Review of Happy!

Cast
Umino Miyuki - Aibu Saki
Sakurada Junji - Miyasago Hiroyuki
Ootori Keiichiro - Taguchi Junnosuke
Ryugasaki Chouko - Kobayashi Mao
Kagami Kikuko - Natsukawa Jun
Yamaguchi Momotaro - Morishita Noyuki
Umino Ieyasu - Arakawa Ryoga
Samebuchi Kyohei - Aikawa Sho
Ryugasaki Hanae - Watanabe Eriko
Ootori Utako - Katahira Nagisa

On the whole, this was a pretty enjoyable drama SP to watch. Personally, I do like tennis so this was one of the main reasons why I have interest in this. Besides, given that the author is Urasawa Naoki, I was curious to see what type of story this would be so as to contrast this with his other hit series Monster which is on the dark and suspense side.

Happy! is entirely different because the atmosphere is relatively light despite the pressure on the heroine Miyuki to repay the debts of 250 million yen incurred by her elder brother. The tennis scenes are realistic unlike Ace wo Nerae which went a bit overboard on the CG side. At least I could see that Aibu Saki could manage a pretty powerful serve. Given how the SP had ended, it is highly likely that we can see a full series earliest by summer since the story is very much unfinished. Come to think of it, TBS has a tendency of testing the waters with a SP first before launching a full series. That's a pretty conservative measure but it can help to prevent wasting money. Yaou was an example of this method where the SP was shown in May last year and the full series launched in Jan this year.

As for the acting, Aibu has done quite well as Umino Miyuki and she does look quite compatible with Taguchi Junnosuke. The SP did not allow too much development between them but at least we know now that Taguchi's role, Ootori is obviously in love with Miyuki who is still oblivious to this. Taguchi still needs more practice to fit the role of the rich guy who's good at tennis because he appears more like an insecure little boy who can't do anything on his own.

The most irritating person should be Kobayashi Mao who plays Ryugasaki Chouko. Of course, I know that the character is supposed to be one obnoxious, pretentious, spoilt brat but then whenever I hear Kobayashi deliberately raising the tone of her voice, that freaks me out. The first time I saw her was in Slow Dance and sad to say, I still don't like her acting. Somehow, I have the feeling that her sweet girl image is too fake to be true and it doesn't help that her character this time round is not meant to put her into the good books of the viewers.

As for the rating of this drama, I would give it 7.5 out of 10.