Ikite ne... Zutto Ikite.

You said that God is unfair, but aren't you the one trying to do unfair things? ...If you just blame it on your illness, and throw away all the things you can do, can you still say that God is the one unfair?
-- Ikeuchi Shioka, "Ichi Rittoru no Namida"


Spent the whole weekend watching Ichi Rittoru no Namida. It's every bit as good and commands as many tears as everybody's been saying. T_T For sure my tears didn't fill up to 1 litre as the title says, but every single episode (even the first) has made me cry, a feat no other drama I've watched has achieved so far. =P Maybe it's the deep context that the script and the acting built up so well, I wanted to cry at the simplest words being said. *wipes wipes*

Story details can be found at the above link and easily google-able. Based on a real-life account, though it surely contains some fictitious bits. Dreaming Illusions has the subbed episodes, and I fully recommend watching it yourself. Just quoting the moral messages here feels flat to me, as what impressed me most was the unexpected wisdom in pragmatic opinions scattered throughout the series.


It can't be helped. Because, you see, parents are always thinking in terms of their children's benefit. Isn't that okay? It doesn't matter how the other parents put it. We're just ourselves and we need to think only about Aya.
-- Ikeuchi Mizuo, "Ichi Rittoru no Namida"


I like the father a lot, he looked like he was pulled out of a comic book straight, such expressive face! Found the actor who played Deathnote's L too. =D firefly warned me not to watch the drama for his sake since he didn't appear much; and I do find almost all of the characters very lovable, each of their predicaments and clumsy attempts at solutions close to home.

The episode outro was everything I think it could best be -- snapshots of the real person's life, diary quotes, colourized pictures of daily encounters like the classroom, the stairs, flowers, sky... They are beautifully captured, and the colourization seems to imply a new way of looking at these mundane things. All these backed by the gentle ending theme with very fitting lyrics.


It got me thinking that, here I am crying my throat sore for this one person, while, aren't there many others out there, in perhaps worse conditions, whom I never care about? I always think life is better viewed stripped from any drama, but some things are apparently hard to see when not dramatized, ne...