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Positive reactions to the drama's 2nd series: Heartwarming home drama or just radical melodrama? Whatever it is, Fuji TV's weekly drama "Hitotsu Yane no Shita 2" (Under the One Roof 2) garnered high ratings, as did its original four years ago. The show deals with the lives of six siblings, separated after they lost their parents in a car accident, who are brought together again by a series of unhappy events. The drama, which aired Mondays at 9 p.m., ended Monday with ratings of 34.1 percent of the viewing audience in the Kanto region, the series' highest rating. The first series hit a ratings high of 37.8 percent in the Kanto region, the highest rating ever scored by a Fuji TV drama. The first series focused on the efforts of the eldest brother, Tatsuya Kashiwagi, to reunite his five siblings after their seven-year separation. The second series, set two years after the first, focuses on individual love stories, including a love triangle involving Tatsuya, younger brother Masaya and eldest sister Koyuki, who is actually adopted. This series deals with how the siblings "become grown-ups as a result of their love affairs," said Fuji TV producer Atsuhiro Sugio. Though the shows deal with individual story lines, they are held together by a common framework--the theme of family unity, Sugio added. "Heartwarming" was among the words used by The Yomiuri Shimbun's readers when asked for their views on the show. "(The drama) is centered around the idea of familial love and the human condition. It's easy to sympathize with the characters," said a 39-year-old company employee. "Regardless of age, the whole family can watch (this show) together," a female reader noted. Tatsuya, the main character, is energetic, warmhearted, cries easily and places his family above everything else. He is able to express his love directly, but often acts recklessly and scolds his family. Sugio said that at first, he doubted that young people, who are an important part of the ratings equation, would watch the show, because of its sermonizing quality. The producer noted that the setting, developed by well-known playwright Shinji Nojima, helps to get the message across. "In the absence of their parents, Tatsuya plays the role of the father, while Koyuki acts as the family's mother. The same message that might be rejected from an adult is accepted when it's given by someone Tatsuya's age. Young people listen to his 'sermons' mainly because he is not a serious character," Sugio said. He also pointed out that Nojima's sense of balance between comical and tear-jerking scenes keeps the moralizing tone to a minimum. During an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun, Yosuke Eguchi, 29, who plays Tatsuya, said he thought the series was popular with young people because of its easily identifiable theme. "At a time when everything moves so rapidly, (Tatsuya) sticks to one of life's constants--his ties with his brothers and sisters, which is at the core of the human experience," he said. "Family is better than anything else." Why, then, is the second series so popular? According to Kotaki, it is because of the addition of popular actress Takako Matsu, loyal fans from the first series and Japanese attraction to melodrama. "People tend to want to see unhappiness," he said. A reader pointed out that despite the second series' high ratings, the show's popularity may have reached its limit. Kotaki agreed, adding that even if the final episode scores high in the ratings, it would be the last series. [Excerpts from Daily Yomiuri - July 2, 1997] The following are negative reactions to this drama: But not all readers were so taken with the show. One woman said that the show was "full of prejudice." She gave as an example a series of episodes in which the youngest brother, Fumiya, who is in a wheelchair, falls in love with a blind girl despite her parents' opposition. The woman said that this gives the impression that "the disabled always have a pitiable existence." A 24-year-old company employee also pointed out that the writer appears to have a "superficial way of thinking toward the disabled." The reader added that the whole drama is "a stale, soppy story." Tetsuya Kotaki, an expert on the history of TV culture, said that Nojima handles the show's themes in a clever but unnatural way. Kotaki, a professor at Nihon University's College of Art, said Nojima's style involves surrounding his stories with intense unhappiness. He regards Nojima as an "artisan" who uses his uncommon storytelling techniques to make his tales popular. According to Kotaki, the problem is that Nojima uses the story lines "just as a means" to describe the unhappiness of the Kashiwagi family. Moreover, Nojima purposely creates extremely unhappy scenes just to make viewers cry. Nojima used the same technique in the first series, but it did not have the same impact in the early 1990s just after the collapse of the bubble economy, Kotaki said. The years of the bubble economy were a time of trendiness and materialism. When the bubble burst, people returned to the traditional values of family and friendship--the same topics addressed by the first series. Now that times have changed, and the mood of nostalgia is waning, only Nojima's technical cleverness stands out in the second series, Kotaki said. [Excerpts from Daily Yomiuri - July 2, 1997]
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