#ichigeki

a few days late but better late than never 😅😅😅

10) I sold off my lifespan for 10,000 yen a year - 9/10

9) genkaku picasso - 10/10

8) prophecy - 9/10

7) to my dearest self with malice aforethought - 9/10

6) summer time rendering - 8/10

5) happy! - 10/10

4) sengoku youko - 10/10

3) ping pong - 10/10

2) ichigeki - 10/10

1) the fable - 10/10

I’m still on my little Machida Keita/Akaso Eiji rabbithole kick, simply because I cannot shake Cherry Magic from my existence, and I’ve been pretty vocal about how disappointed I’ve been in some of Machida’s more normie/cishet roles, simply because I don’t think the scripts leverage his range. (This does not quite apply to Akaso, as I think....shhhh... that Akaso is the stronger actor, and he’s had a lot better roles thrown at him more recently, including Maiagare, Ishiko to Haneo, and Hiru.) Three Star Bar in Nishi Ogikubo was actually better than Machida’s other, more recent cishet roles, as Super Rich and Teppachi really fell flat. 

However, I ABSOLUTELY loved his work in 2018′s Life as a Girl, which was prior to Cherry Magic, and I think that show was a nice preemptor to showcasing the chops that he threw down, along with Akaso, in CM. 

So my review of Life as a Girl touched upon how I learned about the show -- through Tumblr, obviously, as a “based on your likes” recommendation post that called Machida’s character in the show a “himbo,” and of course, that’s going to pique my interest. Really quickly, because I’ve already written about this, but Machida’s character in Life as a Girl was as a bumbling classmate to the main character, played by Shison Jun, who is in the process of transitioning to female.

Machida nailed himbo very well. Slightly physical comedy, demonstrating a range of emotions that went into and out of the bumbling, supposedly masculine role that he inhabited. He wove in and out of this structure of being the masculine man next to his classmate that was formerly a man -- he nailed that balance as a means of offering tremendous compassion and companionship to his close friend. I loved it.

So anyway, why am I bringing this all up? It’s because he was GREAT in Ichigeki. 

Ichigeki (one strike/one kill) is a manga about a peasant-turned-samurai in the last year of the Edo period, 1867, who joins a group of villagers assigned to disrupt another group of samurais who are involved in warring factions with the Shogunate. NHK dramatized this manga earlier this month as an hour-and-a-half Japanese New Year’s special.

I usually just don’t do period dramas -- in part because I feel really guilty that I’m not deeply familiar with Japan or Korea’s history (although my VERY, VERY FIRST K-drama EVER was Dae Jo-young, which an ex-boyfriend got me into, l.o.l.). And as well, the previews for this New Year’s special didn’t quite give an indication into how the material would be treated -- was it going to be heavy-handed serious, an ode to past history with a sad ending, kind of dull and boring and condescendingly educational?

No -- it was SO GOOD! I’m not sure if the manga was written this way, but this special had a LOT of comedy in it. I truly did not know what to expect -- the show is led by an EXCELLENT Sometani Shota as a stout villager, dealing with his moral and ethical inhibitions regarding fighting for wealthy lords who don’t give a shit about his life or of those of his team. And Machida plays a character named Ichi (not related to the title of the show), an overconfident villager who finally finds a path out of his impoverished life by way of hopefully becoming a samurai -- all at a time where the samurai are literally about to become extinct.

The show is structured as being told by a Japanese storyteller, and again, I really don’t know that much about the tradition behind this kind of storytelling, and I wish I did -- but if there are poop jokes, badass women fighters, lots of sake, and many shirtless dudes, well, then, I’m all in, fam. It was a VERY digestible and fun watch, and I highly recommend finding and watching it. Machida was in classic himbo mode, lots of comedy and brashness, and he nailed his role hilariously. The entire cast was great. (Including this guy, Kudo Asuka, who was also in Teppachi with Machida -- and he’s a motherfucking FARMER! A farmer-actor! We need more farmer-actors.)

Ichigeki