(please excuse the spelling errors, i’m writing this at 2:30 in the morning)
Hailed as one of the most controversal dramas for the fall season in Japan, 14 Sai no Haha (aka The 14 Year Old Mother) is about a 14 year old girl named Miki who was one of the most popular girls in school, had her own radio show on the campus, and had relatively good grades to keep her in the elite private school. She is a good child to her parents and a great older sister to her younger sibling… and in the beginning she seemed to be the epitime of the Japanese junior high school girl. No one would have suspect that she would end up getting pregnant by her cram school classmate on one, hot, summer night.
The series seems light hearted in the beginning, starting off like a classic junior high school puppy love story between two teenagers who are the ’standard Japanese child’ but dramatically, after the first half, changes into a chaotic story of a girl who is lost and confused after she realizes that she is pregnant three months after that fateful night in July. The drama continues to escalate into each episode as the people around her gradually find out about her hidden secret, as well as the debate to whether to abort the child or not. The story not only focuses on the soon to be mother, but on the soon to be father as well. The pressures of being the son of a strong, self established entrapenour, mother as well as going to an elite all boys school begin to take a toll on the self-conscious child as he soon discovers that he is going to be a father at the young age of 15.
The acting in this show is superb and you can feel the frustrations and pain that all the players in this story go through. From the shock of the mother to the break down of the father and all the way to the confrontation of her own school; the actors of this story continue to give a stellar performance that makes you feel for every single one of them, whether it be frustrations and anger or sympathy and sadness. Despite being only 13, Shida Mirai, complete sells her main character of Ichinose Miki. You actually believe that she’s a 14 year old soon to be mother trying to cope with the changes around her, you forget that she’s a young face but a young woman confused and in a situation that she still doesn’t understand what ‘true love’ is. Tanaka Misako gives a stellar performance as Ichinose Kanako, a mother now trying to cope with the fact that her innocent daughter is now going to be a mother of her own. The pain and hurt she goes through is completely believable and kudos to her respects as an actress, emerging from her previous role as a loud mouth and sarcastic mother from the drama [i]Brother Beat[/i].
When you watch the series, the dialogue is powerful and speaks to your heart and not just to your ears. Every person caught up in this situation conveys valued points that makes you sympathize for them all. And its to be expected that great script writing is come from Inuoe Yumiko, who has done work on such dramas as [i]Good Luck!![/i] (staring Takuya Kimura) and [i]Engine [/i](also staring the SMAP member Takuya Kimura). The cinematography is beautiful, and the attention to the natural scenary emphasizes a great deal in the storyline. It makes such a heavy drama so beautiful, from the first few scenes with the bright, blue, sky to the scenes where Miki confronts Satoshi (the father) about their child with the bright autumn leaves falling around them.
In the end, I am entirely impressed with this story. I had weary thoughts about this considering that I had expected this to be about a lose girl that ended up pregnant, but the story was more complex than that which got me hooked. It was not about a lose girl, but two people who made an honest mistake… The most unlikely who became the likely. Its that which has kept me watching so far. With five episodes currently airing in Japan, the series continues to get better and I can’t wait till the end when everything finally comes together.