<figure id="attachment_325440" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-325440" style="width: 1280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="a1d8451f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2023/08/15f2b22947511091da49d096df0a992c.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-325440" class="wp-caption-text">Nana Mori plays the heroine who is always cheerful and positive. Her devoted support of her family is criticized as &#8220;too much self-sacrifice.</figcaption></figure>
 Dramas in the July season have been the talk of the town, including &#8220;VIVANT&#8221; (TBS), with a budget of 100 million yen per episode and a movie-like scale, and &#8220;The Best Teacher&#8221; (NTV), which brings together the staff of the classic school drama &#8220;3 Years A Class&#8221;.
 Among these, &#8220;Cinderella in Midsummer&#8221; (Fuji Television) was the drama that had the Internet buzzing even before it aired. It had been seven years since the July 2004 season&#8217;s &#8220;I Love You,&#8221; and the series had attracted much attention as a &#8220;typical Fuji TV&#8221; romantic drama about a young man and woman at the beach in the middle of summer.
 However, when the show opened its doors, the first episode received a 6.9% rating, the worst rating for a first episode of a Gekijuku series. The ratings continued to decline, with an average rating of 5.8% through the fourth episode. This is the lowest average rating for all episodes of a Gekkan 9 series (6.1% for &#8220;Umizuki Hime&#8221; in 2006), and is a huge blowout. On Tver, however, the exact opposite phenomenon is said to be taking place.
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 She said, &#8220;We are second only to &#8216;VIVANT&#8217; in the number of favorite subscribers, with 1,005,000 (as of August 3). Also, on July 31, it was reported that the total number of views of the missed streaming of the first episode exceeded 4.1 million on Tver and FOD. A drama that had a high number of registered favorites despite its viewer rating in the 5% range was the April season&#8217;s &#8220;Even if You Don&#8217;t Do It for Me.
 The drama depicted a married couple having sex, and was said to be &#8220;a work to be watched secretly by a single person. Based on this, some drama writers have suggested that &#8220;Midsummer&#8217;s Okinawan Drama&#8221; is watched secretly by old men who are nostalgic for the trendy dramas of the past.
 (Drama writer) Is it really the case that &#8220;old men&#8221; are &#8220;secretly watching alone&#8221;? We asked two experts to analyze &#8220;Midsummer&#8217;s Okinawan Dream&#8221; and predict who is watching it.
 The overall story is flat, with no ups and downs. The heroine, Natsumi, played by Nana Mori, is a very energetic and cheerful girl with a savage personality, but she is not a romantic type. The men are also somewhat herbivorous. So there is not much drama or swing as a romantic drama, and it is flat. This summer is extremely hot, so watching the drama feels rather cool.
 says media culture critic Hiroyoshi Usui. So what kind of people does Usui think are watching this drama on Tver?
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 I think that middle-aged and older men who are embarrassed to tell others that they watch &#8220;Midsummer&#8217;s Okinawan Drama,&#8221; including those who used to watch trendy dramas in the 1990s, are watching this drama. These people are interested in what is going on in romantic dramas these days, and many of them may be interested in the three heroines.
 This drama doesn&#8217;t have a bad cast. Nana Mori, Sawa Nimura, and Ai Yoshikawa are all not major players by any means, but they each have their own charm. Like a popular hideout bar quietly operating in a back alley, there are many customers who come to the bar just to meet the girls, and I think these old men are watching the show.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Young people are watching too...?"></div>
On the other hand, columnist Takahiko Kageyama says that young people may be watching the movie quite a bit. He suspects that many of them are watching the drama in a lighthearted manner, rather than watching it in a full-fledged manner.
 He said, &#8220;Because it&#8217;s Tver, I don&#8217;t think they are necessarily watching the entire 60-minute drama. I think they are watching only the scenes that are well-received, not as good as TikTok, but they are scooping out only the good parts. That&#8217;s also the way it is nowadays, and &#8220;Midsummer&#8221; is not a drama that you have to immerse yourself in to be able to follow it, or that it&#8217;s okay to view it that way. That may be a good fit for today&#8217;s young people.&#8221;
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 According to Kageyama, there is another point that the younger generation is attracted to.
 This may sound a bit harsh, but I think &#8220;Midsummer&#8221; is like a Reiwa version of &#8220;Izu no Odoriko,&#8221;&#8221; Kageyama said. There are frequent scenes that emphasize the disparity between the women and men in the film. For example, &#8220;He is an elite graduate of the University of Tokyo&#8221; or &#8220;We live in different worlds.
 So I thought that young people today might be very interested in the disparity in status between the main character and the dancer in &#8220;Izu no Odoriko. However, if it is too wet, young people will leave, so I have treated it lightly and in a Reiwa-like manner.
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 In case you are wondering, &#8220;Izu no Odoriko&#8221; by Yasunari Kawabata is a classic love story that has been made into a film many times. The story depicts a tender love between a high school student, one of the elite of the time, and a traveling entertainer, Odoriko, who has a &#8220;different status. The story seems to be somewhat similar to &#8220;Midsummer&#8217;s Okinawan Love&#8221; in that the protagonist, who sets out on a journey with a troubled mind, meets a naïve dancer and becomes enchanted by her. Mr. Usui also points out this &#8220;disparity.
 The women are all working class people, while the men are petit celebrities, which at first glance may not seem like a good idea, but it&#8217;s simple. Because it is simple, you can look at it as a parallel world, a story in another world, without thinking too deeply about it. It is not connected to reality, but that is why it can be viewed as a nonstressful romantic drama.
 There are many criticisms of &#8220;Midsummer&#8221; such as that it is full of humor, lacks reality, and that the story is somewhat old-fashioned. Midsummer&#8217;s Okinawan Summer&#8221; may be a film that offers such a way of enjoyment.
<figure id="attachment_325448" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-325448" style="width: 1636px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="bc0fe145"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2023/08/05b0a0a02ce549ca557c748a7cba6fa6.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-325448" class="wp-caption-text"> Ai Yoshikawa plays an apprentice hairdresser and the best friend of the main character played by Mori.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_325449" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-325449" style="width: 3768px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="9496c099"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2023/08/bd0c4b7bd91bcab79a00c5ed533bda6c.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-325449" class="wp-caption-text"> Tsuneji Mizukami plays a lifesaver and doctor. His first appearance in the film, when he suddenly kisses a man under artificial respiration, drew a lot of criticism from the viewers.</figcaption></figure>

 Yusuke Kondo (Mori, Yoshikawa) Yuri Adachi

 Although "Midsummer's Cinderella" bombed in the ratings, the number of subscribers to Tver is booming. It has been pointed out that middle-aged and older men, embarrassed to watch with their families, are "sneaking a look" at the show alone, but who is really watching it?

Uncle secretly watches alone&#8230;? Tver is doing very well even though the ratings for Tsuki 9&#8217;s &#8220;Cinderella in Midsummer&#8221; are dead! Why?

Uncle secretly watches alone…? Tver is doing very well even though the ratings for Tsuki 9’s “Cinderella in Midsummer” are dead! Why?

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