Hadouken!Disability stories are to 90s jdoramas what cancer/leukemia are to Korean movies. It is such a useful tool because you get instant audience empathy and writers can easily set up challenges for the main character without need of a villain. Kimi no te is a five episode dorama special that aired annually from 1997 to 2001. Kanno Miho plays Takeda Mieko, a deaf girl who is starts her job in but finds difficulty in being productive at work. She was hired to comply with regulations requiring firms to hire disabled people.
Everyone at work treats her bad except for Nobe who starts learning sign language in order to communicate with Mieko. Realistically, there's no way a deaf girl who looks like Kanno Miho will end up bullied/ignored at work. With 1 1/2 hours per episode, the story moves at a pretty fast pace. Episode 1 deals with Nobe and Mieko meeting and ends with them getting married. Episode 2 is about Mieko's prenancy and episode 3 about Mieko raising her daughter.
There's not much time to get into character stuff and Kimi no te is basically about the challenges that Mieko faces because of her disability which I find interesting like being able to be productive in an office environment or being unsure whether she will be able to raise a child properly. Its fun to watch and its a 'nice' dorama in that all the characters are unrealistically nice people and there's never any sense of danger or excitement. I wouldn't say Kimi no te is flat but I sort of watch it as a pseudo documentary fiction on a hot chick living with her deafness.
Kimi no te hasn't exactly blown me away but every episode so far has done a good job of building up to an emotional climax. The fact that there's nothing really worth watching this season besides Fumo Chitai and Magerarenai Onna means there's no excuse not to check it out.
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