Why You Should Watch the Final Episode of “101 Times Proposal” Again Now

We begin a new series, “History of Trendy Drama Conclusion,” in which we take a fresh look at the final episodes of trendy dramas.

If we define “trendy drama” as “Summer Stories of Seven Men and Seven Women” (1986, TBS) to “Love Generation” (1997, Fuji TV), then “trendy drama” lasted only about 10 years from Showa to Heisei periods.

The first serialization of the famous “101st Proposal” was aired during the summer season of 1991 (July to September), which was right in the middle of the 10 years of “trendy drama”. It was a film that marked a turning point in the series.

Trendy + Hotness

Here is the program description on FOD (Fuji TV On Demand).

–Tatsuro (Tetsuya Takeda) is a middle-aged salaryman with a serious nature. He lives with his younger brother Junpei (Yosuke Eguchi), a seemingly cool guy but actually an anime geek. The match is with a cello player named Kaoru (Atsuko Asano). Tatsuro is rejected by her as a matter of course, but he is unable to give up and begins a furious attack. At first, Kaoru is puzzled, but she is touched by Tatsuro’s pure heart and gradually opens up to him. ……

Perhaps due to the “bursting of the bubble,” the most important point of this drama was the use of Tetsuya Takeda, who has a hot and intense image that never befits a trendy drama, in addition to Atsuko Asano, “W Asano,” who represents the trendy drama genre.

In 1994, this person made this scattered expression about the image of Tetsuya Takeda in the 1990s: “Every time I think that Tetsuya Takeda is popular, I hate the country of Japan. If it is the national character of the Japanese people to accept Tetsuya Takeda, I want to stop being Japanese” (Nancy Seki, “The Very Best of ‘Nancy Seki’s Kouimi ni Hana Mo’ 100” – Asahi Bunko -)

He made his debut in 1973 with Kaientai, made a name for himself in the 1977 film “Kofuku no Kiiroi Hankachi” (The Yellow Handkerchief of Happiness), and got his big break in 1979 with “3-nen B-gumi Kinpachi Sensei” (the first series). Tetsuya Takeda, who became “popular” with his hot and thick 70’s image, and Atsuko Asano, who dominated the trendy dramas of the late 80’s. The 70’s and 80’s, so to speak, are both represented in their respective roles in this film. In a manner of speaking, the 70s and 80s joined forces to create “101 Times Proposal” in the 90s.

In the world of trendy dramas, where trivial details are often forgotten, there are two things about “The 101st Proposal” that people remember for a long time.

The first is “I’m not going to die,” the last scene of episode 6. This is the line that Tetsuya Takeda says after he suddenly runs out onto the road and almost collides with a dump truck. It won the gold medal in the popular category of the year’s New Words and Buzzwords of the Year (by the way, if you review the video, you will see that he does not pronounce it as “shhh~n” as expected. (By the way, if you review the video, you will see that it is not pronounced “shee-n” as it should be.)

The second was the theme song = “SAY YES” by CHAGE and ASKA. The second is the theme song = “SAY YES” by CHAGE and ASKA, which sold 2,822,000 copies (!!!). The song was a mega-hit before the so-called “CD bubble” of the late 90s. Listening to it now, the sparkling sound is clearly the sound of “J-pop,” but ASKA’s sticky singing style also evokes a “folk” moisture.

If you think about it, Tetsuya Takeda, Chage, and Asuka were all folk singers from Fukuoka. In the middle of a trendy drama with a sparkling, Tokyo-style “J-pop” atmosphere, Fukuoka Prefecture’s “folk” atmosphere jumped in and created a big hit drama.

So, what was the legendary final episode about?

Let me preface this by saying that it was a long time coming. Let’s take another look at the legendary final episode of “101st Proposal,” which enjoyed a household viewership rating of 36.7% (Video Research, Kanto region).

(This paragraph contains spoilers.) In conclusion, Tetsuya Takeda (Tatsuro Hoshino) and Atsuko Asano (Kaoru Yabuki) get married. Tatsuro had planned to get married after passing the bar exam, but he fails the exam and Kaoru, dressed as a bride, comes running up to Tetsuya Takeda, who is working part-time at a construction site with a broken heart. Tatsuro had thrown away the wedding ring he was going to give to Kaoru in the sea, but he uses a nut that had fallen on the work site as a ring and they are happily married – and then they are married.

The first thing I thought when watching the film was that all the actors were young; it was 31 years ago, so it was only natural that all the actors were 31 years young, but in addition, the entire screen was filled with youthfulness.

Atsuko Asano was 30 at the time, Ritsuko Tanaka was 20, and even Tetsuya Takeda, who plays a dull middle-aged man, was 42. The entire screen is full of pizzazz.

According to data prepared by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the population in its 20s, which numbered 16.87 million in 1990, is expected to drop to 12.01 million in 2013. This means that the youthfulness that overflows from the entire screen may be natural for a drama set in a time when there were 1.4 times as many people in their 20s as there are today.

The producer of this drama, Ryo Ohta, said, “We asked a major scriptwriter to write a draft of the drama. He said, “I tried to change to a producer who gives his opinions to young scriptwriters instead of asking big scriptwriters to draft a ballad. In trendy dramas, only young actors appear, and there are no veteran actors who have a strong point of view. I could do what I wanted to do. The result was a trendy drama that came naturally” (Ronza / August 31, 2018).

Although I have to admit that, because of its youthfulness, I feel that the acting in this drama is poorer than in the Reiwa drama (Tetsuya Takeda’s habitual acting stands out in this context), the screen is still very dazzling with its youthful energy.

In addition, I feel the presence of “romantic supremacy. The fact that the characters are young means that love is more important than it is today. Love is at the center of the script written by the then up-and-coming Shinji Nojima. I am ashamed to confess that I, too, was enchanted by the romantic ensemble dramas of several trendy dramas, and I wondered if I would ever be able to have such a love story.

Compared to “Elpis: Hope or Disaster,” which is also aired on Mondays on Fuji TV 31 years later, I am surprised at the high “love Engel’s coefficient” of “101 Times Proposal.

Trendy Drama, Bubbles, and George Lucas

Now, speaking of trendy dramas, there is “Bubble.

The year 1991 is remembered as the year when the bubble economy began to burst, but even so, it is easy to look at this last episode as a “handy, easy-going trendy drama made in the aftermath of the bubble economy. At first, I too watched it with that kind of half-smile on my face. It’s impossible, isn’t it? Tetsuya Takeda’s younger brother is Yosuke Eguchi (laughs),” and so on.

However, about halfway through the show, I began to have intense nostalgia for my twenties, when I used to spend my time entranced by trendy dramas and the romantic ensemble dramas that they featured. And the drama itself, “101st Proposal,” also began to endear itself to me.

In other words, it began to look like the movie “American Graffiti. A film about the “good old America” of 1962, produced in the United States in 1973, when the dollar shock, the Watergate scandal, and the Vietnam War were shaking the country. The advertising copy is “Where were you in the summer of ’62?

While watching the NHK program “History of World Subcultures: Genealogy of Desire” broadcast just a few days ago, the words of George Lucas, the director of this film, were introduced (source notation: “Rolling Stone” interview selection).

–He said, “I wanted to preserve a form of how Americans of a certain age view the period when they were teenagers.”

And Lucas goes on to say.

— “Kids today don’t have the same dreams for life as we did when we were kids.

Where were you in the summer of 1991? –I’ll be following the last installment of this trendy drama in Reiwa, a time when the air is depressingly similar to America in 1973, in a way. Best regards.