Natsu no Koi wa Nijiiro ni Kagayaku (Japanese Drama)

Title: Natsu no Koi wa Nijiiro ni Kagayaku (Japanese Drama)
Also Known As: 夏の恋は虹色に輝く / Summer Romance shines in rainbow color
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Broadcast Date: July, 2010


The drama starred Matsumoto Jun, Takeuchi Yuko, and a great young artist, named Kobayashi Seiran (who played Yuko’s daugther).

The drama is about a second-generation actor named Kusunoki Taiga, who has been known all his life as his famous father’s son. While he has wanted to be an actor, any jobs he has gotten are because people want to see a famous person’s son. Because of this, he lacks confidence in himself. He also comes to resent his father, thus creating a distance between himself and his father. When his father passes away, he is lost. Taiga has a mother who needs taking care of, and a brother who is a man in his own right. He has a best friend, who suffers from the same second-generation status he does, and a rival (Irabu Joe) who comes to be a friend.

Around this time, a woman named Kitamura Shiori (Yuko) comes into his life. She is a single mother of a precocious kindergartner named Umi (Seiran). Shiori lost her husband a long time ago, and while she may seem confident and strong on the outside, she is afraid to love again. She is also linked to Taiga through his father (Shiori is a big fan of his, he named Shiori’s daughter, and asked her to be a fan of Taiga in the future).

The drama is the tale of how these two come together and let down their guard with each other. Taiga finds this much easier than Shiori, because he has not been as hurt as Shiori was in the past. Taiga grows through his love of Shiori, and extends himself (by taking any acting job he can get, by working part-time, and by limiting his frivolous activities), and Shiori softens through her new emotions for Taiga. In the drama, Taiga takes an actors’ workshop, and is abused on a daily basis, but his determination to be an actor like his father and his love for Shiori push him on. In the end, he is rewarded with the opportunity to work with a great director in a production of Hamlet. The audience finally gets to see Taiga in a scene where he is not flubbing his lines, he is not over thinking, he is just acting. This scene, where every member of the cast (who have all invested something in Taiga, be it: time, money, care, love, competition) sees Taiga perform his line, was a profound scene and brought a smile to my face, and, ultimately, tears to my eyes (when Taiga sees the ghost of his father in the crowd).

Synopsis/Summary/Review

Taiga is a struggling second-generation actor who has developed a complex due to his father, a famous actor in his time. Taiga, only get to appear in variety shows, most of the time. One day when his friend bring him out for a skydiving, a big wind dragg him away from the dropping point and he got stuck in a tree. A beautiful woman, Shiori (Takeuchi Yuko), come to rescue him. Shiori is a cheerful woman who laughs away all worries she has. She's exactly the opposite of Taiga.

Casts
Kasahara Hideyuki
Matsumoto Jun
Nagayama Kento
Sawamura Ikki
Takeuchi Yuko