Ore no Ie no Hanashi

After watching The Last of Us episode Left Behind, I definitely did not expect to cry twice in a day.

What appeared to be just a light hearted family drama turned out to be an emotional punch to your heart. It was like in the drama and their pro wrestling move, that high feeling of being lifted high and then being slammed to the floor.

The show itself offered a good insight on what it is like taking care an old person and the effect of dementia on a person and the impact on their family.

I like that it offered an insight on the world of Noh too and contrasted that with the pro wrestling world. Such two different world that able to contrast and complimentary one another.

The casts are great, setting are great, truly a delight slice of life drama.

It starts out looking like a silly show , in a good way, with wrestling, jokes and brilliant use of a fantastic Yumi Matsutoya song, which was the key to me sticking to it! My husband loves wrestling so that worked for him. Eventually, forget the pop song, forget the wrestling - it becomes a heartfelt and introspective drama about dementia, mistakes, regret, infidelity, discovering things are not what you thought they were, the behaviour of the elderly, divorce, life deadlines, father son relations, and family overall.

The ending is very shocking and a real left hand turn but somehow works, if just to show life doesn't always turn out the way you think and you could lose the one thing you thought was the only thing you couldn't lose.

Really well made and written and very sweet and funny.

This 2021 Japanese series seems to have been re-titled "Story of My Family" by Netflix. It features the veteran actor Tomoya Nagase, who starred in the hilarious My Boss My Hero and the cult youth drama, IWGP / Ikaburo West Gate Park. (He deservedly won top acting honors in Japan for his starring role here btw.) Tomoya plays the eldest sibling of a clan of revered Noh performers whose "National Treasure" father is coming to terms with Alzheimers. In the very first scenes we learn that he had abandoned serious Noh traditions for an "escapist" style life in pro-wrestling, but has returned as a prodigal son. He clearly has a lot of "catching up" to do and fences to mend. His role oscillates between comedic and tragic and often careens toward the mythic. Although he is is the "narrator" throughout the series, his emotions (like the emotions of many of the other characters) somehow remain inscrutable. Like the family in the story, the series' flow is quite a puzzle: a puzzle with many pieces that never quite fit together. But I enjoyed trying to figure it all out anyway and I'm still scratching my head over episode #10.

Starting as a comedy with touchs of drama in a very dramatic situation then telling almost every character story through an excellent writting with plot twists and revelations in every episode to an unexpectedly funny AND heartbreaking end (how can they make us cry and laugh at the same time?), an amazing work. The incredible Toshiyuki Nishida (the father) again delivering an extraordinary performance again by the side of the almost unrecognisable Tomoya Nagase, they worked together in "Tiger & Dragon" and "Unubore deka" (imo, a handsome man some years ago, here with an almost different face, plus an also purposefully unflattering haircu :); all in favor of his character of course). A great performance by Noriko Eguchi (Mai, the daughter/sister) and Kenta Kiritani (Jugemu, another son/brother) who also was in Tiger & Dragon and a hilarious appeareance by Sadao Abe (the lead on the great "Extremelly inappropriate!") from Tiger & Dragon aswell.

The father being a noh master is a perfect excuse to let us learn a little bit about that art form and mirror some of its ancient stories in the current plot, a resource also used, though more evident, in Tiger & Dragon.

An extremelly fun and touching work.