mokudekiru

Now that’s it’s break, I’m extremely happy to finally have time to get some serious jdrama watching done. The one I finished up yesterday was called Oh! My Girl!!, a fall drama that ended a couple of weeks ago. Hayami Mokomichi delivered, as usual, this time as a writer at a publishing company, who gets stuck taking care of his celebrity sister’s celebrity 6-year-old daughter. Hilarity ensues, and there are some very heartwarming moments. Needless to say, Mokomichi’s character, Kotaro, emoted quite a bit compared to his last role as a robot-boyfriend in Zettai Kareshi (summer 2008).

The show was cute, well done, and with only 9 episodes, left you wanting more. Kotaro’s sister is a movie star and a total flake about her daughter, Sakurai An, who doesn’t know her own father. When An’s mom goes to Hollywood for an audition she leaves An in the care of Kotaro and An’s manager, Mineko (Kato Rosa). Unfortunately, the love between Mineko and Kotaro doesn’t quite blossom (though by the end of the last episode they do appear to be living together… hmm…) The show focuses on the relationship of An and Kotaro: the rich & famous child star and her essentially impoverished but compassionate uncle. She takes him out for an $800 meal at a Chinese restaurant, while he normally gets by on cup-noodles and convenience store onigiri. At first An seems a little ridiculous and spoiled, but a lot of her issues stem from the outer shell she has to construct for the media, and the stress of wondering if/when her mom is ever going to come home or return her calls.

One interesting thing about Oh! My Girl!! was the disproportionate number of iPhones in the show. This is also the first time I’ve seen an iPhone in any Japanese TV show, which isn’t particularly surprising given that they only released in Japan this summer so we only have two seasons of dramas to work with here. However, there are several interesting things to note here.

iPhones are not very popular in Japan right now. The original 2nd generation iPhone, released in July of this year, which was the first iPhone to come to Japan, lacked some key features for the Japanese market, including the ever-important emoji. The november firmware update began to introduce emoji to the iphone, as well as a one-seg tuner (the signal that most Japanese phones already use to watch tv on the phone) that doubles as an external battery. I wrote a Japanese paper about this topic in late November (right around when the firmware update came out), and this is the first article that I have seen that portrays the iPhone in a fairly positive light (from last week):
http://www.asahi.com/digital/digimono2008winter/TKY200812150312.html

So, the whole iPhone cool/desirable factor is missing right now in Japan. When I got my iPhone, my friends were either jealous (if they didn’t have an iPhone), welcomed me to the iPhone-owning community (for those who did already have one), or at the very least showed considerable interest. Not so in Japan — nobody is going to get jealous there over an iPhone. I told one friend, who said he knew someone with an iPhone, and that it was difficult to use (of course, the exact opposite comment is the norm here — that it’s great because it’s so *easy* to use).

Despite all of this, out of about ten major characters in Oh! My Girl!!, two of them had iPhones. That’s a pretty high ratio there.

It’s not particularly mysterious when you consider that SoftBank, the local carrier of the iPhone in Japan, was a sponsor of the show. They do, of course, have a couple of great iPhone ads, including the one I mentioned a few posts ago (here’s a translated version of the same ad). This is of course normal practice for a cell phone company to sponsor a tv show, and product placement ensues. I can’t even really think of a drama I’ve seen from recent years that wasn’t sponsored by either Docomo, au, or SoftBank, and of course, the characters all have keitai from that company.

However, in Oh! My Girl!!, our protagonist Kotaro did NOT have an iPhone. Sakurai An’s character didn’t have an iPhone, and neither did her manager Mineko. So the three people you constantly see using their phones, had other random SoftBank phones. In contrast, the two characters with iPhones were actually sort of the bad guys. One, a guy who worked at the same publishing company as Kotaro, and wanted to publish an exposé on Sakurai An and her mother that would have jeopardized the careers and the well being of those involved. Second, Sakurai An’s flakey celebrity mom, goes to America, stops returning her daughter’s calls, and lo and behold, returns to Japan months later carrying an iPhone. “Look, I bought a new one, isn’t it cool?” she asks An. Way to show off your iPhone while using it as an excuse to neglect your daughter!

iPhones in action:

Kotaro’s bad-guy coworker takes sneaky pictures with his black iPhone around the residence of Kotaro and Sakurai An.

An’s mom, in the scene where she just shows up in Japan again and wants to whisk An away to Hollywood with her, failing to address real issues at hand like, “why haven’t you contacted us in months?” And no, iPhone is NOT an excuse. She could have used EMAIL. Mom has the white iPhone.

This is the point when I decided the whole show had transformed into an advertisement. An’s mom receives a call from her/An’s manager, who has a secret he’s hidden from An and Mineko for years! Semi-bad people calling definitely bad people, on iPhone!