Smile Episode 7: Matsujun vs. Oguri Shun
by mo on 05/29/2009Just when I was starting to wonder if Oguri Shun had disappeared into oblivion…
Smile is this season’s Friday night TBS drama, starring Matsumoto Jun (Matsujun) and Aragaki Yui. Matsujun steps outside his typical role as an overly arrogant, overly rich, overly permed high school student, and instead plays Vito, a half Philippino aspiring cook with a dark past and a dream of creating a shiny happy multiethnic restaurant.
Shiny, happy, half-gaijin Matsujun (who is currently nervously talking to Aragaki Yui):
He’s about as un-gaijin of a gaijin as you can get though — as is repeated many times throughout the show, he was born and raised in Japan, has never even been to the Philippines, and can only speak Japanese. Still, he has to deal with a lot of racism from those around him (getting asked to show his passport on the street by policemen, getting called “Phillipino bastard!”, etc.) and has certainly developed a gaijin-complex about his identity.
But hey, Aragaki Yui’s character can’t talk (as the result of some traumatic experience). So, we’re all messed up in our own special ways!
But the whole show is the viewer just waiting for it to all go to hell. It’s told from the point of view of conversations between Vito and his lawyer, Kazuma, as Vito sits in prison in 2015, looking back on the events of 2009. Lawyer guy wrinkling his brow in 2009:
None of this is the awesome part of the show though. The awesome part of the show, is the bad guy. Guess who? Oguri Shun.
Oguri Shun??? A bad guy?? I know, he’s about as bad as a snowflake falling on Christmas Eve, but you gotta suspend your disbelief, and just roll with his evil laugh.
Apparently he was the ringleader of this gang Vito used to be in, and Oguri’s character, Hayashi, keeps picking on Vito and framing him for crimes to keep himself safe.
Oguri bein’ bad by the bus stop in a suit:
Oguri bein’ a bad guy peeking around some sketchy corner (in a parking garage/alley/whatever). Now that’s bad!
Oguri bein’ bad having a smoke with Matsujun, pulling the old bad-guy-gone-good “you’re the only one who can help me” line… and Matsujun is good enough and stupid enough to fall for it.
I’d just like to remind you that last time we saw Oguri & Matsujun together was in 2007 in Hana Yori Dango 2. Things could get pretty serious back then too — especially when Oguri (on the left, in white) decided he liked Tsukushi, just like Matsujun (on the right with the awful perm) did too. Oh, the drama!!
The end of Smile, episode 7. Let’s just say the reason Matsujun is sitting in jail in 2015 — no longer a mystery. A gun is involved and here are the last moments of Oguri, squirming on the floor, peering up at Matsujun. But Oguri deserved it, because he was REALLY BAD. I promise.
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