I just realised that in most the dramas I've seen featuring Wu Lei, his characters give such wonderful heart eyes to the FL. Those soulful stares are so effective and knee-melting.
Then I realised it's just that his characters are handsome men who have basically zero rizz and are socially awkward.
To wit:
Lin Yiyang playing nice with the girl he met in a snowstorm.
Ling Buyi at breakfast, freaking out all his in-laws. Except for Grandma Cheng since she's practically Teflon.
Ashile Sun trying to figure out how to treat a wounded maiden without outraging her modesty. Which is pretty sweet for a barbarian warlord, no?
He does these roles so well and I am in awe of his talent.
I just realised that in most the dramas I've seen featuring Wu Lei, his characters give such wonderful heart eyes to the FL. Those soulful stares are so effective and knee-melting.
Then I realised it's just that his characters are handsome men who have basically zero rizz and are socially awkward.
To wit:
Lin Yiyang playing nice with the girl he met in a snowstorm.
Ling Buyi at breakfast, freaking out all his in-laws. Except for Grandma Cheng since she's practically Teflon.
Ashile Sun trying to figure out how to treat a wounded maiden without outraging her modesty. Which is pretty sweet for a barbarian warlord, no?
He does these roles so well and I am in awe of his talent.
Review of Kazoku Dakara Aishitan Janakute, Aishita no ga Kazoku Datta (2023)
This drama is a semi-autobiographical story about Kishida Nami’s essays on her life & her family, and their series of hardships after the death of her father. What I enjoyed about this series is unlike many series/movies about disabilities, this drama doesn’t seek to inspire its audience about people overcoming their disabilities but instead wishes to show that people can live a fulfilling life along WITH their disabilities. As both the author & the main character said this show is not to attract sympathy but to show that her family are just regular people who happen to have misfortunes & disabilities.
After the death of their patriarch, the Kishida (renamed Kishimoto in the series) family faced a series of misfortunes that seem melodramatic if they weren’t in fact real events. While the series did not shy away from depicting the emotional & physical toll of being paralyzed, the anxiety & fear of raising a child with Down’s syndrome, the emotional trauma of losing a parent, and early onset dementia, this series did not portray them in a melodramatic or sentimental way. In fact, the eccentricities of both the main & side characters, & comedic background scenes manages to keep the show light & provide balance to its more serious scenes.
While the essays that series is based on is autobiographical, the author herself admitted that the adaptation is less than half as accurate as her real life/essays for it to translate to a tv show. The biggest change is the presence of the deceased father played by Nishikido Ryo throughout the events of the story. In the beginning, he appears as a mental projection of Sota, the youngest son who has Down’s Syndrome, as a coping mechanism to deal with the loss of his father & repeats whatever Sota say or do. As the story progresses, the father becomes a narrative tool to reflect the growth of the main characters as he begins to appear to the rest of the family & become more independent. This was a conscious choice as the director & screenwriter wanted to make audience question whether he is a just a projection or truly the spirit of the late father. The scenes with Sota at the crossroads & with Nanami in the final episode are some the best the actor has given.
One thing I love about this series is discovering a bright new talent in Kawai Yumi who plays the main character Kishimoto Nanami. She is both our main POV character and the heart of the show. And despite the heavy burden placed on such a young actor, she manages to pull it off. Her emotional breakdown when she finally came to terms with her guilt towards her father’s death felt so raw & genuine. She makes Nanami likeable which is commendable as the self-doubting, insecure & socially awkward Nanami isn’t the easiest character to root for. Her Kansai accent too was highly praised by Kansai native Nishikido & he was surprised she no musical training despite capturing the tones of the Kansai dialect. With time & experience I believe Kawai Yumi will be a great star.
I initially found the ending to be a little unsatisfying as Nanami character arc seems incomplete & how they chose to close the series too fantastical & open ended. But I must remember that these narrative choices are because Nanami is based on a real (and still living) person. Kishida Nami’s journey is not over, she is still growing and maturing, & searching what it means to be happy. Just like all of us.
Even after almost a year since this drama first aired, my joy and delight of watching this drama still haven’t faded. This is the kind of stories that we should see more of, and I hope you enjoy it too.
2024.03.01 Nishikido Ryo & Lily Franky interviewed by Oricon
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video version: here
My translation of the interview below. Any corrections are welcomed!
Cottontail, an Anglo-Japanese co-production project by a Japanese cast and up-and-coming British director Patrick Dickinson, will be released in cinemas from 1 January today. This road movie spins a tale of family love and rebirth, moving the stage from Tokyo to the UK. Lily Franky (60) plays a clumsy father who has kept his heart closed, and Ryo Nishikido (39) plays his long neglected son. Although they had known each other privately, this is the first time they have worked together as actors. They praised each other's work.
