Manpuku (2018)

It is only my second Asadora, but I can confirm they are really addictive. Easy to watch and easy to fall in love with the characters. It is like they become part of your family, I am going to miss them all ^_^.

I love Sakura Ando as Fukuko; she was cheerful and strong and my, her tears were so good. She had a nice chemistry with Hasegawa Hiroki; they were truly a wonderful married couple. They look the part too.. they look young at first and older at the end, unlike Kaname Jun (Tadahiko) and Matsushita Nao (Katsuko), who still looked too young to be grandfparents. Manpei was the ying and Fukuko the yang in their relationship, the complimented each other. If it weren't for Fukuko, Manpei wouldn't go anywhere with his ideas (but let's face it.. most of the good ideas came from Fukuko but Manpei-san was the one who was able to reproduce the idea or make it real).

I loved Fukuko's mother.. she was such a character! Annoying and meddlesome but so funny and with a good heart. By the end of the series, I was loving every one, from Sera to Shinichi. How nice that Shinichi was still part of the family, even after so many years of Saki's death. And how nice that Saki was still present in their lives even though she died so many years ago. How nice that Kanbe-kun admired and loved the Tachibana couple so much. And how nice how everyone was involved in one way or the other in the success of Manpuku Noodles.

The support of family, friends... all of them were so important to make Manpuku Noodles come to what it is. As always in a J-drama, family and friends are pivotal in the main character's lives (and at the same time, they influence positive in the others).

Some scenes were a bit slow for my liking, like all the times Manpei went to prison. Reason why I rate this 8.5. And sometimes I just wanted to smack Manpei-san... I know he was a genius and couldn't see straight beyond his ideas, but poor Fukuko suffered so much many times and years (but she loved that her husband was an inventor). He was the reason of all her tears; of her happy and sad tears.

Main song was cute and the opening sequence very dorky, I loved it.

I will mourn for a couple of weeks and then start a new Asadora ^_^

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"As long as we're alive, there's hope"

"Manpuku" is the ninth asadora that I've completed so far. I'd actually downloaded and started this drama early on during this journey, but I ended up putting it on hold because I was tired of WII stories at the moment. Week 2 was also surprisingly heavy for this asadora being mostly a comedy. I was able to pick it back up pretty easily and honestly the WII part wasn't as long as I was expecting. "Manpuku" was also one of the asadoras I watched for "Natsuzora" as Sakura Ando has a small voice cameo in it. Another note: Sakura Ando previously appeared in my [thus far] favorite asadora "Ohisama."

Now on to the meat and potatoes. "Manpuku" is one of those "couple" asadoras, meaning that a couple are the lead characters instead having just a female lead. As such, I think the drama has a very different flavor to most other asadoras. Fukuko (Sakura Ando) doesn't have an aspiration like the traditional asadora heroine. Instead, she's there to support her wacky inventor husband Manpei (Hiroki Hasegawa). I don't think this is actually a bad thing but it's not what people are typically expecting from an asadora. As a couple, they're very cute together though Manpei irritates me a bit. While it's obvious how much he needs Fukuko, it's not exactly obvious why Fukuko needs him. But I suppose there's no logic in love [lol]. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the dynamic is one-sided. I've heard similar complaints about "Gegege no Nyobo" [which I haven't watch], and ironically Nao Matsushita appears in both.

"Manpuku" is a fictionalized account about the inventor of instant ramen, Momofuku Ando. Everyone has eaten instant ramen and, being American, I didn't know for a long that there was a different way to eat ramen. I wasn't immediately sold on this premise, but I was surprised how I invested I got once we finally got around to it (a little over halfway through I believe). The process of inventing something was shown in the previous asadora "Hanbun, Aoi," but "Manpuku" really goes into it and several times over since Manpei gets involved in numerous endeavors. If you can believe it, I shed some tears at the end over the invention of Cup Noodles.

As for the side characters, my favorite is Fukuko's mother, Suzu-san (Keiko Matsuzaka). I love her so much. She in my opinion has the best comedic moments in the drama, particularly when she's paired with Fukuko or Manpei. The rest of the cast was also great, but by the last few weeks it seemed that the writers were unsure of what to do with them. For example, Fukuko's niece Taka (Yukino Kishii) graduates from college during the eight-year time skip but simply becomes a housewife and mother afterwards. There's nothing wrong with being a housewife but I just thought it was boring that we only see her and her mother Katsuko (Nao Matsushita), Fukuko's sister, just sitting around the TV. I also have a small complaint about Taka's sister, Yoshino (Mai Fukagawa). They made a big deal about which man she was going to marry, but didn't show it playing out. Instead, they just revealed it randomly after the final time-skip.

All-in-all, I don't have many complaints about "Manpuku." I think it's a solid comedic asadora and just an all-around good time. Not *the* best, of course. It's a little towards the end, and Manpei and Fukuko have just a few too many hardships. However, I believe most asadora fans will enjoy this one and it being a comedy makes it easy for a beginner to watch. A final bit of trivia: "Manpuku" ends in 1971 and mentions the Osaka world's fair and the previous asadora "Hanbun, Aoi" begins in 1971 and also mentions the world's fair.

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