Movie / DVD [MOVIE] Documentary of AKB48: The Time Has Come (14/07/04)

I agree... IMO the key is the type of roles Yuko gets. I think Kimutaku is a good actor, but it really helps that he is always playing the same type of character that you automatically root for... so all he has to do is act the same way he always does and his natural onscreen charisma and idol good looks will carry him. My fav Kimutaku dramas are Engine, Change, Karei naru Ichizoku and Hero. But when he played the mean role in Tsuki no Koibito... I didn't like him at all and his same style acting started to bother me.

IMO it is the same thing with Yuko... I think she is somehow always getting stuck with the wrong type of serious roles. IMO whenever she has to act in a serious drama like her role in Galileo 2 or Ando Lloyd, she tends to overact the loud moments and underact the soft moments. Like you said though... I just think she needs to be like Kimutaku and just keep getting the same type of likeable heroine roles that let her natural charisma shine through. IMO Yuko needs to get the type of roles in which she is playing a lighthearted happy smiling character... unfortunately Japan seems to like the darker depressing type of dramas and not the happy kind.

The other problem is those type of roles will probably only go to big name stars who can carry a drama. And unless you are Masami Nagasawa or Haruka Ayase... being in your late teens and early 20's is a tremendous advantage in getting cast in the best roles.

And I actually think Keiko Kitagawa is a pretty good actress... she was great in Mop Girl and Buzzer Beat is one of my all time fav dramas. I think a better example of a bad actress would be Gouriki Ayame... I think her range is very limited and yet she still gets all the lead parts in movies and jdramas.

 

@aratafuru
True. Not everyone has charisma like kimutaku though. It's kinda hard to explain but you can sense it when you watch his drama. I am not sure whether Yuko can carry the same charisma. She was given a lot of screentime in Renai dekinai and also Kaeru no Ojousama, but she didnt appeal to me. (I'm sure actress like Narumi Riko or Fukuda Mayuko will nail it)

Happy drama is not rare but lots of them end up getting average rating haha. Looking at past years high ranked dramas, not all are dark genre type though. (Of course there is Kazoku game, etc etc) I wouldnt say Hanzawa Naoki is a dark drama, its a typical career drama with twist here and there. Doctor X (both season) was highest ranked night drama in 2012 and 2nd highest night drama 2013. It was another career drama with medical theme (and it emphasizes rise of woman). Japanese love career drama I guess? (i think detective and medical alao belongs here)
Japanese were obsessed with family genre drama in 1999-2000s though (Hitotsu Yane no shita, Hotman, etc).

It's kinda pleasant to notice that most actress and actors who deliver drama with highest ratings are often 30 years old and above. (Fukuyama Masaharu, Amami Yuki, Shinohara Ryoko, etc etc).

Talking about Gouriki, we cant leave Takei Emi either haha. Both are pushed heavily by Oscar . I cant say they are good actress though.

 

@Amberlicious
Kimutaku is not a bad actor, its just that he is not super amazing actor as well. What makes an actor performance enjoyable is not just good acting skills, but also charisma. There is actress like Katase Nana who actually have good acting but doesnt have excessively amazing charisma.
There is stars who have both acting skills and charisma, like Nogiwa Yoko, Abe Hiroshi, or Amami Yuki. Then there is stars who have quite good but not amazing acting skills yet has awesome charisma like Kimutaku, the GTO 1990 guy. But Yuko is not all the above. She tends to overact even in a plain role, and she doesnt have the charisma to back it up. Yuko does not bring any good rating either

If you say best actress in AKB, then I wont disagree.
I wouldnt deny if she probably will have a good career because as I saod before, lots of actress with mediocre acting skilla got the demand but dont expect her to be like Fukuyama masaharu, AMami Yuki, SHinohara, Ayase who always dominate survey

 

We can pretty much end with this.
Seriously, I dont think her fans OR people expect her to become one of the genius actress in Japan.
However, she is good enough (and maybe able to improve more later on) to have a stable career in acting world. The end.
Plus, look at ur list, there are not many impressive people that considered great acting. Most just get a pass "grade", and that how is entertainment. Yuko will be alright.

