Author: Tang Yonghua
Although it is true that there are no slots, it is not fair to compare the original version of the new 2020 "Tokyo Love Story" that is regarded as the originator of the idol drama, which is tantamount to comparing the painting itself with a puzzle of a painting. At that time, the 25-year-old Suzuki Ho Nami starred in her true colors, which is not a miracle that happens every year. We can expect the same talented actors and the same luxurious production team, but there is no guarantee that we will wait until the next Akama Lika-style smile. Nothing can explain this smile, this smile explains everything, and the more it is in a place where the background of the characters is blurred and the logic of the plot is weak (the show is based on a comic), the more powerful it is. Smiling well was originally a specialty of Japanese actresses, but who can melt ice and snow with innocent power, Suzuki Honami seems to remember only Yamaguchi Mome in "The Dancing Girl of Izu".
Stills from the original Tokyo Love Story
Li Xiang only listens to the rhythm of the heart, and this rhythm is also the rhythm of Tokyo
For the loyal viewers of "Tokyo Love Story", the breakup between Akamei Rika and Nagao Kenji is a knot that has been in the heart for 30 years, and they have imagined how to unravel it again and again, but they have given up again and again.
Transferred from Ehime Prefecture to Tokyo, Kenji is an honest and self-motivated young man who hovers between Rika and her crush in middle school, Rimi Sekiguchi. Rimi's crush is another classmate, Kenichi Mikami, who has affection for her but is not devoted to her, and when he empathizes with her, Rimi grabs Kenji like a life-saving straw, eventually destroying Kenji's relationship with Rika. Rimi thus becomes the poster child of a bad woman (played by Yuki Mori and even thrown a stone), but today's audience has seen more clearly that the biggest obstacle between Kanji and Rika is not Rimi, but the sense of dislocation that the two cannot eliminate.
In the relationship between the two, Li Xiang is always one step ahead of the completion of the rule, just one step, but it is difficult to touch. Li Xiang is absolutely dominant, she can give her full heart at any time, but she seems to be in and out of her own way. Should she accept the company's expatriate and return to Los Angeles, which makes her feel more comfortable? She asks Kenji to make decisions for her, but the latter is never the one who makes the decisions. She always pushes the end of the rule to Rimi, but she will wait bitterly, she likes to imagine herself as a bronze statue for lovers to admire. She always speaks in a tone of irony and ridicule, and her smile makes it impossible for Her to distinguish between true and false. Every thrust of their love story feels like an accident, but it's like following a script that's too tight. Kenji's way of protesting is not to hide his passivity, he admits that he does not understand Li Xiang, and even does not trust her, and his withdrawal is a reasonable self-protection. In the end, rather than missing out, one of them continued to run ahead and the other gave up on catching up.
One widely resonant explanation is that Li Xiang is too good to be worthy of his mediocre completion. Of course, this may be right, but we may not know more about Li Xiang's excellence than Kenji. What we can understand better is Keiji and his two classmates. With all the yearning and anxiety of life in Tokyo, Kenji longs to find a stable feeling, just like a person who goes to sea for the first time is eager to see land. Rimi, a kindergarten teacher, has never grasped tokyo's fashion, and her emotional world has nothing but memories. She couldn't catch Mikami and wanted to catch The Cure, and her mind was more instinctive. As for Kenichi, who superficially indulges in inner desolation, his selfishness is as sharp as his honesty, but it is not mysterious. These classmates, who once imagined the future together, developed a deeper bond with each other than friendship and love in the midst of Tokyo's surging crowds, and their stories were the stories of another generation of young people who went from the countryside to Tokyo. But Li Xiang is different, although her family has never been mentioned, but we know that she grew up overseas. It is said that she also has various discomforts in Tokyo, but she is not a person who has entered Tokyo from her hometown. She may have a wider world, and Tokyo is her hometown.
On the roof of the company building, Li Xiang told Kenji that whenever she was lonely, she would look up at the starry sky, and she believed that at this moment, there must be people like her in the city who were lonely, and they were looking up to the same starry sky. Li Xiang can not only experience her own loneliness, but also understand others. She was even more concerned than Kenji herself about letting him regain his old friendship in Tokyo, and when she pushed Kenji toward Rimi, no one understood her behavior, but no one doubted her sincerity.
As one of the largest, most economically developed and affluent cities in the world, Tokyo has absorbed young people from all over Japan into itself, and loneliness has become a specialty of Tokyo, and this loneliness is intertwined with the spirit of hard work and enterprising, so the most common story is that the more successful the lonelier, the more lonely the more want to succeed. Kenji is the protagonist of this kind of story, but the truth is that Li Xiang's light obscures The story of Completed Rule from the beginning, and the simplicity, prudence and suffering that the latter may have are so weak compared to the former's eternally abundant emotional creativity. All she could give Li Xiang was to let go, and what she wanted was not just women's independence. The crux of the matter is not whether Tokiji retains Li Xiang, but what guides him in his decisions, and what can impress her is not the kind of forward-looking trade-off.
