JAPANESE DRAMA DATABASE: Egao no Hosoku

Egao no Hosoku (Always Smiling)

[Excerpt from Wm. Penn's April 17, 2003 Daily Yomiuri article on "Egao no Hosoku"]: It was the best manga moment of the week! Egao no Hosoku (Sundays at 9 p.m. on TBS), unlike many of the dramas in the new lineup, is not a made-for-TV manga. Instead, it takes a peek at the crazy, pressure-cooker life of a manga world superstar, who is pressed to turn out one lucrative comic after another for an insatiable audience.

Hiroshi Abe is quite good in the role of Reiji Sakurai, the slightly neurotic artist. Yumi Kurasawa (Yuko Takeuchi) is the young woman hired by his publisher to accompany him to a quiet hot spring resort and keep him churning out comics. Sakurai agrees to go with her because he says she reminds him of one of his goldfish, bubbling about in the tank. After a while, she starts reminding the viewer of one too, bubbling and bumbling about the hotel. The script started out amazingly well. Yumi is unceremoniously fired from her office job in one of those new-style restructuring plans where they invite everyone in, tell them to turn in their badge and proceed out the door without even a stop at the company ladies' room to have a good cry. Yumi is next seen in a rented, red, long-sleeved kimono running from a late-ending wedding to a part-time job interview at the publishing firm.

Only she gets lost. She asks a delivery truck driver for directions and realizes her sleeve is caught in his van door only after he has left. Along comes Sakurai. He calls her a goldfish, frees her sleeve and off she dashes. She fails miserably at the interview and is busy looking for the nearest ladies' room when Sakurai, who is being pressured to work, sees his guileless goldfish gliding past. He says he will go with her or not at all. She says she will go only if they stay at the hotel where her brother is the chef. And off to Izu they go. Actually, the script worked quite well up to this point. It made the rather unlikely plot appear almost plausible. It is when the pair arrive at the hotel, run by an all-knowing "okami-san" (veteran character actress Yoko Nogiwa), that things fall back into all the traditional Japanese inn script stereotypes. Sakurai, not keen to work despite his companion's presence, pretends his supplies were stolen and burns them. He blames it on the hotel staff. In the ashes, Nogiwa finds a treasured cloth her late husband had painstakingly designed. She informs Sakurai that as retribution he has to stay at the hotel and create. She says it would mar the hotel's reputation if he did not. Meanwhile, she also has some plans for turning Yumi from a goldfish into an impressive carp by Golden Week. Two and one half colorful stars.

[TBS Synopsis]: Yumi (Yuko Takeuchi) is a 23-year-old office worker. Out of the blue, she is fired from her job. A few days later, wearing kimono, she is rushing to an interview for some part-time work at a publishing company. She was at a friendÅfs wedding that went on a bit longer than expected and she has no time to change from her kimono.

In another room at the publisher, popular comic book writer Reijiro Sakurai (Hiroshi Abe) is having an editorial meeting with some staff. He is planning to lock himself away at a hot spring for the next three months to concentrate on his next project. Yumi stumbles into the room, looking for somewhere to change out of her kimono. Sakurai comments that if Yumi were to join him he wouldnÅft mind being away for so long...

Starring: Abe Hiroshi, Kurasawa Yumi, Takeuchi Yuko, Takahashi Katsunori, Shibata Rie, Jinnai Takanori, Nogiwa Yuko, Nishijima Hidetoshi
Theme: "Nemurenai Yoru wa Nemuranai Yume o" by Shibasaki Kou
DURATION: April 2003 through June 2003
NETWORK: TBS
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