spsn | Nouhime ~ 農姫

Wow, it's been so long since I've written any drama related. It's not that I haven't been watching any but my backlog keeps getting longer and I find that nowadays I can't write anything without watching the whole series, so that reduces to less writing to do now but longer list to write later. And lately I developed the liking of watching the 2 hour SP because... yes, it's short and sweet. No merry go round, and for most of the time, it's pretty straight forward. OK, let's go back to the SP that I just watched. I very seldom watch period drama because it tends to be LONG and too many character and history to remember. I do love the history part but not the character memorizing. So, this 2 hour SP is actually quite a good fit for my liking.

In short, Nouhime is about Nouhime's slice of life. The story starts when she was ordered by her father Saito Dosan, the Viper, to marry Oda Nobunaga from Oda clan to tighten the ties between the 2 regions. However, since Oda Nobunaga has been portraying himself as a fool by 'playing' around on the river, being late to his own father's funeral etc etc to even cause his vassal to commit suicide due to his erratic and eccentric behavior, the viper intended to get rid of Nobunaga and take over the land. Will the Viper succeed? Or there're more plots to see here?

One thing about taiga drama is that it has lots of layers. Plot after plot, deceit after deceit. For most of the time, it'll be story of a group of shoguns plotting around to topple the currently in power shogun in cyclical mode. But that's what I find interesting in watching taiga drama. How far human's ambition, hatred, jealousy, greed and lust can take them, especially for those who were in power. We've seen over and over again in taiga drama that those in power won't be on top for so long because there's always somebody close to him plotting around to topple him down. And only a few will survive incidents by incidents, wars by wars, and had his name remembered as one of the 'great.' I believe that taiga dramas that we're watching now tend to humanize the characters from what it may be originally in the history. Example will be the regret that Nohime's brother found out after he 'won' the coup against his own father that his father deliberately spread the rumor that he's not the real Saito bloodline to make him raise as the Saito clan leader. Not knowing this, the brother (which I totally forget the name) assume the worse of his father, planned the coup, killed his own brothers then later killed his own father to raise to the throne.And what a heavy burden he had in the end. On the other case, Nobuyuki, Nobunaga's brother initially didn't even want to fight for the throne in Oda clan. But, he's swayed by his own vassals' greed, he joined the coup plan to topple Nobunaga, only that it failed badly and he met his demise being killed by his own big brother. A very sad and bloody case of sibling rivalry, and one can't imagine the pain of the brother that must decide he had to kill his own brother in order to survive. If we were to relate this to our current society, we definitely will seldom have cases where siblings are killing each other for money (we do have these cases a lot in real life, but not as many as in the past). However, family feud over money, power will be always around especially when it involves a big family with riches.

Besides the heavy topic, off course the trigger of me picking up this piece is Mizuki Arisa and... Shirota Yu LOL. 2 beautiful people, yes really beautiful, plus beautiful scenaries from the garden, beach, hills, pathways, makes this drama so eye candy. Shirota Yu's acting as Nobunaga is a bit choppy to my liking, but I can't really blame him because he's trying to portray Nobunaga as a rough burly samurai (well, could have been better, but I won't complain so much of it). But at the very least, he makes Oda Nobunaga so eye candy and hot LOL... I like Mizuki Arisa's portrayal of Nouhime as the wise and smart shogun's wife who can outwit her husband. On top of that the veteran actors' acting make up of any lacking of this drama.

So, if you're feeling like watching a taiga drama but don't want to go through the whole 52 episodes saga and don't really feel like work the brain so hard to memorize all those characters, but still like to appreciate the beauty of taiga drama, you may want to check this one out :D. And off course, do look forward for 2014 taiga drama, Okada is doing it, yay!