Review: Cat Street

Note: This review follows my brand new review format. Click for more details.

Summary
Alternative Title: キャットストリート
Genre: Romance, drama
Episodes: 6
Broadcast: Aug. - Oct. 2008
Starring:

• Tanimura Mitsuki as Aoyama Keito
• Katsuji Ryo as Mine Koichi

Aoyama Keito was once a popular child actress, but following a traumatic incident involving her best friend, she distanced herself away from society and her acting career. She is now 17 years old and accidentally enrols in a school for dropouts.

Pro

Background music: I’m guessing most J-drama fans don’t pay too much attention to the music in a drama, but it’s something that is important to me and Cat Street does it well. The background music didn’t play too often but when it does, there’s some very nice orchestral music to be heard. Furthermore, the insert song was actually integrated into the story which I thought was very unique and interesting (you’ll see what I mean by this when you watch ep.3).

Cons

Acting: You’d expect good acting from the main character since she’s an actress playing an actress, but not so. She does the teary scenes alright, but most of the time she shows no emotion. Also, I noticed that she always stands still, there no emotion in her movements either. Of all the other actors, there’s no one that stood out to me. All of them were you’re average drama actors. Some of the sad scenes were acted out very poorer and I felt like a lot of the actors were melodramatic in alot of the scenes.

Too many diversion from main plot: I expected (and hoped) that the drama would focus on the main plot about Keiko’s acting career. I thought it was a very original story that very few dramas have touched on. In addition, I thought it would be interesting seeing how Keiko progresses through her acting career. However, after watching the drama, it was the complete opposite of what I expected. Most of drama was not about Keiko’s acting career. There were many diversions from it including an episode focusing on a minor character’s love life. There were only two scenes that actually showed people filming and there was only one time we got to see Keiko act in a scene.

Slow pace: Cat Street is only six episodes and I expected the story to move quickly, but overall, this drama had a dreadfully slow pace. I usually find in good dramas that the story is a bit slow at times, but cliffhangers and unexpected twist make up for the slowness. I can’t say the say the same about Cat Street, it was pretty much slow from start to end. Cat Street is filled a lot of scenes where you feel like nothing’s happening to progress the story. Just to give you an ideal of how slow this drama is, Keiko doesn’t go back to her acting career until more than halfway through the drama (!)

Recommendation
I had high expectation from a drama based on a manga by the same manga-ka as HYD. It had very high potential but in the end, it was a huge disappointment. Even if you’re a fan of Kamio Yoko, I wouldn’t recommend this to you.

Rating: 5/10

Video Preview
Here’s the first 5 min. of episode 1.


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