Um wow. I don't normally do well with wholesome slice of life stuff, far too often it minimises suffering, and are so filled with useless platitudes copypasted off Chicken Soup, that I usually end up much sadder watching it than before starting. Almost all of the wholesome branded stuff were slaps to my face about what's never achievable for me, like being forced to view video after videos of people eating delicious meals while I'm starving.

Given that this is a show where the protagonist Asami 1. Wanted to be a human next life, 2. Was willing to re go through her own childhood multiple times voluntarily (which btw is my definition of torture), I really assumed that it's a show that's too far-fetched speculative fiction for me. And how wrong I was. This is a solid contender for Show of the Year and it's only half way through January.

Something I want to put right out there: it's a comedy, and it's genuinely very very funny. Rest of what I will talk about will make this look like a drama. The comedy is so well done that I don't want this aspect to be lost. Anyway.

The protagonist was content, unambiguous, and generally disinterested in any forms of achievement. She was also intensely an eccentric weirdo. All of these are complements: the cast were such genuinely good people that I want unachievable, unimaginable slice-of-life happiness to all of them. This was lampshaded later on when an in-show fictional TV show talked about re-living one's life it was all over the top isekai power fantasy.

I'm sure all of us would at least think about if we were do redo our lives we'd get Tesla stock early, buy bitcoin early, and retire as billionaires at 25 (oh, remember my favourite villain of all time from Zero Escape?). Some of us would find this so appalling that we would make conscious objection to not do it. For Asami, she didn't even think about this. Never went through her mind. She had the kind of life that's so free of poverty and abuse that she had no need for greed. Even typing this down made me feel like, on paper I should be filled with envy. Except I love Asami and I'm so glad she never had to live what most people lived.

Consider I'm writing this, there will be that mandatory question. My answer is I don't know if Asami was ace/aro, I know that if she were she wasn't so allo that she couldn't live a fulfilling life without romance. Considering she had hetero crush as a school girl, and a boyfriend in adulthood; all I can say is she's more allo than me. Which is kinda a useless scale to compare with as I'm so Not Allo that even a binary system would've worked for me. I do consider this an ace/aro friendly show.

If _any_ fictions are capable of telling a story where a woman don't need romance/marriage/children to live a fulfilling life, then extra incredible that an East Asian show can also emphasis on a person don't need to be a high status/extreme wealth/extraordinary achievements to life a fulfilling life either.

Asami's lack of ambition was noted many times, including that in the final life she became a high achiever as mean of reaching her goal of piloting a specific plane to save her specific friends. Once that goal had been met, both Asami and her friend Uno Mari (the other life cycler and "achiever") immediately resigned off their high status jobs to do what they truly wanted to do: Asami as a generic council worker and Mari a child carer in their hometown. I got pretty teary at that part tbh, I don't know how many of us have the gut to leave a "high status" career that's killing us, and dare I say a lot of it are just pure vanity, and maybe elements of subconscious self harm.

80% of this show is the interaction between the four best friends, between colleagues, and between a loving family. The lines were so natural that I don't know how much of it was improvised on set. I was pretty surprised that the script was written by a man, in the way that I was amazed that Rules of Rose and Fata Morgana were written by men. Men are absolutely capable of writing not-men, provided they are willing to humanise everyone of every gender in their lives.

A common comment I saw about Brush Up Life is how "real" it felt. To me, I felt it's not so much meant as reality, but an idealised utopia where family abuse, corrective rape, and allo-coersion don't exist, everyone's basic needs of welfare are taken care of, and if you are not greedy you don't actually need wealth as a mandatory element of happiness. It's about the security in a functional social structure and family structure and greater support network. And it is done so well, I feel like maybe that's a near future we can hope for.

And how good was the ending? It ended with Asami's death after a fulfilling life, she's ready to become something not human but a creature in her home town, and the four best friends are now four pigeons who are still best friends. Crying while typing this lol, this is how good the ending is.

The script is strong, the direction is solid, the acting is spot on. And I don't even have the 90/00/10s nostalgia like its target audience do, and I already love everything about this show.

#TV #TVshow #TVShows #JapaneseDrama #JapaneseComedy #JDrama #BrushUpLife #Rebooting