Moriyama Mirai plays Fujimoto Yukio, a 29 year old temp worker who has never been popular with the ladies. However, one day he starts to experience moteki, a period when Yukio starts to get involved with 3 lovely ladies.The first girl being Aki, someone who he met during one of his temp assignments. The second girls is Itsuka, played by the lovely Mitsushima Hikari who is a still a shoujo and gets along very well with Yukio.
The third girl is Natsuki played by Matsumoto Rio, who was responsible for Yukio no longer being a dotei. It is interesting to note that Matsumoto Rio was Stand Up! which was another show about being a dotei. The fourth girl is played by Kikuchi Rinko but that will probably be in episode 4. Can't write too much about the girls because part of the fun is watching how Yukio got involved with them in the first place. :)
For a midnight dorama, Moteki is definitely not short on talent with Mitsushima Hikari and Kikuchi Rinko. It doesn't even look like a midnight dorama and doesn't have the sterile set look of many shows. The only indication of the budget is the running time but hats off to the makers of Moteki who have given it a movie like feel.
Moteki basically deals with Yukio fumbling around the women. The audience gets to hear Yukio's hilarious thoughts as he deals each of the women. Moriyama Mirai does an awesome job of playing Yukio. He doesn't overact too much and no matter how many stupid decisions Yukio makes, he manages to keeps my empathy because Yukio feels more like a rounded and flawed character rather than a faceless protagonist of your typical harem jdorama. There's lots of humour in Moteki such as Yukio time travelling to his previous selves and vice versa as well as two 'musical numbers' in eps 1 and 3 that just had me in stitches.
Speaking of music, they use a wide range of jpop music in this show to great effect. How the hell did they manage to pay off the licensing fees for these songs. Every episode has at least 4or 5 awesome songs while most jdoramas just have a theme song and maybe a 3 types of background music. Are the budget of midnight doramas increasing or have the producers found some way to blackmail the actors into accepting minimum wage so that more can be spent on the show? The musical number in ep 3 must have taken a long time to choreograph and practice.
Could the best show this season possibly be a midnight dorama? I don't mean Moteki is good in the midnight dorama sense of having fanservice. There is only one oppai shot in 3 episodes so far. The script is funny and interesting and I can't wait for ep 4. First must watch dorama of the season and it does have a killer intro.
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