TV in Japan

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:

The official site.
The Show’s Japanese Wiki Page.

Posted in: Anime Inspired, Culture, Sex, Strange Hobbies, Weird

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 at 11:03 am and is filed under Anime Inspired, Culture, Sex, Strange Hobbies, Weird. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.