordinary to emotional. It takes an already heavy situation and brings you past the brink of tears and causes them to flow. Take a moment and listen then now, to the song that spurred this review, i posted the video at the top if you haven’t yet. Listen and perhaps you will understand, or maybe even recall and remember, this drama. This OST was beyond incredible, and it only makes sense why this drama yielded such acclaim with music such as this to back it up.
This drama also clearly hit a homerun casting-wise. Like i said in my previous post where i referred to sawajiri erika starring in this, this was her breakout role. This was the drama where she screamed to the world she was here, and that this was what she had to offer. I’ll put this out there right now, SHE DEMOLISHED THIS CHARACTER. They say that quality actresses/actors become their parts, and you can tell the caliber of one by how believable they become. I had to remind myself several times this was a fictional show, and that she was acting, so believable was she in her part that i sometimes was fully convinced she was becoming disabled and crippled. The amount of effort and study she put into that part boggles my mind. And i present the same challenge i made in my other post, i DEFY you to tell me another person who could have done this as well as she did. I can think of no one else that would have played this so brilliantly, could have been this believable. I’m sounding like a broken record here but this is really what i think. This drama would not have reached the acclaim and attention it did had she not completely owned the role the way she did. Casting was essentially completed the moment she was chosen for that role, the most critical one for this drama, and simply helped what was already a promising drama to the legend it has become.
More detail to come when i come around to adding more but until next time
-Aznanimedude
For placing the organized chaos that is my mind 