How did you come to know each other?
Lily: We had a mutual acquaintance and got together at a bar.
Nishikido: Yes, we did. After our mutual acquaintance left first, we continued drinking together. Even though we hadn't met each other before (laughs).
Lily: Then it took more than 10 years until we worked together on Cottontail, didn't it?
Nishikido: I was around 24 when we first met.
Lily: Has it been that long?
Have you talked about working together one day?
Lily: Not at all (laughs). We talk about instruments and music all the time, don't we, Nishikido-kun?
Nishikido: Yes, that's true.
Lily: It's not like we contact each other and go out drinking. But we just met each other naturally, somehow.
How did you feel when this collaboration was decided?
Lily: It was a no-brainer, right? (laughs).
Nishikido: Yes, it was.
Lily: The script reading was done remotely because of the pandemic. Even right before I left for London for the shoot, we were talking about something completely different, like, "I heard you recently bought a guitar." I guess he is not the type of person who talks passionately about his work. He never talked about his enthusiasm. He never shakes hands and says, "I'm looking forward to working with you” on the shoot (laughs).
Nishikido: It's a little embarrassing to express your feelings in that way (laughs). However, I have also seen the movie "Gururi no Koto/ All Around Us," in which I co-starred with Tae Kimura, who also appears in this film, and “The Devil's Path/Kyoakuu” with Takayuki Yamada, I have always watched the films in which you have appeared, thinking, "How nice" or "That is such a sneaky thing to do!”. There is a unique atmosphere that only Lily has. I was genuinely happy to work with such a wonderful actor.
Lily: I've seen the films that Nishikido-kun has been in too, but when I saw this finished film, I thought again, 'Wow, he's amazing'. I wasn't really aware of it when we were filming, but Toshi (Nishikido's character's name) explained to me what kind of family the Oshima family was and the relationship between the father, the deceased mother and the son. Without relying on dialogue or narrative devices, he made us understand his feelings towards his mother and his feelings towards his father by the way Toshi acted. It was amazing.
Nishikido: It was all directed by Patrick.
Lily: Toshi is Patrick, isn't he? He has a lot of thoughts about his father, and I think he really wanted Nishikido-kun to play his thoughts.
I share the feeling that you mentioned earlier, when I see Lily's films and think “That is such a sneaky thing to do!”. How do you always prepare for your roles?
Lily: If the director tells me to, I do. If I'm not told otherwise, I don't. I was in Daihachi Yoshida's The Beautiful Star (2017), and his next film was The Scythian Lamb (2006), starring Nishikido-kun, and did Daihachi-san ask you, “please do XXX”?
Nishikido: As in preparation for the role? No, he didn't tell me to do anything.
Lily: I was told by Daihachi-san to lose weight. Well, if you're told to do that, you do it. I try not to do anything unnecessary as much as possible, because the worst thing that can happen when you create a role for yourself is that it doesn't match the director's image of you. Besides, and this is serious, I've almost never played a role where I have to wear a tie to work. Maybe the directors and producers don't have that kind of image for me anymore.
Nishikido: I have a stronger image of him in roles where he looks like a nice guy but is actually very bad, or where he smiles in a nihilistic way.
Lily: In a film called Analog (2011), I played the role of a coffee shop master who just quietly brewed coffee, and I heard that many people were misled into thinking that he was going to do something someday, probably because he hardly had any dialogue (laughs).
Nishikido: In the first place, when you offer the role to Lily, you don't need to ask him to prepare for the role, do you? I think it works just by having Lily do it. When Daihachi was directing, I think he thought it would be nice if you looked a little thinner.
Did you have received (any preparation instructions) from the director, Patrick?
Lily: There was nothing from Patrick. He said that the script was just a blueprint and that the script wasn't everything, and it was like he was waiting for what came out of the actors themselves playing their respective roles. I think that's exactly what Nishikido-kun's Toshi is about.
What was the director like?
Lily: Very calm.
Nishikido: He's so gentle.
Lily: Really sweet and very polite. Now that I think about it, director Patrick and cameraman Mark (cinematographer Mark Wolfe) were definitely wearing collared clothes to the set every day. We were shooting in England in the middle of summer (in 2021).
Nishikido: Yes, that's true.
Lily: England has a gentleman image, right? There is something old-fashioned about Patrick. He has a sense of politeness that Japanese people have forgotten. Nishikido-kun is old-fashioned too, but in a slightly different way.
When you say Nishikido-san is old-fashioned, what do you mean?
Nishikido: Am I old-fashioned? I don't know...
Lily: When you went to England, you cooked your own rice.
Nishikido: I did cook for myself.
