Hoshi no kinka

We can finally admit it, Japan in the 90s was full of psychopaths and sociopaths, but also good people. Except that I get the feeling that the group of "vague" people was the majority. There was all this screaming, even though the main character is deaf and dumb. The first two episodes were quite hard for me to get through, I thought it had an awfully heavy atmosphere. Fortunately, it "got better". This is a melodrama, and although I'm not a huge fan of those, this one was quite heartbreaking and I was left a bit tormented (not like I was sobbing at it, but some of the scenes really did hurt). I'll probably check out the second season sometime in the future... Yutaka got his start here, and you can see him overacting in some scenes, but it wasn't anything distracting, you could see he got better towards the end. On the other hand, Sakai Noriko played the deaf-mute Aya to a tee. I liked how each character had her own personality, somehow moving forward, playing only for herself, although some of the female characters seemed like a carbon copy in certain aspects. Still, if you're looking to get familiar with Japanese series from the 90s, I don't think this is such a bad choice. A weaker 4 stars. (23.03.2014)