Ore no Ie no Hanashi (2021) User Reviews

That twist

[ladyliliroche · 8/10 · 28 February 2023]

After watching The Last of Us episode Left Behind, I definitely did not expect to cry twice in a day.

What appeared to be just a light hearted family drama turned out to be an emotional punch to your heart. It was like in the drama and their pro wrestling move, that high feeling of being lifted high and then being slammed to the floor.

The show itself offered a good insight on what it is like taking care an old person and the effect of dementia on a person and the impact on their family.

I like that it offered an insight on the world of Noh too and contrasted that with the pro wrestling world. Such two different world that able to contrast and complimentary one another.

The casts are great, setting are great, truly a delight slice of life drama.

Surprisingly bittersweet and well written

[claudineharper · 9/10 · 27 March 2023]

It starts out looking like a silly show , in a good way, with wrestling, jokes and brilliant use of a fantastic Yumi Matsutoya song, which was the key to me sticking to it! My husband loves wrestling so that worked for him. Eventually, forget the pop song, forget the wrestling - it becomes a heartfelt and introspective drama about dementia, mistakes, regret, infidelity, discovering things are not what you thought they were, the behaviour of the elderly, divorce, life deadlines, father son relations, and family overall.

The ending is very shocking and a real left hand turn but somehow works, if just to show life doesn't always turn out the way you think and you could lose the one thing you thought was the only thing you couldn't lose.

Really well made and written and very sweet and funny.

This series is not what it seems...

[phoinikaskg-888-590010 · 7/10 · 20 March 2023]

A story about family, old age, wrestling and Noh. It mixes those 2 worlds with comedy and drama in a family setting.

There are a lot of funny and dramatic elements, especially around parent-child relationships, aging and dementia.

A prodigal son returns to his family home to take care of his father and reclaim his position as the next head of the family. It presents the struggles he has to go through by leaving what he loves (wrestling) to perform his duty to his family by assuming the Noh training and facing the challenges of his father's declining health.

All that in what it seemed like an ordinary slapstick series, well, up until...

I didn't see the end coming and it hit hard.

Loved this

[TheodoraEh · 9/10 · 21 July 2023]

First of all, Tomoya Nagase was great in this. Right now Netflix has 3 series with him as the male lead. I haven't watched the rest where he's in his early and late 20s, but now being in his 40s and me seeing him for the first time, I think he's great. We were born in the same year :)

The whole cast was really good to be honest, he was just more of the central character. Even the kids and all the side actors.

I actually laughed out loud in so many parts, the humor in this one is sometimes subtle but really effective. I found this the best part of this show, it made all the heavy stuff more light hearted.

I wasn't expecting the sad twist, I got a bit annoyed, but it worked out.

Story of My Family

[kgenereux-75-533576 · 8/10 · 13 October 2023]

This 2021 Japanese series seems to have been re-titled "Story of My Family" by Netflix. It features the veteran actor Tomoya Nagase, who starred in the hilarious My Boss My Hero and the cult youth drama, IWGP / Ikaburo West Gate Park. (He deservedly won top acting honors in Japan for his starring role here btw.) Tomoya plays the eldest sibling of a clan of revered Noh performers whose "National Treasure" father is coming to terms with Alzheimers. In the very first scenes we learn that he had abandoned serious Noh traditions for an "escapist" style life in pro-wrestling, but has returned as a prodigal son. He clearly has a lot of "catching up" to do and fences to mend. His role oscillates between comedic and tragic and often careens toward the mythic. Although he is is the "narrator" throughout the series, his emotions (like the emotions of many of the other characters) somehow remain inscrutable. Like the family in the story, the series' flow is quite a puzzle: a puzzle with many pieces that never quite fit together. But I enjoyed trying to figure it all out anyway and I'm still scratching my head over episode #10.