Taiyou no Kisetsu

[excerpt from article by Wm. Penn, Daily Yomiuri, July 11, 2002]: An adaptation of his most successful novel, Taiyo no Kisetsu, also holds a prime spot in the new summer schedule. The series began July 7 at 9 p.m. on TBS with Hideaki Takizawa in the starring role of Tatsuya, a tormented college student who was once an all-around nice guy but now seems to be balancing a gigantic grudge on his shoulder. What the grudge is has yet to be revealed, although it likely has something to do with his father and the poverty that plagues his life.

For some unknown reason, he has taken to hanging around with the richest kid in school, basically a trusting, nice guy who Tatsuya is out to destroy. He feels an uncontrollable urge to deface the rich kid's new car and chase after his fiance. Ishihara wrote the novel in the 1950s but the adaptation had a rather compelling timelessness about it until Takizawa pulled out his cell phone and it was clear we were in Japan, 2002. Televiews has always thought that whoever it was at Johnny's Jimusho who called Takizawa leading man material needs new eyeglasses, but the singer-turned-actor did much better than expected in his first week as Tatsuya. Complicating the plot further is Tatsuya's run-in with a young composer and pianist, who has a limp sustained in a car accident many years before. She, too, is rich, although Tatsuya does not know it yet. Stuck in a stifling home environment with her pianist mother who disdains her desire to compose, the obedient young woman begins to change after a chance meeting with Tatsuya, while he seems to regain some of his humanity in his interaction with her. And, yet, he tells us at the end of the first episode that were it not for that chance meeting, he would have never come to love her or lose her that summer. So we know the outcome, it is the wending path that takes us there that should keep viewers tuning in for the next 10 weeks. The story is somewhat dark and depressing but definitely better than expected and perhaps the best vehicle Takizawa has ever had. Three stars, definite possibilities.

STARRING: Takizawa Hideaki, Takaoka Sousuke, Yabu Kouta
NETWORK: TBS
DURATION:  July 2002 - September 2002
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