14 SAI NO HAHA
THE PLOT
The premise is a winner – a fourteen year-old girl gets pregnant with her boyfriend’s child and after struggling with the fact that she is pregnant, decides she will keep the baby and raise it herself. Certainly, it caught my attention – surely one must have some curiosity about what it must be like being pregnant and going into labour and stuff when one is barely, barely “post-pubescent”. Much less about what mad urge must propel a fourteen year old to actually keep the baby. (Honestly, I wasn’t wondering so much about that because I assumed it must have been some jingoistic campaign against abortion that did it. BUT! It is a valid…wonderment I would have entertained if I weren’t so jaded about how the world must always be anti-abortion and how this drama therefore had to be you know, “one of those things”.)
See, many reasons why one would be intrigued enough by its premise to watch it – hence, my not-so-bold claim that it is some kind of winner. Some guy on a forum went on about how its publicity was raking in the ratings. But…come on, one look at that lousy, washed out, no-brainer of an advert and we know better, yes? “Shida Mirai and a stalk of Dandelion?!!! Oh god, I cannot wait to catch the drama.” But anyway, WHAT a digression. I was talking about the plot!
In summary: It started off brilliantly, peaked at Episode 2 and then it was all downhill from there. Or perhaps, an extended review to acknowledge the extraordinary silliness that must have gone into imagining up such a completely moronic drama: It started off brilliantly, peaked at Episode 2 – where the protagonist first made her stupid, stupid decision, went downhill from there, took a break from sucking because we see the protagonist suffering the First Consequences of her Stupid Decision (and we see that these Very Torturous Consequences are Well Deserved) and then went back to sucky, sucky, sucky.
…Oh. And then, the last 10 seconds or so with its ominous music redeemed it abit. My, what an exciting roller-coaster ride of a drama! (This, I will very unironically, admit – it is one engrossing heck of a drama. One watches on the edge of his seat to see just how far we can test the limits of Human Moronism. It is an experience quite akin to watch some fantastical record being broken on that Guiness Book of Records show.) Perhaps I should be fair and elaborate, but then you must put up with the spoilers – they are inevitable if we must objectively evaluate this drama.
*** SPOILER ALERT!!!***
Episode 1 and 2 – When it was still Good
What happens in Episode 1 – as is customary for most Episodes 1 – is that our protagonist (Shida Mirai‘s Miki Ichinose) and her surrounding People are set up. Our protagonist, you will find, is this…zanily…happy person bursting forth with joie de vivre. For example, when we first meet her, she is greeting all her fellow schoolmates on the school radio show with an over-enthusiastic (all the more painful for its wretched pronounciation) “Hey Garlz!” and babbling away about school tests with a suppressed giggle in her voice. Because, well, school tests are a universally endearing topic. Her Mary Poppins mannerisms tether on annoying because well, how can anybody BE so happy but the sincerity with which she goes about Loving the World does indeed make her joy somewhat contagious and thus, she is “effervescent, bubbly, vivacious” more than “annoying” – it is a Good Happy. Good happy and comically, comically earnest. We laugh, maybe that’s why we ultimately don’t hate her. And she is (for now anyway) above all, refreshing…because, you know, how many teenage pregnancy cases are non-Emo; non-Angsty and Well-Adjusted?
The relationship between her and her “boyfriend” (well, they aren’t really, at the beginning of the show) was also Well Played. Again challenging convention, theirs is first shown to be a very innocent relationship with a pretty adorable scene by a river involving the cutest black puppy EVAAA.And yet, when the Deflowering (the most appropriate euphemism in consideration of her…flowery dramatics) happened, it was suitably hormonal (and thus believable) and not so completely and unnaturally out of the blue.
(Cute scene where they plunge into the river trying to save the Cutest Black Puppy in the World. They do not die – obviously – because the water is conveniently shallow enough so they don’t drown but deep enough so they don’t smash their legs or skulls diving in…Also because, it’d be that much more troublesome for producers if protagonists dropped dead before the plot had time to happen.)
(Don’t look like much here, but trust me. It’s a pretty quality scene when they…put the plot in motion, as it were.)
