Sayonara Maestro: Chichi to Watashi no Appassionato (2024)

Full of quirk and top of the pops in Classical music

I cannot be objective in my review of this series (and even less so than usual). I can give you eleven reasons why you, a perfectly normal Asian drama watcher, would peg this series as mid even among the usual froth of Japanese dramas. It's series full of quirky characters, fighting the good fight to preserve a community orchestra in a city that could not care less. It's a story of a family broken by an incident 5 years ago that struggles to come back together. It's an episodic series in which almost every episode is structured around a famous, overused piece of the Classical repertoire. It's a tepid romance. It has side plots that resolutely go absolutely nowhere. It has little to say about the realities of orchestral employment and production in the 21st Century. It fetishizes the old masters of the genre presented in a world in which anything composed after the 19th century in Europe does not seem to exist. It accedes a privilege to Classical performers which largely does not and should not be. It promotes stale tropes of following one's dreams and self-discovery. It's Art verses the mundanity of life, man!

But ...

I loved it.

And not just for the Manachan of it all.

Of course we in the Cult of Ashida Mana were going to watch it. She has not won an acting award for a whole six months now and we have, naturally, grown anxious. Sadly she will probably not win one for this role even though she brings her usual prodigious strengths to the role of Hibiki, the estranged daughter of the protagonist Shunpei played by Nishijima Hidetoshi. Both of their performances were fine to excellent, and she had her usual moments of reactions to tear at one's heart. But Hibiki is no tragic heroine, and it's actually cool to have the Manachan playing a relatively normal young woman with a few daddy issues who gets to have a smidge of a romantic arc. Angsty, rebellious Manachan is my spirit animal.

Nishijima anchors the series well. His Shunpei is hopeless and clumsy at everything outside of music, but within that sphere his ethics and insights are pretty much spot on. He brings an old, tired community orchestra to life, and injects joy into what had become rote. He inspires people. He challenges people. He reconnects them to the reasons why they love making music. Yes, those are also tired tropes of the genre, but they also result in fun little payoffs throughout the series.

Surrounding the two are over a dozen quirky characters in the two's family and the orchestra. All the actors are promising up-and-comers or polished veterans, and kudos to the production for placing Nishida Toshiyuki in a tasty role as the owner of the local music café despite the fact that the actor clearly has mobility issues even if his character doesn't. I'd give special shout-outs to Miyazawa Hio and Touma Ami for seemingly having genuine musical talents in addition to fulfilling their roles well. Miyazawa sings a jazz standard in English at one point and his American accent is so good that you'll have to click over to his MDL page to learn that he was born in San Francisco. And Touma does really seem to play the violin even if it's just Twinkle Twinkle Little Star: (I'm not crying: you are!).

The writing in this series resolutely avoids having a plot, or, at least, resolutely avoids resolving the mild stakes it sets up in the ways we expect these things to be resolved. And that's a good thing! Will the orchestra be thrown out of its practice space by the evil mayor? Will the evil mayor learn to accept is daughter's love of music? Will the orchestra win the festival that they struggled to get into to convince sponsors to help keep the orchestra going? Will Hibiki and Daiki fall in love? The answers may surprise you, and honestly I found most of payoffs refreshing.

And so if you enjoy Classical music or even dramas about quirky communities coming together to struggle against the usual entropy of living, then you'll likely find the show to be worth your time. As for me, it pretty much hit all the right notes.

Lees verder