From the moment she met Kenji, Rika wanted him to fall in love with Tokyo as soon as possible, asking him to stay in good spirits in the face of an unpredictable future, teaching him to "turn every day's memories into sparkling badges", but Kenji never understood what these words meant. What made him incomprehensible was that no matter what she had experienced the day before yesterday, Li Xiang was always radiant at work the next day, as if all the sweetness and sadness in love could become the energy of her work. She seems to live in a primitive simplicity and childishness, and since she draws strength neither from nature nor the past, the only explanation is that she is the spirit of the city, and it is Tokyo itself that nourishes her. She makes Kenji feel strange because Tokyo still makes Himo feel strange; she makes Kanji feel dramatic because Tokyo itself is dramatized or even manga. But the city is also simple and sincere, as the end of countless people's dreams, it guards something innocent and strong. Li Xiang only listens to the rhythm of the heart, and this rhythm is also the rhythm of Tokyo. This rhythm is especially reflected in the small section of the subway to the company every morning, they are shoulder to shoulder, but they have nothing to do with each other, everyone seems to echo the magical melody of the theme song "Sudden Love", they are sleepless, but they are not tired, jumping and marching like deer. Kenji and Li Xiang meet here every day, just like the first sight.
This is Li Xiang's Tokyo love story.
In the thick shadows that were coming, only the twinkling starlight in her eyes could soothe people's hearts
This hometown is, of course, also a foreign land. But it's not the exotic land that Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson encountered in Lost in Tokyo, not the exoticism used to defuse the midlife crisis. However, in Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story", the old couple who came to Tokyo to visit their children slowly said, "Tokyo is really big, once it is lost, it may not be found for a lifetime", which can convey the beauty and sorrow contained in that strange city. Li Xiang stood on the roof and looked around, the skyline of the city was not exquisite but stretched endlessly, and the rooftops near and far were uneven, like layers of mountains. The early 1990s was the final stage of Tokyo's extensive growth, and the stagnation and adjustment brought about by the bursting of the bubble economy will profoundly change the appearance of Tokyo. Li Xiang, who looks at the scenery on the roof, is also the scenery of this city, she does not herald a vigorous era, but rather an elegy, the expectations, frustrations and sorrows she carries, the pain caused by missing out, may be far greater than a setback in love, and there is a "sense of depressed life"; but at the same time, in the thick shadow that is coming, only her stubbornness, the twinkling starlight in her eyes, can soothe people's hearts.
The elegy is unforgettable but also traumatic, so it will be rewritten. There is no sequel to Tokyo Love Story, but Six years later, Love Century is a comedy version of Tokyo Love Story. Also directed by Kozo Nagayama, "Love Century" is highly corresponding to "Tokyo Love Story" from plot to characters to scenes (sometimes there are some subtle contrasts between the characters). Tetsuhei is also torn between the old and new loves, which hurts Ritsuko, but Tetsuhira's love for Ritsuhiko becomes more and more determined, and Ritsuko's self-destructive stubbornness gradually dissolves in Tetsuhira's tenderness. The interaction between the main actor Takuya Kimura and Takako Matsumoto is full of vitality, and they create a more classic couple image, but they do not create a more classic love story.
As for "Tokyo Love Story 2020", which retains a considerable number of plots and lines from the original work, it seems that it is deliberate to adjust the protagonist's personality to the sister-brother love mode. Also on the rooftop, a green-faced Kenji said to Li Xiang, you are very much like Tokyo, capricious, emotionally high, and your expression is different every day, completely unable to guess, unable to understand. Li Xiangyun asked lightly, so that you will be afraid of me? Kenji replied that at first, I would, but now I want to know more about Tokyo and you. This dialogue seems to be seeking reconciliation for the completion of the rule of the year, but it is too straightforward. As an urban white-collar woman with independent thoughts and aversion to the same life, the new version of Rika's love story can be equally warm, but it may not have the sunrise-like persuasiveness given by 25-year-old Nanami Suzuki. What can provide new support for the new version of Li xiang is the night view of Tokyo that is far more brilliant than 30 years ago, but this Tokyo is too natural, it has become its own puzzle. If we want to explore the cause and effect of love and the city, we may still need to go back to the distant 90s of the last century, back to the starting point of idol dramas, to touch the hidden people and the city, in and out, fear and love in the childish story, and Akamei Lika's heartless smile may still sting us.
(The author is a professor at the Department of Chinese, East China Normal University)