Ok, I'm back --
masap wrote:
There has been much discussion on the Drama Awards. I just want to clear up by saying that:
1. Last Friends' leading role was Nagasawa Masami from the very beginning (starting from when news of this drama first came out in Japanese newspapers).
2. There is no leading male actor in this drama.
3. For this season's drama awards, Masami is nominee for best actress, Juri and Asami will be nominees for best supporting actress, Eita and Ryo will be nominees for best supporting actor.
Well, there was never a confusion to my mind that Masami Nagasawa has top billing in Last Friends, and would be nominated for lead actress (if they deem her worthy this season). Juri Ueno is a shoe-in for best supporting actress nomination, and it'd be a travesty if she doesn't win. I don't think it matters whether they nominate her for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress - the main thing is that her brilliant performance is recognised.
Do I think that Juri deserves to be co-lead actress with Masami? Of course I do. But that doesn't change the fact that Masami was promoted as lead actress from the start. Based on screen-time, the order of their names listed on the official site and introduced on interviews etc., I figured that Masami was the first lead actress or main lead actress, Juri as the second female lead, and Asami as the third female lead. Eita and Ryo are both supporting actors - their characters serve the purpose of supporting the main females in the story (Ryo as the DV perpertrator to Michiru, Takeru as the soulmate/kindred spirit to Ruka). Ogurin is the least important supporting male and the producers didn't even find him important enough to put in the opening.
Talk about the opening song, it sure was misleading - the opening song made it seem like this was a story about 5 people with equal importance and their individual character arcs. In actual fact, there were only two storylines they explored with some depth- the DV issue and the gender identity confusion. Eri's 'loneliness' was not delved upon at all, except to show her clinging on to Ogurin. Takeru's agony with his sexual trauma was solved as an afterthought with a phone-call ...in the special. Hilarious.
For one, a leading actor/actress in Japan not only have to act, she/he also has the responsibility of uniting and leading the team onsite and on promotional shows. If ratings crap it's the leading actor/actress's fault and so on. Nagasawa Masami had taken on all these responsibilities from the start because she was listed as the leading actress. On the other hand, personally, I think Ueno Juri deserved to be the leading actress too, but that was not the case. So to use her name merely for increasing DVD-Box sales, I find that very unrespectful.
Yes, it is dodgy practice - but not uncommon. It happens when those producers of DVDs want to cash in on the popularity of a certain actor/actress - for example, put the actor's face right in the middle of a DVD cover when the actor only plays a small role in the film made before he/she became popular.
Anyhow, even though she is the main lead actress, I don't think Masami Nagasawa has solely taken on the responbility to promote Last Friends (all 5 of the main casts have participated in the promos and suffered for the show - as you've said), and neither will the blame for the low ratings of the show fall solely on her shoulders. Last Friends is an ensemble show, and not a one-man/woman show, like the type of dramas Takuya Kimura takes on usually. It doesn't matter who his co-star is, the drama's success/hype is mostly attributed to him. Masami is not yet that big an actress to say that the failure or success of a drama depends on her mainly.
Amidst all these... the casts did what they can based on what I consider a dodgy script (of which the later half was written in a way that appealed to higher ratings during on-air period, everything going all over the place), and I think all of them deserve applause for their hard work.
Agreed.
Now for the off-topic comparisons of Juri and Masami..
And I shall refrain from comparing Juri and Masami's acting skills... as I think they both have different styles. I can't imagine Masami playing Ryoko in Tsubasa no Oreta Tenshitachi or Aoi in Rainbow Song or Nodame in Nodame Cantabile or Ruka in Last Friends, nor can I imagine Juri playing Aki in Crying out love in the Centre of the World, Kaoru in Nada Sousou, Rei in Proposal Daisakusen, Michiru in LF.
Hmm. Maybe it is my personal bias talking - but I do firmly believe that Juri has shown far more range and versatility in her acting than Masami has thus far. Masami's role in the hit movie "Crying out Love in the Center of the World " which brought her much fame overnighit, was a matter of being at the right place, at the right time, at the right age. It was a Jun Ai themed movie, which Japan was ready to embrace once again (after a long drought since the 1990s). Masami was fresh-faced, innocent and sweet as a 17 year old and perfectly cast as the nostalgic first love of the protagonist. I watched that movie mainly for Kou Shibasaki, as she was my favorite actress and already a big star in 2004, but the movie really made Masami's role shine as the ingenue (not unlike what Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon did for Zhang Ziyi). Masami became the IT girl, overnight and the darling of many movie producers and advertisers.
