My Girl – Hina’s not an asshole, he’s just an angry asshole

Tomoya must have really fucked up to make his ex-wife this paranoid

I’ve pretty much dropped the ball on My Girl, forgetting that its still airing and catching it in bits and pieces here and there. But I recently saw episode 4 and downloaded 5 and 6 with plans of watching them sometime this week.

Episode 4 pretty much fleshes out Hina’s character in the drama. Mr. Tomoya isn’t a douchebag on purpose to Masamune, he’s only doing it because he sees him as a reflection of himself five years ago. So he’s hard on him — To the point of scolding him in front of a parent, stating that he will never acknowledge him as a father. Well, eventually, Tomoya gets a wake up call and cools off; slowly growing to a compromise with Masamune and his ongoing struggle with being a single father. On the flipside, Tomoya has to live with the mistake he made and the loss of a son he could have had.

My Girl, from the previews of ep 5, seems to be heading in an episodic route. Now that Masaume and Koharu are in check, its now time to explore everyone else and their screwed up family life problems. We’ve now found out what’s eating his mom in episode 3, found out what’s pissing off Tomoya in episode 4, and now we get to see what’s crawling up his boss’ ass in episode 5. I’m also starting to loose interest in this drama, its not as engaging as I hope it would have been.

This episode tackled the issue of divorce and custody, albeit lightly. It made me think about custody rights over there in Japan and how fucked up it is. There’s no such thing as 50/50 child custody once a divorce is final. One parent gets the child and that’s that; parental rights is gone for the loser in the divorce proceedings. This means the spouse can get up and leave with your kid and you have not a single say in the issue. Its a cruel and sad way of doing things and a lot of parents on the short end of the stick really suffer with it.

I don’t feel as if people like Tomoya’s character should be punished for the mistakes they made that lead up to the divorce. If they’re willing to compromise and make change, why make the child suffer? When his son, Yusuke, stated that he didn’t have a father it really bothered me. Yet, its a justifiable situation in Japan. Like being a father only matters if its documented on paper not by blood. Hopefully that simply won’t be the end to Tomoya’s story, but I have a feeling it will be.

There needs to be something engaging in this drama to happen. Its getting stale and fast too.