What’s in the Surprising Final Episode of the Drama Series with Akashiya Sanma and Otake Shinobu

I never thought I would laugh out loud when watching the final episode of a drama broadcast 36 years ago. That is indeed the origin of trendy dramas.

I will talk about what I laughed out loud at later, but the very first “origin of trendy drama” was “Natsu Monogatari: Seven Men and Seven Women” broadcast on TBS from July to September in 1986. The “summer” in “Natsu Monogatari” was the summer of 1986, 36 years ago.

The following is an excerpt from “Highlights” on the TBS Channel’s official website.

“A Summer’s Tale of Seven Men and Seven Women” is a romantic drama masterpiece written by Toshio Kamata and co-starring Sanma Akashiya and Shinobu Otake. Three men and four women are 30 years old and 27-28 years old…for some reason, their lives have not been settled and they have yet to shed the vestiges of their youth. The seven men and women of marriageable age living in the big city are moving as they clumsily try to live out their somewhat late adolescence.

This is followed by a sentence that conveys the essence of the drama’s appeal.

Sanma loved both the roles and the dialogue so much that he himself called this work his document.

As will be mentioned later, the tour conductor Ryosuke Imai, played by lead actor Sanma Akashiya, looks like Sanma himself. In fact, it is as if Sanma himself has blended into the world of the drama. As a result, it is almost strange that the people around him act as if they were actors.

It is likely that she was inspired by Sanma. Shinobu Otake, who is now a major actress, also has a strong grounding. The appeal of this drama was the essence of its appeal, as if it were a sporting contest between two physical elites, Sanma and Shinobu, who were slugging it out on the ground.

As you know, the two later got married, but as far as this drama is concerned, Shinobu Ohtake must have found in Akashiya-sanma a unique presence who could bring out something unique about her.

In addition to Sanma and Shinobu, the “seven men and seven women” of the title are Kimiko Ikegami, Eiji Okuda, Tsurutaro Kataoka, Chikako Garai, and Midori Ogawa.

The last one, Midori Ogawa, was an entertainment reporter for a TBS morning wide show at the time. To be honest, she is a bit less important in the story than the other six (she played the role of a Japanese bush warbler at the Seibu stadium!) ), if the film had been titled “A Summer’s Tale of Six Men and Six Women” without Ogawa, it would not have been as big a hit as it was. After all, odd numbers are good for this kind of thing.

Now, in the spirit of “the origin of trendy drama,” I would like to note what I consider to be the three principles of trendy drama.

One is romanticism. Love-centeredness. The story moves around romance. In other words, the story is almost solely based on romance. As a result, the average age of the characters is inevitably young.

The second is ensemble character. Basically, the story is not about one-on-one love, but about multiple love relationships, which sometimes intermingle. In this drama, the romantic relationship between Sanma Akashiya = Shinobu Otake, Kimiko Ikegami = Tsurutaro Kataoka, and Eiji Okuda = Chikako Garai is depicted.

The third is Tokyo-ness. Not so much urbanity as Tokyo-ness. It is not set in Osaka or Nagoya, but in Tokyo, one of the richest cities in the world at the time.

As a side note, the theme song of this drama is Akemi Ishii’s “CHA-CHA-CHA,” which was a big hit (No. 1 in Oricon, 581,000 copies sold), but I have a stronger impression of the British fusion band “Shakatak” that was played as background music. In other words, the trendy drama began with Shakatak and ended with Kimutaku.

The airing time of “Summer Stories of Seven Men and Seven Women” was Friday at 9:00 p.m., and it was originally broadcast on Kin-chan’s weekly TV show. Originally, “Kin-chan no Shukan Kin Yohi” (Kin-chan’s Weekly Kin Yohi) aired during this slot from 1982 to 1985. However, the program ended, and a year later, Akashiya Sanma took the reigns in the same slot.

As an aside here, “Daremo Shiranai Akashiya Sanma Vol. 8” aired on NTV on November 20, featuring Fuji Television’s “Kin-Don! Special” (1987), a documentary depicting how Sanma took the title of “King of Comedy on TV” from Kinichi Hagimoto (script by Naoki Matayoshi), and the very same thing was happening on the TBS Friday 9:00 p.m. slot.