Don’t know ’bout you! But I really appreciated the drama’s challenging of conventions and that delicate balancing of elements (said couple’s childish innocence and adult desires, for example) which made that challenge happen so beautifully. And realistically. Was completely misled into expecting a first-rate drama that’d startle me into some good, honest reflection and review of my beliefs and values. Or you know…something.
Episode 2 again demonstrated the skillfulness of 14 Sai no Haha’s scriptwriters. The pace was urgent, the mood taut and tense and set up all the important relationships of the drama really well. Then again, I think the success of the drama at this point must be attributed more to the really, really adroit acting of all the cast. Still, there were the clever scenes which made it so drove home so well the key facts – the rude shock of the fact of her pregnancy itself and the scarinesss of her being fourteen and unable to even purchase a pregnancy test with her…pocket money.
(This scene, I like! Another example of how some of these scenes are so sensitively, so compellingly shot – here, Miki’s father pleadingly begs them to uncover their prank. It tells such a powerful story about his absolute disbelief – no, more accurately – his yearning for it to be all untrue. True: Better a hideous prank in bad humour than a baby in the belly!)
And then.
And then they made a huge set-up of the kind of familial and societal pressures a fourteen year old mother would face. How? By (pretty accurately) guesstimating what sort of opposition might happen, what sort of negative implications might occur and then supersizing them to Hollywood proportions (I know! It isn’t even American!!!) and imagining up a few more problems. So you have:
1. (Very understandably) Miki’s parents absolutely dreading her pregnancy for the potential threats to their only daughter.
2. (Understandably) Miki’s Private School’s Staff Committee grappling with the potential negative publicity, bad influence on the children and
3. (Again, Understandably) The Very Angry Parents of Miki’s schoolfriends who worry about the potential bad influence on their offspring also.
4. (Bizarrely) Miki’s friends who are so pissed with Miki for soiling the school’s image (like teenagers care?!) they actually stop being friends with her. *snap* Just like that.
5. (Also Bizarrely) Miki’s brother who faces Alienation and Bullying Problems at school because a school-full of pre-pubescent boys feel enormous moral outrage at Miki’s being pregnant. (What a stick-in-the-mud bunch, huh.)
And then of course, for the story to even happen, we have Miki choosing despite all the smorgasbord of wonderful, wonderful reasons NOT to have a baby to…have a baby! And of course, in doing so she: 1. Endangers herself, 2. disappoints her mother (who took up a part-time job to support her expensive private education), 3. disappoints her father (who worked overtime and such to earn a good enough salary for her expensive private education), 4. troubles the entire school committee and her Very Hot Form Teacher (and how criminal is that!!! VERY!!!), 5. has her brother suffer alienation and bullying problems in school. Oh, she also 6.tarnishes her school reputation, ruining whatever effort her schoolfriends (who clearly care very much about the school’s street cred) must have put into letting the school flag fly high and 7. tarnishes her family’s reputation (because her nosey parker neighbours now absolutely disdain the ill-bred 14 year-old arse of an Ichinose representative).
(The adorable, adorable little brother, Kenta Ichinose played by Koshimizu Kazuki – completely let down by his bum sister and her foolhardiness.)
Last but certainly not the least! She decides on a baby inspite of all the thousand and one warnings about how financially, physically and mentally draining it is to raise a baby. As Wise Gynaecologist put it, giving birth would be the least of her concerns, raising a child’d require so much more. And as everybody’s who’s been to school knows: If you cannot pay for your own Pregnancy Test Kit; Do not go and have an expensive Baby. It is like, the Law of Home Economics! (not to mention, the very embodiment of Common Sense) What’s that to my mind? Selfish Selfish Selfish. Granted, I think the supersized proportions of her Opposition are (sometimes) very much unjustified. But given that they exist, Miki must be the First Class Idiot for going ahead anyway. (Oh, and have I said, IRRESPONSIBLE?!)
So I hate her decision, LIKE MAD. LIKE MAD!!!
And because the show decides to glorify her foolhardiness (which of course, we are supposed to interpret as Moral Courage or Determination or Backbone or some such virtuous trait) and celebrate her…lunacy. That is why the show is all downhill from Episode 2 or 3.
(To be Continued)
doramaphilic 