Plus, this is not even a thread for it, but it has been going on for pages Lmao

 

Yuko's not a great actress. But saying that she's mediocre is beeing, forgive the word I'll use, a bit ignorant. She's avarage, but not mediocre or bellow that. I don't say this because she's my oshi.
I'm an actress myself. I've been in this field for half of my life and I tend to be pretty hard when it comes to acting. And I've seen TONS of bad acting before, and I still see everyday when I turn the TV on.
First of all, when it comes to acting we have to keep in mind somethings:
1. Acting is probaly the most subjective art of all. It's not like musicians, filmakers, painters who NEEDS to have technic in order to create and you can easily see its quality with a little trained eye/ear. Great actors have great techinc and knows perfectly how to hide it. Clearly, Yuko doesn't have any other technic other than her own intuition. Beeing intuitive is not bad, it's actually really good. But technic helps you to drive your possible instruments (body, voice and emotions) to your desired destination.
2. There's one thing called character actor. Is the kind of actor that specialize in building every little piece of a character (best examples I can think of are Gary Oldman and Marlon Brando). It doesn't mean that every good actor needs to build characters in order to be good. There are tons of good actors that don't really differenciate the characters from themselves. (ie: Jack Nicholson, although he is a character himself lol). Building a character is just a part of the main reason of acting: telling a story. A good actor tells a story and lends his own point of view to it. A bad actor doesn't even understand the story. Yuko, at least, does.
3. There are different languages. The western acting usually values what we call naturalism. In Japanese doramas, they don't always follow that. It's a mix of languages actually, some actors beeing more naturalistic and others beeing more... what you call "overact". Depending on how the character develops, sometimes the "overacting" doesn't work (and since doramas usually aren't very complex, most of the times it doesn't). But wach some Pedro Almodovar movies and you'll see that "overacting" it's, actually, not only good but necessary.
Well, I could go on and on but won't devolp this much more because I don't think anyone here is really intersted in starting a debate about acting. So now I'll talk about Yuko...
Once again, she's not either good or bad. In some ways, I see she's better than Aachan (who isn't good, but isn't bad either... again, they are both avarage) because she really explores more her emotions, and tends to understad more deeply a situation. She tryes to differentiate her characters, but she doesn't have a full conciouness on how to do it. What bugs me about Yuko's acting is that she clearly cares too much. As an idol, she's creative and loose, but when we see her acting she gets more stiff (the opposite of Aachan in this case). I honestly think that she's still too much insecure about it, so she just want to do things right and don't bring her full creativity to it.
I don't know if Yuko will succed. But I don't see her failing completely tbh. She's very intersted in it and she observers a lot. If you read her blog, you'll see that she really pays attention to the acting of the movies she sees and she's always observing her coworkers in her acting jobs in order to improve herself. This can help her a lot, but after graduating from AKB I'd like to see her trying to study more because, although she has good intuition, she has to understand this profession better. Also, experience really helps because it helps you realize what works and what doesn't.

Oh yeah, charisma is a very important part in acting as well. It helps the audience to emphasize with your character. Yuko has it (otherwise she wouldn't have so many fans), she just needs to know how to drive it to her acting, and than again I think the reason why she doesn't succeed in it completely is because she's still pretty insecure.

 

Lol I went searching into the dictionary to see that. In my language the word "mediocre" (oddly, it's the same as in english) is usually to define something bellow avarage, with low quality. In other words: "Bad". But, from what I get from previous posts, I think that people are actually calling her a bad actress, when I'm defending my point of view that she is avarage, or neither good or bad. Just a standart level.
I'll put my point of view in simpler words so...

Yuko is an "ok" actress. And most def she's not a lost cause. She has plenty of room to improve herself and, more importantly, she wants that.

 

In my opinion, the most important thing for Yuko at this stage in her acting career is to get as many different roles as possible in order to explore her acting range. She really needs to find out which types of roles come naturally to her and which types don't and focus on improving as much as possible. She needs a nice balance of work that she is good at and can get positive attention for and work that she isn't the best at but can use to improve her skills in that area.

What I want Yuko to do next, more than anything, is a comedic and light-hearted role. I haven't seen a lot of Yuko's dramas, but all of them I have seen (Ando Lloyd, Kaeru no Oujo-sama, Blackboard, all her AKB drama roles) have been pretty serious roles. I want to see her prove that she can use her naturally cheerful energy in her acting as well.

I don't see Yuko ever being one of my favorite actors. What I value in an actor, above anything else, is versatility. It's a common trait among all of my favorite actors. Yuko doesn't have versatility now and I don't know if she ever will, but I hope she strives for it and proves me wrong.

 

^

Yea, I think the best thing for her is to aim for something very light hearted. She will have more than enough time on her hands after graduation to focus on it.

I wouldn't think she is going to be the best ever, but for the experience she has and little amount of time she has had to take it seriously, I think she is pretty great.

 

I am quite happy seeing the reactions here. I am honestly quite annoyed with AKB fans exaggerating how good Yuko acting is outside the akb fandom, when it has never been that good. Look at previous page. That was the point I challenged. Not whether she can be successful or not. I would be more than happy to see if one day she can at least properly act and drop those variety-style acting. But to say she is great, it is definitely an insult to proper and talented actors actress out there.

