Excellent Theatral Creation
At the beginning I was thinking that this drama was written especially for the main female lead Yagi Rikako.Her acting is absolutely outstanding! The story is created in such a way and the camera work focuses on the
evolution of her emotions. She is able to show not only thousand shades of love but also surprise, friendship,
worry, anger, sadness and much more I an remember now. It does not matter if you find her cute or not,
everything is about her miraculous capacity to express a huge scale of sentiments in such a small amount of time.
I do not know how much training and how many sets were used, but when we compare with some other
very popular dramas running in parallel now, we see the huge difference. This drama is not about cute actors,
mode, trends or a lot of kyun moments. SUre, cuteness and love are at the start, but
with the time going, some other themes than love develop: finding the self, braeking out
from the long established path, taking decisions and stand for them, etc.
The music and the soundtrack are also carefully chosen. The used language is also beautiful,
it was an absolute pleasure to listen to the actors. I add a million thanks and tribute to the subber who
draw attention to and made this wonderful piece of art understandable by a large audience!
This drama is 160% worth its viewing time!
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1Sweet and Innocent Romance - Beautiful Siblings Bond - A Journey to Find Your Own Path
Subjective Rating - 8.25I am a little surprised that “Otonari ni Ginga” aka “A Galaxy Next Door” has quite a low rating (7.6). Granted, Jdoramas usually score lower on MDL than K-Dramas or C-Dramas. I wonder if viewers are a little put off in the first few episodes due to its typical manga-like over-the-top acting.
If you are not familiar with Japanese manga/anime adaptations, you will find the acting in this drama could be a little much. But once you get past it, there are many heartwarming stories of family, love and finding yourself. I binged all 32 episodes (15 mins each) and if I had to wait for weekly episodes, that would be torture!
Romance - A sweet, innocent and cute romance developed between our leads. An interesting way of telling the story of a contract marriage, our leads have to endure quite a bit of challenges during the initial episodes. The chemistry is good and I especially enjoy the quiet moments and heart-to-heart conversations that they had. One thing great about Japanese dramas is that they are not afraid of silence. They don’t feel the need to fill every ‘romantic’ conversation with background music and dictate how viewers feel. There were several conversations between the leads, and a kiss scene that is so quiet, that I can’t help but listen carefully, feel what they are feeling and be touched by the emotions. Of course, you have to first get past the initial over dramatic acting. FL is direct and honest, and not afraid to take the initiative. ML is more shy but consistently stands by FL’s side and supports her decision without question. The dynamic between them is fun and complementary.
Siblings Bond - Just watching the three siblings is worth an 8.0 rating. The two child actors are so cute and adorable. The little sister is smart and reads the room very well. She’s a really good wing-girl for the couple. The little brother exudes such cute clinginess to his brother. I love that they say “splitting happiness and sadness into three”. Due to the passing of their father, they all have to grow up too fast and mature way beyond their years. Scenes of the two children are heartwarming and beautiful. I especially love the scene where ML was struggling to cover the little boy’s ears, so he couldn’t hear the conversation about Santa Claus.
Share House - This has to be the funnest share house I’ve seen in any drama. Though the other two housemates do not have a lot of screentime, they show up at the right moments. With the addition of the editor and big sis manga artist, the supporting cast is caring and fun. There are no annoying character in this drama. Who doesn’t want to live in a house where you can be animals in a zoo, play games and fireworks during the summer festival, decorate and celebrate with lights in the yard and have summer bbq and camping as well.
Manga career - Although the drama does not go into detail about the manga industry, it is still interesting to see some of the drawings, and they are beautiful! I love the manga that ML drew for FL to encourage her and to tell her that she’s lovely just the way she is. That was so romantic!
Finding Your Own Way - But the overarching plot of the drama is FL’s journey to leave her predestined path and home to find her own way. Without going into spoilers, I find the burden FL has to shoulder quite interesting, especially the thorn bond and its effect.
Overall, I had a great time watching “Otonari ni Ginga”. It did take me a while to get past the initial episodes and to get used to FL’s personality. I like how the romance developed and especially love the siblings bond. Just these two elements are worth at least an 8.0 for me. I’ll round up my 8.25 to 8.5 to give the rating a little bump. LOL 😉
Completed: 7/6/2023 - Review #328
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Straightforward and fun to watch
Japanese are sure to come up with weird plots, this one started off like that as well. It had a sci-fi tag but it's a pure fantasy to be very honest.I liked the FL's character way too much. She is determined, honest, caring, skilled and a Princess on top of that. She is the epitome of a KANPEKI ONNA. Now moving on to the ML, he is not a pathetic looser, he knows and act like a level-headed man throughout the series. He is shown as a hard-working person raising his two younger siblings all by himself. His character is portrayed as a mature big brother with so many desires for the betterment of his family.
Chemistry of the leads were on astronomical level, I liked the pair-up way too much. Those romance scenes gave me butterflies, those scenes where they confirm their love, like, affection are perfectly done on comical level. Supporting casts are the life to any story, two younger siblings portrayed their characters with such fitting emotions. It's rare to see such good child actors. ML's mentor and editor's role was pretty important for the character development and the housemates are just fun loving people.
Since most the episodes are centered around them I had a pretty fun time watching it. You will find career driven people (mostly mangaka), siblings bond, bonding of share housemates, romance, comedy, fantasy all in one!
I'M HIGHLY RECOMMENDING THIS.
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This was clearly visible in the story, which might result a bit (heck, even more than just a bit) too naive and simple for the older audience, as it's been the case of yours truly. Indeed, although I deeply appreciated the innocence and purity of it all - something one would actually expect from NHK, but nevertheless is always a nice "surprise" when compared to the ever-surging wave of "hollywoodian" dramas made in Japan - on the other hand, though, I'll confess the story was not really that interesting to poor old me, sorry...^_^;
Still, the acting was very good (Koyama Sae is so talented it's scary, seriously - how can she act so well at that age? >____<), the "packaging" totally ok, and the music decent enough.
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