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Change 2008 From Televiews (May 23, 2008) by Wm. Penn for the Daily Yomiuri: The only challenge to Nakama's supremacy comes from Takuya Kimura's Change, which debuted with 23.8 percent ratings last week. That seems a little low for a Kimura extravaganza, but those figures should increase. Eri Fukatsu and Hiroshi Abe gave excellent performances and did most of the heavy lifting in Episode 1 as the script called for Kimura's character to do little more than look disillusioned and disinterested. But by Week 2, the Kimura sparkle returned as Asakura, dubbed the "kokkai oji" (the new young prince of the Diet), settles into his new job. He asks his savvy political secretary (Fukatsu) to explain everything to him in terms a fifth-year primary school student (and the rest of us) can understand, making the fast-moving script informative, clever and easy to follow. By next week, Asakura should be taking over the prime ministership. The party elders, realizing his potential as a political panda who can enthrall the media, have decided the country can run on auto-pilot for three months. They'll install Asakura, reestablish the party's popularity with the electorate and then retake the position and power themselves in 90 days. But will Asakura really be such a pliable, political puppet? The current public mood and political atmosphere are being skillfully conveyed in Change. With a fantastic supporting cast giving it their all, Episode 2 was a joy to watch and the first four-star effort I've seen in a long time. The only annoyance is watching Kimura puff his way through yet another script. Reported to be a heavy smoker in real life, one wonders whether he requires that all his onscreen characters have a smoking habit, too? The local Fuji affiliate was rerunning his 1997 hit Love Generation (a 32.5-percent winner in its day) last week and he was puffing away in that series also. One of the few bright spots in 21st-century Japanese TV has been the move away from smoking scenes in dramas. I hate to see Kimura take us back there. From Televiews (May 7, 2008) by Wm. Penn for the Daily Yomiuri: Get ready. Change (Fuji, 9 p.m.) is coming Monday. It has taken a while, but Takuya Kimura is finally on his way to save the day for Japan. The quest for a quality political drama seems to have caused some production delays that pushed the series debut back three weeks. There have been media reports of grumbling at the network and worries that the late start will affect the timing of the summer series set for the Monday, 9 p.m. slot. Can't quite see what the problem is myself. Until the private networks create more dramas that really excite viewers, staggering the start of each new season may be one of their best strategies for keeping the public interested in TV. Most of this April's offerings have already bored or alienated viewers, so it is nice to have something new to look forward to in May. Fuji has not yet revealed how many weeks Change will run, but if it should preempt a few of the between-season, special marathon, 180-minute, triple talento, super-duper, silly noise extravaganzas, will anyone really miss them? So bring on the Change already. With the Japanese public's frustration with the political problems that have piled up over the past year and the excitement of the U.S. presidential race as a backdrop, the drama's Web site (www.fujitv.co.jp/change) is promising a political story that will provide the public with hope and dreams. That's an awful lot to expect from a mere TV series. But from the preseason publicity to the choice of Madonna's "Miles Away" as the theme song, the network does seems to be going all out on this one. As part of the advance PR for the series, Change tissue boxes went on sale on May 2 at a nationwide supermarket chain. By May 4, the supplies at my local store were all sold out. Can Change campaign buttons be far behind? As for the story itself, Kimura plays Keita Asakura, 35, a primary school teacher from rural Nagano Prefecture whose recently deceased father had been a dietman from Kyushu. An all-around nice guy, Keita has no interest in politics and agrees to run only to get everyone off his back once and for all. But with the help of some sharp political operatives, he will be swept into the Diet and toward the prime ministership. It's a rather implausible scenario, but in a world where Diet seats are passed down from generation to generation like the family china, not entirely impossible either. Once elected, he's bounced about and manipulated by the elders of the Seiyuto (Political Friends Party) as he tries to use his power to change things for the better. The all-star cast should help make the story both watchable and believable. The talented Eri Fukatsu plays his personal political secretary while Hiroshi Abe is the election strategist with a winning track record who knows how to get Asakura elected. Rosa Kato is cast as a loyal young supporter who warbles his message of change to voters from his campaign sound truck. Reportedly, filming of at least one of the outdoor campaign scenes had to be cancelled after Kimura attracted too big a crowd. Once ensconced in the political world, he will be dealing with the party