プライド Pride

Title: プライド Puraido (Pride)
English Title: Pride
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Year: 2004
Episode: 11
Cast:

• 木村拓哉 Kimura Takuya
• 竹内結子 Takeuchi Yūko
• 坂口憲二 Sakaguchi Kenji
• 市川染五郎 Ichikawa Somegoro
• 佐藤隆太 Sato Ryuta
• 中越典子 Nakagoshi Noriko
• Megumi

SYNOPSIS

Queen - I was Born to Love You

Satonaka Haru is the captain and the star player of a famous ice hockey team. He is serious and committed to be the best ice hockey player he can ever be. However, Haru treats love and relationships as mere games.

Murase Aki is the typical office lady. She is waiting for her boyfriend who went abroad to come back but he has not contacted her for the past two years. Her two friends at work, Aizawa Yuri and Ishikawa Chika, wants her to move on with her life and they invite her to watch an ice hockey game.

Aizawa Yuri is looking for a rich guy to marry and she meets Hotta Yamato while he was driving a very expensive car. Yuri assumes that Yamato is a rich person but he is only driving a friend's car (and not his own). Yamato initially wanted to correct Yuri's misconception about his financial background but he later decided to pretend he's a rich guy when he found out that Yuri will not date him if he is poor.

Ishikaw Chika had a one-night stand with Ikegawa Tomonori, a hockey player and Haru's teammate. They randomly meet again afterward and Chika tells Tomonori to not worry since she has no expectations and she just wants to have fun. The two of them ended up dating, without any commitments whatsoever.  

Haru and Aki eventually become acquaintances after meeting a few times. They decide to enter a contract wherein the two of them will date each other with the knowledge that they will part ways when Aki's boyfriend comes back.

REVIEW
I don't really find the the premise of Pride very interesting. It's rather unusual to find a contract relationship in a Japanese drama, and it's mostly found in Korean dramas. The basis for the contract relationship in this drama does not involve pressing matters and is not very compelling. Contracts are serious matters so I expect that when the characters go into a contractual relationship, it means they are invested into it one way or another.

I find the the lead girl character Murase Aki quite extraordinary. I think it's really weird for a woman to still consider someone who had not contacted her for two years as her boyfriend. I cannot believe that Aki actually regularly went to the place where she is supposed to meet her boyfriend for two years even though he ceased all communication with her. It's just so wrong on so many levels. I don't think it reflects that of a person truly in love and more of a person who is too stupid for her own good.

Aki's friend Aizawa Yuri is also quite a character. She grew up poor so she's focused on getting a rich guy to become her husband. I think no person in his right mind would want to marry a poor person so I don't really take this against her. But then she brings up the topic upon her first or second meeting with guys and that's just really awkward to watch. 

Aki's other friend Ishikawa Chika slept with a guy she just met and that guy did not contact her after that. Although it was supposed to be just a one-night stand thing, the two ended up seriously going out with each other. Chika's relationship had lesser conflicts compared to her two friends and I'm not really sure what this means in the greater scheme of things.

Anyway, the drama is essentially about ice hockey so it's also about brotherhood, teamwork, and hard work. I think it's interesting how a group of people, with different physical capabilities and motivations, actually get together to achieve a common goal. There's going to be a lot of conflicts but then getting through these conflicts would keep the team closer than ever.

There's a legend in the drama (perhaps in the world of ice hockey?) about a goddess of the ice and how players who can see the goddess are unbeatable in the rink. Satonaka Haru is the star player of his team and he has the potential to see the goddess of the ice if he works hard enough. He's had two coaches who were former ice hockey players and they tell Haru that he should not fall in love with someone because if he does, then he really won't be able to see the goddess of the ice. I don't know what's the reasoning for this but anyway, that's the premise.

Haru eventually sees the goddess of the ice and the goddess has Aki's features. When other people ask Haru what the goddess of the ice looks like, he said that perhaps the goddess looks different for each person. It seemed that a good player can see the goddess of the ice if he truly falls in love with someone.

I'm not sure how to interpret what happened in the end, really. Does it mean that people who are truly in love with someone and who know what it means to protect someone are the only ones who can excel in their work? This is such a romantic concept, to be sure, but I can't help but feel bad for all other people who are not in love; not only are they going to be lonely, they would also fail to be the best in their careers.

###
プライド Pride