Shimokita GLORY DAYS - An Interesting Look at a Manga-to-TV Adaptation
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a TV show so perfectly capture my initial impressions of Manga as Shimokita GLORY DAYS.
But first, a disclaimer: I am not and have never been a huge consumer of Manga. I know of a few really great ones but mostly I’ve just flipped through their pages with gaijin eyes. And, mostly, I’ve found them to be slightly boring. Both visually and story-wise, Manga have never grabbed me in the way say The Watchmen did when I was younger.
And, as always, I am watching these clips with little to no skill in the Japanese language. Therefore my opinion is based on an understanding of these clips equal to a three-year-old with slightly more visual life-experience.
Based on a Manga of the same name, Shimokita GLORY DAYS is a late-night Japanese comedy/drama/romace airing currently in Japan. The basic story line involves a guy running away from his responsibilites to the family business who tries to get into college to get a girl. Pretty basic. The twist is he ends up staying in a house full of five exceptionally beautiful women, all of whom are constantly exciting him in some way. The guy is your typical nerdy dude (imagine the heroes from Weird Science and you get the drift) and it’s relatively entertaining to watch even without subtitles.
According to my (brief) research, a number of the women in the house (if not all of them) are AV Stars or Adult Video Stars. So he’s got to deal with that aspect of it as well. However, I’m not sure if the girls in the house are supposed to be AV Stars on the show as well.
While the story is what it is, what’s interesting to me is how closely they made the show look and feel like a live action version of a Manga. From the way people look at one another to the action sequences to even the camera framing, it feels (to me at least) like they captured the Manga almost perfectly. I’d be interested to see some original pages of the book the show was based on as I bet that there are some exact real-life replications.
But more than just the visuals, they’ve managed to capture that weird, not-of-this-world soft-core sexuality that so often exsists in Manga which to me is just so strange and really what makes these clips fascinating. Things like the close up shots of underwear for no apparent reason or beautiful women who come up and sit on the hero’s lap just for fun.
Of course, all of this is surrounding what seems like a very sweet story about a boy who loves a girl. Which we’ve been watching over here like forever with and without sexual overtones.
Anyways, here’s the first episode thanks to the lovely people on YouTube. Almost the entire series is availible there. If anyone has links to subutitled versions I’d love to see them.
WARNING: There is some sexual content. But, really, nothing worse than say Weird Science. Which is still on my top ten movies of all time BTW.
Part One:
Part Two:
Part Three:
Anyone with more information or an opinion, feel free to leave a comment.
For more info in Japanese:
Awesome. I’ve never seen a true harem genre entry with live actors. A lot of shows seem to have that element, but there’s usually either one main love interest/anima archetype character or all the girls go for different guys. (Last Christmas and Strawberry on the Shortcake both feature an ordinary guy whose life and home is intruded upon by a strange girl; but they only have one girl, whereas harem anime have several girls. Wedding Planner and Tokyo Friends both feature an ordinary guy surrounded by amazing women, but the girls never compete over him and all have their own romantic subplots.) From your description this appears to be the real deal. Fingers crossed anyway, this could be even more “authentic” live-action anime than a lot of tokusatsu shows, insofar as it embraces more extreme genre elements.
Fansubbers have released episodes 1-11 (RAW) here:
http://tinyurl.com/mvdy6
You can find subtitles for episodes 1-4 here:
http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_32812.htm
Harem anime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem_anime
Also check out Shibuya 15:
YouTube - http://tinyurl.com/m9od5
torrent - http://www.animesuki.com/series.php/816.html
Think Battle Royale meets Serial Experiments Lain. They have a girl playing the male lead, which (when it works anyway) captures the girly look of male leads in popular anime and really pushes this over the edge from sci-fi based on a manga into live-action anime territory.
July 2nd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
The place to go for more of this would be http://www.d-addicts.com , where you can get all the episodes and the subtitles too. Quite funny show indeed!
July 2nd, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Wow, thanks MJ. That’s a really informative post.
I would never have imagined the words harem & anime ever went together.
I’ll be sure to check out Shibuya 15.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:42 pm
I have just finished this drama with my wife. A bit short drama but it is overall very interesting and fast paced.
Yes indeed three of the girls casted in the drama are popular AV stars (The police woman, and the two girls taking off clothes in front of the main actor). All others are not.
I am so surprised the girls in the drama act decently well, even those AV stars. Many of them were NEVER even casted in ANY japanese drama/movies before. They are much better than many actresses in Hong Kong (the place I am living).
August 30th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
well,i got all the episode but only have the subtitle for ep1-4,do anyone know where to get ep5-12 subtitle?
November 9th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
[...] How has YouTube’s policies affected your site? The 30,000 Japanese clips coming down was a bummer but it’s been happening since the beginning of the website. The hard part is that it means that a lot of my posts now are without the video reference within them. It really sucks when you write up a long post about something really cool only to go back a few weeks later to find they’ve taken down the clips - eg my long post on the Japanese TV show Shimokita Glory Days. I did a lot of research and wrote up a lengthy article which I felt did a very good job of describing the show when accompanied with the clips I posted. Now, those clips have been removed and it’s much harder to understand. That sucks. ( http://tvinjapan.com/blog/2006/07/02/shimokita-glory-days-an-interesting-look-at-a-manga-to-tv-adaptation ) [...]
November 28th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
well , I got all the episode but only have the subtitle for ep 1-9 , Do Any one know where to get another subtitle (ep 10-12 )?
February 19th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
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February 20th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Pls send this video to me from H.K.Shimokita GLORY DAYS. I’m very like see this video.Thanks.
July 25th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
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August 1st, 2007 at 12:02 pm
we want more…we want more
August 31st, 2007 at 8:25 pm
All the girl kawaii desu… :D
September 17th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
i dont know how to download the glory days help me..someone please help me
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:37 am
babi
June 28th, 2008 at 4:37 am
Hello, I´m a manga nerd, surprise, well i have few episedes, 12 i think so, but i don´t have subtitles, where i could find them???
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:51 am