Lily: Even when I told him that the food catered on the set was "delicious," he would say something like, " I'm fine with this," and eat onigiri (rice balls) that he made himself. Sometimes he even made one for Director Patrick. It was a bit samurai-like in that way.
Do you always take Japanese food when you go abroad for work?
Nishikido: I do some research before I go, and if there is a Japanese restaurant near the hotel where I will be staying, I don't bring Japanese food with me, but this time I had a quarantine period (5 days) due to the pandemic, and I knew I would definitely want to eat some rice, so I brought some.
Lily: You were trying to eat up all the rice before you returned to Japan.
Nishikido: I ate it all up (laughs).
Would you like to work together again?
Nishikido: Of course! I'd like to play a role that isn't father and son next time, and I'd also like to play father and son again.
Lily: I would love to make a film together. This time we played a very serious father and son, so maybe next time playing a foolish father and son would be good.
Ryo Nishikido’s first TV drama since becoming independent, and the 38-year-old’s “views on family”, including a history of fist fights with his brothers.
Released three albums as an artist, successfully performed at Budokan during the Covid pandemic.
Actor and artist Ryo Nishikido returns to TV drama for the first time in four years with the drama Family I Loved, Not Because I Loved You (Sunday 10pm), airing on NHK’s BS Premium/BS4K from 14th May. It is his first appearance on NHK since becoming independent in 2019. His first appearance was in the 2018 historical drama Segodon. We asked him about his feelings about playing the difficult role of a “phantom“ who appears in the drama even though he is dead, as well as his thoughts on his own family.
On the day of the interview, Nishikido was being interviewed by several companies. Nishikido was sincerely searching for his own words in response to the questions posed by the interviewer in the studio.
“Before when I became independent and now, being offered to a role has a different meaning. Now that I’ve been asked, I want to give it my all. I immediately said, ‘If it’s okay with you, I’d love to be a part of it.’“
Nishikido plays Kosuke, the father of the main character Nanami Kishimoto (Yumi Kawai). He is 38 years old, the same age Nishikido is now, but he passed away from a myocardial infarction. It is a difficult role to play, but on set, directed by Akiko Ookyu, who also directed the film "Jikkuri Furete Ro” (2017), he is digging into the scene with Ookyu-san to shoot the scene.
“I don’t have many scenes myself, I’m more like a spice. There are scenes where I gently push Nanami when she is in distress, but when I think about it, I sometimes realize that Kosuke has been more supportive of her. His wife Hitomi (Sakai Maki) and the rest of the family are all strong, but they are also fragile. As a father, I want to warmly watch over my growing family.”
Kosuke is a mysterious figure who appears in the tv drama even though he is dead.
“I am curious to see the reaction of the people watching the drama and how they will react to it. It is a mysterious presence that you don’t know if he is there or not. I myself have not experienced any “hallucinations/visions”, but last spring the dog I lived with passed away, and the other dog I had was depressed. It had been listless for a long time, but one day when I came home after work, the one dog that had been depressed was frolicking around in the living room. When I saw that, it made me think that it (the deceased dog) had come home and was playing with them.”
In real life, he has 3 other siblings “As we get older, we are able to talk honestly.”
In real life, he has 3 siblings: two older brothers, who two and three years his senior, and a younger sister, two years his junior. Sometimes he had trouble stopping his mischievous second brother, fighting with him until he broke his arm.
“There was a time when my two older brothers and I didn’t get along and we didn’t speak to each other. The fact that we hit & fought each other hasn’t changed, but now that we are older and have our own lives, we are calmer and we can talk more honestly. When my sister got married and had a child, she looked very mature.”
How does he feel about his father, who supported a large family?
“When my father was 38 years old, the same age as myself, he already had a child named me. I don’t have a family of my own, but looking back at my own age, I have more opportunities to think about what my parents were doing when they were the same age.”
Since becoming independent, he says, he has looked at himself more objectively and calmly, and in addition to SNS, he has also focused on internet distribution, bringing him closer to his fans. In 2020, the year of the Covid pandemic, his first solo performance at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, was broadcast online without an audience for the first time in the Budokan’s history and became the talk of the town. As a singer, he has released three albums. He looks wilder with a beard, and his slow speech exudes the confidence that he has built up over the years.
“I have asked myself many times the question of who I am. I can move everything at my own pace, but I have to take all the consequences. If there is a place where I am required to be an actor, I want to give it my all. I also want to keep my feet on the ground and not overdo it in my music career.”
The drama is based on an essay by writer Nami Kishida about her own family. Her father, a venture capitalist, died suddenly, and her mother suddenly found herself in a wheelchair. Her younger brother has Down syndrome, and her grandmother has memory loss …. The "information overload” of her daily life has been well-received by many people and has been published in book form.
