Madonna Verde has a very interesting premise. Rie (Kuninaka Ryoko) had her uterus removed because of cancer. However, she had her eggs frozen so that they could be joined with her husband's seed in a petri dish and implanted into a surrogate mother. However, surrogacy is still very new to Japan and the laws do not recognise it. In other words, Japanese law view the surrogate mother as the true mother.
Rie is an emotionally detached person but she has this strong desire to have a child. Desperate, she convinces her mother, Midori played by Matsuzaka Keiko to carry the child for her. Yup, this is a story about a grandmother who is going to give birth to her grandchild or one could look at it as a story where a woman is going to legally get a sibling who is actually her child. Its interesting stuff and what makes it fun is that Rie is this obsessive in her single mindedness to have her mother be the surrogate and her emotional detachment prevents audience empathy and sort of casts her as a sort of antagonistic character.
For Matsuzaka Keiko, this has to be a dream role for her, playing this mother who would risk pregnancy at 55 in order to grant her daughter's desire. Nagatsuka Kyozo plays this haiku dude, Toshi who's infatuated with Midori, finds out about the plan and has to stand in as the child's father. He is in the other dorama that I really want to watch from this season, Kazoku Hotei. I wonder which dorama was shot first cause he appears frequently in Madonna Verde. Speaking of Kazoku Hotei, no one has uploaded it to d-addicts. The last episode is airing today so hopefully it'll show up at my local dvd shop HK translated.
Minami Akira has a supporting role as a 20 year old pregnant gyaru who's boyfriend has left her and she has an admirer who wants to be the father. She's got no future, blah blah blah and is unsure whether to keep the baby. Yawn. Its probably an uplifting story for a country with low birthrate but raising a child costs a lot of $$$ or in this case yen. In the end, its filler plotline and as long as the main story is good, I can't complain.
With Rie's personality and the illegality of the act, you know its not going to be long before things go crazy. Its got two fun characters in the center of it with Midori and Toshi and I'll be interested to see when a rift forms between Rie and her mom. Come to think about it, what makes Madonna Verde fun is how unlikable Kuninaka Ryoko's character is. If this had your typical idol in the main role, her character would be nice, there would be lots of pop songs and the story would be boring. With nothing else really worth watching right now and the upcoming season being barren of any potentially interesting shows, Madonna Verde is an oasis in the jdorama desert. I leave you with a Matsuzaka Keiko singing Ai no sui chu hana.
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