Terrace House, a Deeper Dive: YOU

Panels are a common part of Japanese variety shows. Usually, they are there to provide comic commentary via inset reaction shots in one corner of the screen. Terrace House's panel does so as well, but instead of insets the show hard cuts to their reactions, and the reaction segments are comparatively long. Thus, in addition to quips we get largely empathetic analysis, discussion and occasional fan-fiction. The panel is clearly designed to be an audience surrogate, and you can tell from the demographics of the panelists that the intention of the show is to have as wide an audience as possible.

And so who are these panelists? They are generally "tarento", Japanese entertainers who serve as hosts and fodder for a endless array of game shows and variety shows. They may have had moments of fame in their prior careers, but, mostly, they are now "famous for being famous". In this series of articles, I'll take a look at the panelists, and examine where they came from and some interesting tidbits from there prior careers.

YOU (born August 29, 1964) is the original and sole host of B&GND. The show's first thirteen episodes had her introducing the show usually from the interior of a product placed car at night as she went from one part of her glamorous life to another. Her original name was Ehara Yukiko, and, thus, her personal name was often shortened to "Yu", but, at some point, her stage name became "YOU" in the English alphabet which is quite striking when it appears in Japanese credits.

She came to fame as the lead singer of a pop/New Wave band called Fairchild. Their music is largely 80s pop dance music with synths which is strange because their live performances were a standard rock quartet with no keyboards at all. Many of their videos can be found on YouTube. Fairchild only lasted from 1988 to 1993.

After that she moved into a general tarento career which included acting in dozens of television dramas and feature films. She received some notice for her feature film debut: 2004's Nobody Knows. As of the posting of this entry, you can watch the movie with English subtitles here, but I strongly advise against your doing so. The film is well regarded: Roger Ebert gave it 4.5 stars out of 5. However, I found it unrelentingly dire. YOU plays the single mother of four children all by different fathers who is trying to find a way for her family to exist in Tokyo, and (spoiler) she only appears in the first maybe 30 minutes of this 2hr 20min film. Her performance is good, but it's a haunting film chock full of despair.

As the anchor of the Terrace House panel, YOU represents an older female demographic, but she easily exudes a rocker-chick vibe that completely undercuts her age. She remains along with Tokui and Yama the most active of the panelists frequently launching into bits with her partner in crime Tokui, but also tossing to Torichan and rebuking Yamachan. She is a treasure.