leadership. Akira Terao and Atsuo Nakamura play the party's general council chairman and secretary general, respectively. Nakamura should lend some added authenticity to the drama since the actor, best known for his role in the samurai tale Kogarashi Monjiro, actually served in the House of Councillors from 1998 to 2004. Rounding out the big-name cast is Shiro Ito as the reigning prime minister, who holds the unflattering distinction of being the least popular prime minister ever. If Change is even half as good as it looks in the preseason publicity, the network will have a real winner on their hands. Do check it out. [From Japan Times, June 8, 2008 by Philip Brasor]: The jitters seemed to be justified when the May 12 premiere of "Change" came in second to "Gokusen" in that week's ratings race. The left-leaning weekly Kinyobi said the show's writing was characterized by "poor imagination and low intelligence," and derided the casting of Kimura, who had admitted in interviews that he was uninterested in politics. The more conservative Shukan Bunshun was just as scathing. The reporter called the first episode "devoid of content" and complained that Kimura's character, Keita Asakura, doesn't rise to Japan's highest office through ambition and vision, but rather because he is the scion of a political dynasty. Even worse, he's totally ignorant of the workings of politics and government. What could be more incredible? There's more than a touch of schadenfreude in these verdicts, and while "Change" suffers from the poor pacing and lackluster direction common to all Japanese TV dramas, contrary to Bunshun's contention that the story "reveals nothing" about its subject, it does give the impression that the producers did their homework, and not just because they secured permission to use actual Nagata-cho facilities for location shooting. In the first episode, Asakura's father, a Diet lawmaker from Fukuoka, and older brother are killed in an airplane crash. The ruling Seiyu party has to find a replacement and pressures Keita, an awkward elementary school teacher working in Nagano Prefecture, to run for the empty seat. Keita is estranged from his family and disillusioned with politics, but agrees because he believes he will lose. During the campaign, he's coached by Rika Miyama (Eri Fukatsu), the representative of the party bigwigs in Tokyo, and the hired "election planner," Nirasawa (Hiroshi Abe), to do things by the book. But when his opponent brings up a 20-year-old scandal involving his late father, Keita bucks his handlers and admits publicly that he believes his father did once accept a bribe, which was why he vowed never to enter politics. This uncommon show of candor wins him the election, though only by a few hundred votes. We already know that Asakura's rise is being stage-managed by Miyama's boss, Kanbayashi (Akira Terao), a party executive, for reasons that have little to do with change. Like the current ruling coalition, the Seiyu Party is unpopular and trying to avoid a general election that might remove it from power. When the boorish prime minister (Shiro Ito) is forced to step down due to a sexual-harassment accusation, Kanbayashi cultivates Asakura for the post of party president. Despite his lack of political experience, he is very attractive to the public. After only a week in Tokyo, he's a star in the women's magazines and on the wide shows. Kanbayashi's plan is to install Asakura as prime minister to boost the popularity of the party, after which a general election can be called and a more seasoned party member — himself, presumably — will step in. The cynicism inherent in this plan sounds familiar to anyone who follows what goes on in Nagata-cho, and you don't have to be a psychic to see where the plot is going. The party expects a good-looking puppet, but Asakura will rebel in favor of what he believes is right — what's best for "the kids," as he always puts it — and thus bring about the "change" that Japan needs. By the fourth episode he is already locking horns with the bureaucracy, which is shown to be smug and out of touch, over a dam project that threatens the livelihoods of local fishermen. And he does it completely on his own, carrying out his own research, seemingly in the space of 24 hours. At that rate, Asakura will probably be signing a nonaggression pact with Kim Jong Il by episode nine. The point of Asakura is that he's both innocent of the normal machinations of Nagata-cho and dedicated to "keeping his promise to the people." It's hardly an original idea, and given Kimura's limitations as an actor and the sentimental detours the script often makes, it doesn't promise to be a compelling one either. At worst, the series could turn into a pale imitation of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," but at best it could remind viewers, in a way that's easy to digest, of the self-serving nature of politics and how it's led to the current malaise in government. Whether or not Kimura's legions of fans take such knowledge to heart and vote the bums out of office is another thing, but in the end "Change" could do us all some good. STARRING:
Kimura Takuya, Abe Hiroshi, Fukatsu Eri, Terao Akira, Kato Rosa Copyright
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