 

This is the most important thing to keep in mind. Most actors who are worth their salt have gone through special schooling for it. It's a skill to be learned and developed just like anything else - just like singing or dancing or whatever. If Yuuko is serious about acting, she would be wise to pursue that avenue after graduation, since of course she didn't have any time for it while in the group. She must know she won't be able to land big roles forever on the AKB name alone.

 

Just curious... @0:38... what does Naachan say about Naanya? Since the bookends of this film will be about Yuko like how No Flower' was with Acchan... we pretty much know Yuko is gonna be the main focus for a good portion of the film. But also like how the 3 main other stars of No Flower' were Jurina, Mayuyu and Paruru... I hope the 3 main stars of this new documentary include Nana Okada and Nana Owada.

 

Why do we have a discussion regarding acting on this thread?

Certainly, the members weren't ask to act their part in this documentary. Were they?

 

"We're growing daily" Referring to the New Generation.

 

If you look at the last two post on page 5 of this thread, you'll see why there was a discussion about acting. I would say something about it but this isn't the right thread.

 

^ Since a good portion of this new documentary is going to be about Yuko's gradation IMO it is only natural to speculate about of her post AKB48 future.

Totally agree... Yuko's natural charisma is off the charts... IMO you cannot watch her Janken entrance last year without thinking that. Same when Yuko is being Yuko in the documentaries... like her scenes in No Flower' involving Yuka... very compelling IMO. For some reason a lot of that charisma is just not there when she is acting... IMO a part of the problem is with the roles she has been given.

Ooo... thanx for that. IMO though if you are an AKB48 member and you say something like that in front of one of the backstage cameras... there is a very good chance you will see that footage in the next documentary. Like since I think the documentary after this new one will probably be about Takamina's graduation... if I were a member right now I would be going in front of every camera and saying cool stuff about the current Soukantoku... guarantee they will use it in the next film. LOL.

 

I never saw any of the Documentaries….Surely if we kept up with all the AKB48 news/ drama/ and events..the documentary is like the summary and more right? Whats appealing for me is that they are continuing the timeline.

I'll try to see if I can get a good deal before I rob someone at gunpoint for it. #jk #kindofserious #yolo

 

Yuko's my favorite, but I wouldn't even give her the title of "Best Actress" in AKB... that'd be Erepyon. Just watch Sankaku (which, oddly enough, Yuko had a part in).

Wow, you hit it on the head, right there. Even hearing from their sound producer, you could tell that they really that they don't know where it's going. The AKB sound was always anchored by TakaMina, Atchan, and Kojiharu... you'd have some Yukirin sprinkled in down the road, then they started shifting to having more Mayu in there... Now, they're just all over the place... whether it's Mayu, Paru, Kawaei, Mako, or others... it's just a stark contrast to what the original sound was. That really bums me out... when acts continue on with their original members, they usually stay true to their original sound... whethers it's Earth, Wing & Fire, Journey, Takurazauka, or even Morning Musume, they keep their sound (the music may evolve, but you still have the core vocal sound). I wonder if they'll touch on that in this documentary.

That's what was nice about the first documentary; everything was kinda new and shiny. They lifted the veil and we got to see behind the scenes... right as they were riding their original wave of popularity. The media coverage was scarce compared to what it is now, so it was a true experience seeing the first documentary along with the live interviews with the group before the first showing.

The second one still had a little bit of that mystery, because we still didn't know everything going on behind the scenes.

The third one didn't have any surprises... we had seen almost all of those scenes on television, read about what happened in member blogs, google, heard about it on their radio shows, or saw it rehashed numerous times in the news... Even when they interviewed the members, we had heard most of what they had to say.

I was a little relieved when I didn't see a 4th documentary ready for the regular February time frame. Again, they still had the massive media exposure, so I just worry about a lack of fresh content that makes me want to spend 5000円 making a date of it for me and my wife.

That's my personal dilemma when it comes to watching this, however, it doesn't mean that I don't think others shouldn't watch it.

 

The first documentary, "To Be Continued" is a little recap and a lot more behind the scenes/members' actual feelings. It's almost all interviews with members, definitely worth watching (and English subbed, a domestic US release on Amazon).

Show Must Go On and forward are a lot more recap, although SMGO had a lot of backstage stuff as well.

 

Cool, I never knew it was out for domestic US release. Maybe I can actually snag it from a library then ^^. My university is pretty good at that. If not I can totally have a refresher for any new AKB48 friend fans I have!

…Or a pre-game show before Sousenkyo

 

I hope the documentary will be 40% Yuko's 50% next generation, 10% Sasshi's victory in sousenkyo.