Moteki eps 4-12

Kind of forgot about this show because the subbing stalled and it got a bit monotonous in the middle. When you start of a story with a loser character, you usually expect the main character to go through a character arc, ie learn to face his fears/problems, grow a set, clear his first hurdle by the middle and near the end fail his final objective once before ultimately achieve his goal. Its cliched but its the basic template for doing a character arc.

The much harder way to do a story is for the characters not to change which is rarely done and the one dorama I can think of that did it was Enka no joou. Its hard because the characters don't improve and continue to fail. Instead of being about characters reaching their potential or achieving their destiny, its about characters coming to terms with who they are and why they act the way they do.

While I found Enka no joou difficult to enjoy, I watched it all the way because I could see what the dorama was trying to do. Same with Moteki. It is more than just a harem dorama for adults. It certainly starts of as one but later becomes an examination of Yukiyo and his relationship with his harem and his best friend and all characters realising who they are.

The one good side to limited character development is that we don't get the lame ,"I've gotten stronger/more mature" speech at the end. The downside is that it gets pretty repetitive. Granted, Moteki's 12 episodes is more like 6 episodes since each episode is only half an hour but watching Yukiyo screw everything up again and again stops being funny after the first few episodes.

For this type of story to succeed, you really need a lot of humour and one very interesting supporting character to keep the audience guessing. Humour-wise, the first half of the series was pretty good and then suddenly it just drops off. The second half averages one funny moment per episode only.

My gripes aside, there are many reasons to watch Moteki, first of which is the awesome acting. Talent-wise, the cast for this midnight dorama beats 99% of prime time doramas. Second is directing. This show looks bloody awesome and they really maximised whatever limited budget they got. I mean look at the screencaps. It sure doesn't look like some run of the mill boring studio sets dorama. Everything looks inspired.

The third is of course, the soundtrack. Not sure if someone has uploaded it somewhere but it uses a variety of jpop song to great effect and is worth watching for it alone. I didn't enjoy Moteki as much as a wanted after its strong start, but I can't fault it for the way the story went. I just couldn't get behind a character who after all he has been through threw away two birds in his hand for the one in the bush.