If "Crying Out Love" was produced today, in 2008, I can see other fresh-faced ingenues like Aragaki Yui playing the role that went to Masami. It was not so much the acting ability, but the radiance, youthful beauty and sweetness of the character which I think a handful of other young actresses can pull off besides Masami. But that is a moot point now, as Masami played the role and benefited from it. And not to take anything away from her performance, I thought she was good in that movie.
On the other hand, Juri has shown her ability to do both comedy and drama with dexterity. The role of the weirdo piano prodigy Nodame in Nodame Cantabile is one role that is not so easy to pull off - as one has to be exaggerated but still believable. If the balance is not there, Nodame could turn out to be a very annoying and fake character. Juri was brilliant in making Nodame come alive, to the extent that I can't picture another actress playing her. Then you see her play an intense character like Ruka with not a trace of Nodame, and it's hard not to be impressed by her. Maybe you may argue that another actress can pull off Ruka, or Nodame -- but to pull off
both characters, who're so different from one another, equally convincingly is no easy feat.
I think what Ueno Juri does in her acting is finding similarity between herself and the characters she play and then amplifies that particular aspect during filming. In other words, once she's grasped that similarity, she herself sinks in and becomes that character. If she doesn't find much similarity between herself and the character, it becomes a problem for her. As in Joudan Janai, she said the protagonist is very very different from herself. And I don't think Joudan Janai struck most Juri fans as much as her other more impacting works. I actually think that this is something that she needs to overcome, else it will limit the range of roles she can play (not in the sense that she can't play them, but a matter of how well she can play them).
I think the problem with Joudan Janai (haven't watch it yet, but based on what I've read) is that the script was terrible, not so much that the characters were not convincing. Apparently Juri didn't have a lot to do in the show other than pout and act cute.
In terms of her acting ability or acting methods, I think Juri is way ahead of many of her peers and I wouldn't be too worried about her. lol. It's more important that she picks worthy projects that can utilise her talents in future though...because even brilliant actors cannot save a dud script.
In terms of physical appearance, I wouldn't really want to compare them - because one man's meat is another's poison. What's attractive to one is ordinary or common to another. I do want to say that Masami is a very good looking girl, to me. She's got the looks that makes her suitable to play classical romantic leads on the silver screen.
That said, I agree with you that Masami needs to break out from playing 'innocent type of roles' and try to show different sides of her, so that we don't look at her and say 'That's Masami Nagasawa playing a DV victim", or "Masami Nagasawa playing fill-in-the-blank", but completely forget that we're watching Masami Nagasawa and just be engrossed with her character. If she can achieve that, then I'd call her a good actress.
It seemed like Asano wanted to have her cake and eat it too - she was adament in making Ruka's sexual identity set in stone ie. Ruka was NEVER going to be able to fall in love with a man (she said so herself in Episode 10 when she came out to her dad), yet in her interview, the writer (Asano) expressed her regret with the overall platonic tone in the warm affection displayed between Ruka and Takeru in the last episode. I suppose she (Asano) wanted to show that Ruka could feel adoration for Takeru (which she does, but not in the eros form), despite her clear awareness of her own feelings ie. that she was not attracted to men. Me thinks the writer herself was really invested in the TakeruxRuka relationship and knew it was a hit with viewers, thus she wanted to stretch their relationship beyond the boundaries that she herself had drawn. It's not really fair to expect the actors to suddenly change their own internal understanding of their characters based on the writer's sudden impulse to make TakeruxRuka the "sorta couple but sorta not", and she shouldn't shift the blame on her actors for not being able to read her mind. 
Juri's take on Ruka's platonic/brotherly affection for Takeru was consistent with how she felt Ruka's character to be. If Asano had wanted to portray that Ruka was in the "grey" area between Ftm and lesbian, and could in fact possibly reciprocrate Takeru's adoration (romantically), then she shouldn't have made Ruka say those lines to her dad - which to me was like the final nail in the coffin as far as her sexual orientation goes in canon (note - not gender orientation, but sexual orientation).
I'll give her props for that. 
currently struggling with photoshop that is...)
thats unfair! (lol~ like it matters at all)
!