Ryo Nishikido’s renewed thoughts on the existence of ‘family’ .
It’s been four years since you appeared in a TV drama - has your enthusiasm or feelings for acting changed?
Nishikido: No, no, not at all, sorry (laughs). I am just doing the best I can at the moment. I am not overexcited by it. As soon as I read the script, I immediately said, “If it’s okay with you, I’d be happy to do it.”
This …… is not to say that there is anything "good” or “bad” about it, but perhaps I was attracted to the realistic depiction of family relationships in this work, unlike many recent dramas that have “impossible” or slightly bizarre settings.
The main character, Kishimoto’s family, has a series of difficult events happening one after another. It is “impossible” in that sense, but it is also based on a true story by Nami Kishida. I myself am looking forward to the broadcast to see how it will turn out as a drama from that original story.
The film is set in Kobe and the characters’ interactions are in the Kansai dialect. Nishikido-san was the only one in the Kishimoto family who was a 'Kansai native’.
Nishikido: Yeah, that’s right. I think that people who are not from the Kansai region must be under a lot of pressure to speak Kansai-ben, because they are sometimes told, “This is not Kansai-ben! I think everyone must be under a lot of pressure. It was impressive to see Maki Sakai practicing over and over again on set. Everyone was very good at it, but I was especially surprised at how natural Yumi Kawai’s Kansai dialect was. At first I wondered if Kawai-san was from the Kansai region, since she spoke in the Kansai dialect quite naturally during filming.
Dialect and intonation are difficult, aren’t they? Even now, when I have to perform in so-called standard Japanese, I sometimes get corrected, and when I go back to my hometown, my friends say, "You mixed up your accents” (laughs).
-More homesick than rebellious-
In this film, Kosuke Kishimoto, played by Nishikido-san, is shown to be disagreeable towards his rebellious daughter Nanami, and the film depicts the parent-child relationship at a difficult time. Did Nishikido-san have a rebellious period like Nanami’s?
Nishikido: Hmmm… I don’t think there was any kind of defiance that can be considered a rebellious phase. I think I had a rebellious period when I said to my mother, "I want to eat this,” and when it was not served at dinner, I sulked, “What the heck!” I think I was just a little sulky (laughs). I have never been in anything that could be called a fight.
Since I was about 13 years old, I was also working in Tokyo, so I spent a lot of time living in hotels and I think I spent less time with my family than most people. I was rather homesick at that time and maybe I didn’t have time to rebel.
In playing the role of the father, did you recall any episodes from your own family?
Nishikido: There is a scene where the family goes out to various places in the car, and I remembered that my family used to drive when we went on trips.
Back then, child seats were not yet mandatory like they are now, so we would fold down the back seat of the one-box car and relax with my brothers and sister on the futon spread out on the floor.
-I paid my own high school tuition.-Are there any memorable words your father said to you?
Nishikido: When I was 15 or 16 years old, my father used to tell me, "You’d better at least study (stay in school)”. My father was also a junior high school graduate, so I guess he wanted his children to be educated. I can say this now, but at the time I was crazy about skateboarding, so there was no way those words would have made sense to me (laughs).
I went on to high school, but I couldn’t go to a public school, but I managed to just make it into a private school. My father told me, "If you go to private school, pay for it yourself!” So I paid my own tuition out of the money I earned without questioning it.
In the end, I went to high school for only one year and dropped out, but by the time I was 18 years old, I began to understand the meaning of my father’s words.
Should you have studied/stayed in school?
Nishikido: Studying at school is like working hard toward a single goal, isn’t it? It is said that being “smart enough to study” is not the same as being “smart enough as a human being” to live, but I think studying, whether for test scores or entrance exams, is an opportunity to learn “how to work hard” to achieve a goal.
In the end, I started working seriously in the entertainment business after I left high school, so I guess I learned that through my work, but I still remember my father’s words, “You’d better at least study (stay in school)”
-There is no 'right’ form for families and couples.-
In the past, Mr Nishikido has played the role of a father in a number of projects, such as Inu wo Kau to Iu Koto - Sky and My Family for 180 Days and Zenkai Girl. You also have a Netflix drama “Let’s Get Divorced,” about a couple getting divorced, coming out soon, and you have appeared in many films with family and marital themes. Do you find it easy to gravitate toward films that focus on family and marital bonds?
Nishikido: I never really thought about it, but now I realize that there are many different forms of families and couples, and there is no “right” answer. I myself am single, but I am not in a hurry at all.
Recently, due to my age, I sometimes receive reports of divorces from friends, but in the end I think that if the person in question is smiling, then that’s all that matters.
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