Finally, it is on par with “Cinderella in Midsummer”! Why “ONE DAY” is not well-received as it is on its way to being the worst Monday 9 series | FRIDAY DIGITAL

Finally, it is on par with “Cinderella in Midsummer”! Why “ONE DAY” is not well-received as it is on its way to being the worst Monday 9 series

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Many fans who started watching the drama because they liked the three leads have dropped out of the series.

The October-starting Monday 9 drama “ONE DAY – Seiyoru no Kara no KARAKUZA~” is not doing well.

Household viewership ratings dropped from 7.8% for the first episode on October 9 to 4.6% on November 13, the latest in a near-clean steady decline. The average for all episodes was 5.6%, tying with “Cinderella in Midsummer,” which broke the lowest record in five years for the previous season’s Gekkan-ni series. Although household viewership ratings are not considered an important indicator now that the number of viewers who rear-tie is decreasing, those involved must not be at ease.

One Day” starred Kazuya Ninomiya (40), Miki Nakatani (47), and Takao Osawa (55), and was notable for its rather adventurous attempt to depict three stories happening simultaneously on one day, Christmas Eve, over the course of a single season.

As many as 17 actors attended the press conference held on September 23, as the three stories were to take place at the same time. However, when questions were asked about the stories, the only answers we got were ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I can’t tell you. When we asked the producer to give us a hint as far as he could, all he could tell us was ‘the names of the characters,’ and the content was shrouded in mystery.

The three stories are “The Fugitive,” in which a man (Kazuya Ninomiya), who has lost his memory and is being hunted for murder, pursues his past and the real culprit; “The Local TV Station,” in which a woman (Miki Nakatani), who was fired as a news anchor after her news program was canceled, pursues a scoop on a murder case; and “The Story of a Chef at a Western-style restaurant whose demi-glace sauce is ruined by an intruder. In the “Restaurant” episode, a chef (Takao Osawa) at a Western-style restaurant struggles to pull off a successful Christmas dinner after an intruder ruins his demi-glace sauce.

Each of the three stories involves a murder that took place at the port of Yokohama in the early morning hours of December 24, and they generally revolve around getting to the bottom of the case. In addition to this, there is also an old man (Koichi Sato) who has been searching for his beloved dog since the first episode, and there is a sense that he will play a major role in the final stages of the story.

However, the style in which these three stories take place at the same time has been criticized as “hard to understand. The review sites were filled with comments such as ” boring” and “dropped out,” but there were also many comments like the following.

“The scenes change so often that I don’t understand what they mean.

“It’s like a bad chef mixed up a few different kinds of high quality ingredients and made them into a bad dish.

It’s boring to watch the same thing over and over again for hours on end.

The way the three stories are connected is quite elaborate: “For example, when one character opens a door, the story switches from one character opening a door to another in a different story. The pacing is good, but if you take your eyes off the screen for a moment or do something else, you could be left behind.

Also, the “Restaurant Arc” is basically set in a restaurant all the time, and the “Local Bureau Arc” and “Fugitive Arc” don’t change much in terms of where you stand. Moreover, except for the first episode, each story progresses slowly, with only about an hour of time per episode. That may be why it feels like the same thing is being repeated over and over again.

It has also been pointed out that the seemingly too different tastes of the three episodes, with the “Fugitive” episode having a hard-boiled style, the “Local Bureau” episode having a work drama style, and the “Restaurant” episode having a comedy style, may have caused further confusion.

However, the films themselves have not been so harshly criticized. The performances of the three leads, as well as Koichi Sato, Yosuke Eguchi, and other splendid actors, are excellent. Certainly, the drama is a bit forced, with many things happening in a short period of time, such as Yosuke Eguchi being taken to the hospital after being involved in a hit-and-run and escaping within an hour, and all the food in the refrigerator being ruined because the power was turned off for a few hours in the middle of winter. However, there is nothing too twee like “Cinderella in Midsummer” to be overly concerned about. However, it is still difficult to understand.

There is an index called “degree of attention,” which measures how much viewers pay attention to the TV screen, but even “VIVANT,” which was said to be “hard to take your eyes off the screen for even a moment,” had about 70%. Viewers are not concentrating on the drama as much as expected. The tendency for viewers to drop out of a drama as soon as they find it a little “hard to understand” may be becoming more pronounced.

Ichiban Sukina Hana” aired this season on Fuji TV also has four main characters (Mikako Tabe, Kohei Matsushita, Mio Imada, and Fūju Kamio), each of whom has a complicated backbone, but each of them is explained in the drama. Perhaps this is why I have not heard any confusion from viewers. However, if we were to do that in “One Day,” the time line would become jumbled up and more confusing. It may have been quite an adventure to depict three stories that took place in just one day.

After the sixth episode, the story has reached the stage where it should really start to pick up steam from the midpoint. Some people are beginning to see the connections between the three stories, and some are saying, “It’s finally getting interesting. Will “One Day” be able to make a V-shaped recovery from its current rock bottom?

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Ninomiya plays a murder suspect who has lost his memory. She plays a hard-boiled story without difficulty (April ’23).
Miki Nakatani played the role of the maid of honor to Haruka Ayase’s character, Princess Nohime, in the movie “Legend & Butterfly” (January ’23).
Osawa Takao had built up more than 20 kg in preparation for the sequel to “Kingdom. In the drama, he seems to have regained a lot of weight (May ’21).
  • PHOTO Kazuhiko Nakamura (Ninomiya, Nakatani), Ippei Hara (Osawa)

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