Amachan

Sometimes a show is so good that it makes you wistful to find another show that can match it. Mondai no Aru Restaurant was such a show for me. As I casted about looking for something to come close to that experience, I came across the site MyDramaList which covers all Asian dramas, and decided to see if there were any J-dramas focused on the Japanese idol industry. MyDramaList has a convenient search function, and the highest rated j-drama in the music genre is a charming show called Amachan.

Amachan is a 15-minute morning drama that was broadcast 6-days a week over 26 weeks in 2013. Set in a small fishing village, Sanriko, it tells the story of a teenage girl, Amano Aki played by Rena Nounen (who now goes by the highly unsearchable name Non) who accompanies her mother as she returns to village for the first time in 25 years having run away to Tokyo. You'd be hard-pressed to believe that the show is even in part about the idol industry at the beginning because the first 18 or so episodes are about Akichan discovering a love of diving and following in her grandmother's footsteps to become an Ama - a traditional woman diver who harvests sea urchins during the summer months.

Rest assured, however, that this drama does dive into the idol industry, and the middle section of the series moves to Tokyo where Akichan pursues a career as an idol after she forms an idol duo with her best friend Yui from the village. They are implausibly scouted by a guy from an idol organization similar to AKB48's - the actor cast as the head of the organization looks a bit like AKB48's Aki-P and, like Aki-P, writes all the songs for his groups.

But Yuichan never makes it to Tokyo through a series of melodramatic events which mostly detract from the more interesting story-lines about Akichan, her mother and her grandmother. Akichan's mother had run away from home to become an idol in Tokyo in the 80s, but, instead, was convinced by the man who became the head of the idol organization that later recruits Akichan's mother to secretly serve as the singing voice of a young actress who could not sing. The song from that actress's debut film goes to number 1 on the charts but Akichan's mother never receives any credit for it, and the producer never helps her start her own recording career. In Western TV hands this story almost certainly would become a story of vengeance against the producer and the actress, but the story here is much more subtle and complex.

The acting among the leads is superb, and Rena Nounen (Non) is a treasure. Unfortunately, her career since Amachan has been almost completely stalled by a dispute with her talent agency. By comparison the actress who plays Yuichan has been in over a dozen productions since Amachan while Non has done one critically-acclaimed voice-role in an anime during the same period. She is trying to launch a music career as well and you can check out a music video she released a month ago here.

The acting among the supporting cast is much more uneven with a trio of men in the village being played horribly broadly for comic relief including Sugmoto Tetta who was wonderfully restrained and menacing as the main villain in Mondai no Aru Restaurant. I'm guessing that they were directed to be OTT to keep the tone of show relatively light. Japanese audiences would have known going in that the setting and period of the show would cover the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 that resulted in the meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and so maintaining that tone would be difficult as the village of Sanriko faces the consequences of the tsunami.

The 156 episode length of the series may seem daunting, but each episode is bite-sized and the pacing is nevertheless pretty compelling. It's really only roughly four times the length of Mondai no Aru Restaurant. I do recommend the show if you're looking for a charming drama about the idol industry in Japan.