Hotaru no Hikari

There are two type of people in the world, those who get stuck in meeting rooms and warehouses easily and those who don’t.
-Wise words from Ms Ahomiya

I was raving about this series after seeing the first two episodes because it was really funny and the characters were damn awesome so now that I’ve finally finished watching it how does it fair? Must have been pretty well since it almost had a clean sweep of the Nikkan Sports Drama award thingers

Main cast: Ayase Haruka, Fujiki Naohito, Kato Kazuki
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Length: 10 episodes
Released: 2007-Jul-11 to 2007-Sept-12
Theme song: Yokogao by Aiko

Synopsis
Amemiya Hotaru is a working woman but once she gets home she changes into a training outfit and becomes ‘himono onna’, dried up in love and as a woman, Hotaru prefers to laze around on the porch drinking bear rather than going outside. The house she lives in is belongs to her boss’ parents and due to unfortunate circumstances they begin to live together. Her boss cannot believe that the efficient worker is such a dried up woman but suddenly she falls in love with a younger co-worker and is out to prove him wrong.

My Thoughts
I don’t think my opinion of this series has changed much, I love it to bits and it’s one of the better J-Drama offerings of this year.

First of all, this is taken from a shoujo manga and I’m the kind of person who loves trashy shoujo crap as a guilty pleasure but Hotaru no Hikari is NOT trash or crap but it’s still very enjoyable. HnH is pretty much slice of life and it moves slowly at times with few plot turns but when there was a twist I loved it, the storyline is a pretty typical manga storyline to me but it worked in drama form, I’ve never read the manga so I have no comments on it’s faithfulness. HnH doesn’t ever become too seriously and doesn’t turn into an emotional angst parade like other office dramas *ahemSAPURIahem* which is a good change once in a while.

Hotaru is super special awesome and is the cutest female lead like EVARR and the manager is the coolest guy EVARR and he’s very tsun tsun. They compliment each other so well and without them the series would not be even half as good. Refer to here if you want more reasons why I love the two leads SO VERY MUCH. It also helped that I like both Ayase Haruka and Fujiki Naohito (and this is my favourite role of his).

DJ OZMAAA

There are other characters in the office and they all have their own work and romance problems to deal with and their stories are pretty entertaining but I prefer as much Hotaru/ manager as possible. Oh and Teshima Makoto (the guy Hotaru falls in love with), his acting was pretty bad imo and I found him pretty boring but he advanced the story so I let it slide. OF COURSE I wanted Hotaru to end up with the manager :D so I didn’t like Hotaru and Makoto together (plus I found that they had little chemistry compared to what Hotaru and manager had). My favourite supporting character has to be the manager’s best friend, his personality and the way he reacts to things is priceless and he’s somewhat gay at times…

LOL, see…

…I swear he’s gay

Hotaru no Hikari IS a romantic comedy and there is a nice balance of both genres, just when you think it’s taking a serious turn Amemiya Ahoymiya does something stupid again. Some of the scenes are seriously gut-bustingly funny. There wasn’t an episode where I didn’t laugh and that’s a good thing but it’s not always ALL laughs, there are emotional scenes and it balanced out well. My favourite scenes have to when manager and company find Hotaru in the warehouse *OMG -DIES-*, when he gets locked in the bathroom *OMG -LOL-* and when she leaves the house with Yokogao in the background :C.

Hotaru stuck in a warehouse

hdkadhdkaldjaldj -explodes-

I have mostly praises for this series… except the ending which pissed me off, seldom am I satisfied with drama endings (esp. if I loved the series a lot). I LOVED that we get a Hotaru and Manager ending even though it’s sort of open ended and not exactly ‘hug and kiss’ but I liked that it kept with the series’ overall style. I LOVED the conversation they had on the porch at the end and I LOVED their new cohabitation rules. *SPOILERS from here* What I didn’t love so much was that it moved too fast and too randomly, after happily being with Makoto she suddenly feels not happy being with him with 20 minutes of the series to go and starts to move out etc. I actually thought that she would end up with Makoto pre-episode 10 but I sort of saw it (Manager falling in love with her) coming. BUT everyone ends up happy with everything solved and although I was happy it confused me.

“I sit here, and you sit there”

Final Judgment
9 out of 10, Hotaru no Hikaru is romantic comedy at its best! Never corny, never trying to hard, always FUN! LOL, I have a feeling that I will somehow turn out like Hotaru ==

I should REALLY stop with these long reviews.

Other screencaps