Friday, January 13, 2023

Thoughts about "Brush up life" Ep 1 - Winter 2023


If you have watched the dramas written by Baka Rhythm, you probably have a feel as to what you can expect to see in "Brush my life". 

For the first part prior to the death of the heroine Kondo Asami (Ando Sakura) - nicknamed Aa-chan, it is filled with lots of seemingly never-ending and somewhat bland dialogues between her and the people around her such as her family, friends and colleagues. There are also many monologues spoken from the perspective of Asami after she goes through the second round in life. However, these conversations aren't as meaningless as they seem because there are some interesting observations and viewpoints about the things we encounter in daily life but may not have paid attention to or thought about seriously. In addition, what made these conversations a lot more bearable to watch is the cast members' skilled delivery in making the chats look like something you and I could have also done so the lines flowed very smoothly and didn't come across as "staged" or pretentious or preachy.

The setting here is somewhat similar to "Suteki na sentakushi" except that the person who goes back in time to "redo" his/life is different each time and the one sending them back is the taxi driver played by Takenouchi Yutaka. And his passengers aren't dead or do not end up dead at the end of the journey. In this drama though, Asami is given a second chance to relive her life after she dies due to a traffic accident but this time, she is equipped with the knowledge and skills as an adult and the ability to "predict" what will happen next because she had already gone through the same events. However, I don't think she will actually come back to life at the end because her purpose in doing a round 2 is ultimately to make sure that she ends up being reincarnated as something else better by chalking up good deeds and brownie points to change her fate rather than end up as an animal in a country, both of which she knows nothing about. Going by Baka Rhythm's style, we probably would not get a teary farewell at the end when Asami goes for her reincarnation but more of like a quirky yet thoughtful conclusion that marks the end of her lifetime.

Much as I quite enjoyed what happened in this episode up to the point just before Asami started her round 2, the second part where she started off as a baby was largely built upon her monologues about her thoughts which I must admit were generally funny to watch. However, given the physical limitations that the No.2 Asami had as a baby and later a toddler and a kindergartener and she would have to avoid arousing suspicion by staying "normal", there was simply a lack of action and interaction with the people around her since she couldn't be rattling off words as soon as she was born or simply walk and run much earlier than other babies without even crawling. Especially the part when she was trying to stop her friend's father from having an affair with their kindergarten teacher (which was what happened in round 1 of her life), the actions that Asami did and yet were not detected by the adults around her just felt too exaggerated to be believed. Imagine a kid leaving the house twice late at night alone, walking a long distance just to get to the public payphone in the playground, managing to escape the policeman who met her by chance, getting home unscathed and her deeds totally unknown to her parents - this just felt too fantastical and unrealistic to me. 

Of course, given the fantasy angle of this drama where Asami gets to relive her life, some degree of exaggeration and unrealistic settings might be needed but I hope this aspect can be toned down a bit and not end up as a distractor. Thankfully, it looks like the timeline will be fast-forwarded quite a bit by Ep 2 where Asami is at least a teenager by then so it should be more fun to see her attempt to change her relationships with others and help others change their fates.


At this early stage, we haven't seen much about the other characters beyond their relationships with Asami. Even for her two buddies Miho a.k.a. Miipon (Kinami Haruka) and Natsuki a.k.a. Nacchi (Kaho), their occupations and their past experiences are still unknown. I am guessing that these will be gradually revealed as Asami goes through her round 2. The challenge now for me though is keeping track of who is who as many of the characters are addressed by their nicknames rather than first names or surnames. And to be honest, it's quite unusual to see so many characters introduced within half of the first episode. 

One thing worth noting is, the three buddies' dressing is identical in terms of colour tone - brown and earthy shades. I wonder if there's a special meaning behind this arrangement or just to show that they have become such good friends that they even fancy similar fashion styles.

One huge attraction of this drama is the nostalgia/retro aspect as Asami goes through life again from the late 80s to the present era. There are many items and happenings from the yesteryears which bring back lots of memories for those who had gone through those times so it will be like a walk down memory lane for many of the viewers. Even for the younger ones, I think that these retro years' elements will still be a great eyeopener for them to see how life was like back then. It seems like the official Twitter account posted a summary of the past songs and retro items featured in Ep 1 and will probably do the same for subsequent episodes so that will be very useful to viewers especially if you want to look for the past hit songs that were featured in the drama.

It's still too early to tell how this drama will turn out but the first episode was decent enough to hold my attention and interest for about 80% of the time. I will probably give this another 2 or 3 episodes to see if it's worth staying till the end. However, for those who don't really like lengthy dialogues or Baka Rhythm's sometimes cynical, sometimes quirky style of comedy, this episode's first 20 minutes or so might be quite difficult to sit through.

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