A day in June: I might be hooked for the first time in a while. Towako Omameda
I watched the seventh episode of the currently airing TV drama 'Omameda Towako and Her Three Ex-husbands.' I know it's not my place to say, considering I haven't even seen it from the first episode and the only other Yuji Sakamoto script I've seen is 'Switch,' but I want to write this down because I think it's interesting enough to overcome those barriers. A friend recommended it to me around the fourth episode, and I've been watching it ever since. It has a strange kind of appeal. Generally, the mainstream approach to storytelling is for the protagonist to express their emotions and spark drama to build excitement. This show has very little of that. There is an occasional narration, but the protagonist rarely talks about her feelings. Yet, I feel like I can really understand the waves of Towako's emotions. Of course, a lot of that is due to the actor's performance. It also seeps through in her interactions with the cast, the meals she chooses, her home interior, and her clothes (which is obvious, I suppose), and all of those things accumulate to convey something.
That style seems to stimulate and train the viewer's imagination, which makes it comfortable to watch. For me, that is its greatest strength. It's a drama that feels like reading between the lines of a novel. It's interesting because while what comes to mind for the viewers is mostly the same, there are surely many differences as well. This might be obvious to fans of Sakamoto's scripts, but please forgive me as I am a beginner. I am happy to have encountered such a carefully crafted work.
