With summer nearly over and temperatures falling to somewhat habitable levels, Tokyoites can finally go out on all those leisurely walks they were dreaming of during the country’s sauna days. But why would they when TV and the internet had so much to offer them instead this past week, like…

Beauty Is in the Eye of the Ugly Girl

“Are ugly people worthy of love?” That’s the profound question that FujiTV dares to ask in their new streaming drama Busu no Hitomi ni Koishiteru (~ “I’m in Love with an Ugly Girl’s Eyes.”) On the show, Naoto, a dancer and performer of Exile and Sandaime J Soul Brothers fame, plays Osamu Suzuno, an exceedingly-handsome voice actor and photographer dating the beautiful Alice. But then one day, he meets the titular “ugly girl” Miyuki (Tomita Miu) and a spark is born between them that will eventually lead to them marrying.

https://twitter.com/busukoi2019/status/1174228665938382849

That’s not really a spoiler seeing as the show is based on the humorous essays of Osamu Suzuki who wrote about marrying and falling in love with his wife Miyuki Oshima. The essays were even turned into a comedy comic book where Miyuki is depicted as a hideous 2-meter-tall ogre, a fact that Suzuki’s “ugly” wife must have LOVED (although she herself is an accomplished comedian so she might have).

Unfortunately, so far, the show doesn’t seem to be embracing its tongue-in-cheek roots. Although the series only premiered on September 17, it already seems to be positioning Naoto in the role of Miyuki’s savior, which was never the theme of Suzuki’s works. There were traces of it in the 2006 KansaiTV adaptation, but the 2019 version really seems to want to focus earnestly on the message that “ugly people are people too!”

And the Prettiest Cure Is…

Between July 12 and August 31, fans of the magical girl anime franchise Pretty Cure got to vote in an NHK poll on their favorite series, main character, song etc. Votes like that are big events in Japan, which is why the results of the Pretty Cure poll were announced on NHK’s Premium channel on September 14. Long story short: the original series, Futari wa Pretty Cure (~ “We are Pretty Cure”) pretty much steamrolled the competition.

It was voted as the #1 Pretty Cure Series, with one of its protagonist, Misumi Nagisa, being voted the best Main Character. Even the show’s opening DANZEN! Futari wa Pretty Cure (~ “That’s Right! We are Pretty Cure”) was voted as the franchise’s best song.

But that was to be expected, as apparently women between the ages of 20-29 dominated the polls, and they would have been the ones who grew up with the original and loved it the most. That’s just the power of nostalgia.

Tokyo Game Show 2019 – Keanu Reeves and Some Other Stuff

This year, the annual TGS video game expo was held between September 14-15 (for the general public) at Makuhari Messe, Chiba, where CD Projekt Red has really been pushing their sci-fi role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of its April 16, 2020 release. The game has made news before because it stars Keanu Reeves, though the developers confirmed that you can’t have sex with his character in the game so really what’s the point?

TGS attendees were also shown a 50-minute gameplay session of the upcoming game Death Stranding, which, while impressive, didn’t give away much about the story. But seeing as this is a Hideo Kojima production, you would need about a week to do that anyway. The game is schedule for release on November 8, 2019.

Finally, there was a lot of excitement about the remake of Final Fantasy VII, with tickets to play the demo reportedly running out in just a couple of hours. If you missed it at the show, you’ll have to wait until March 3, 2020 to get your hands on the game.

Twitter User Shows Off Their Poop Hands

On September 14, Twitter use @GAWA_TaTsuTa posted a tweet about their younger sister coming up with a hand gesture that looks just like the popular poop emoji, and announcing that it will most definitely “go viral.” The original tweet has now been liked over 180,000 times.