It’s been four long years since Yamashita Tomohisa graced the screen in a Fuji TV Getsuku (Monday@9) when he stole my heart in Buzzer Beat, which to this day remains one of the best dramas at capturing the heady days and nights of Summer. He returns next Monday to Fuji TV with Summer Nude, which follows the time slot vacated by the high profile Galileo 2, this time reuniting with not one but two leading ladies he’s worked with many times before. Yamapi plays a photographer who once had grand dreams but now works in a small seaside town doing wedding and funerals, pining for his ex-girlfriend played in a cameo appearance by Nagasawa Masami (which makes since since they worked on Proposal Daisakusen together and Summer Nude is penned by the same scriptwriter) who abruptly disappeared from his life three years ago. He has a chance encounter with Karina at her character’s wedding when he’s the photographer and ends up shooting the moment she gets left at the altar. Karina decides to take a breather from her fancy restaurant manager job in Tokyo and stays at the seaside town to cook for a restaurant owned by Toda Erika’s character, who is best friends and former classmates with Yamapi and has been nursing a crush on him all these years. Of course a love triangle develops. I was never a fan of Erika for the longest time until SPEC transformed her in my mind as an actress. Karina still has yet to impress me, but both of them look good with Pi so I’ll wait until watching the drama before making a decision which girl and which character I much prefer to be the end game. Yamapi sings the theme song for this drama also called “Summer Nude” and I hope the soundtrack for the drama is even a fraction as good as the soundtrack for Buzzer Beat since it helps smooth over the rough edges when Japan tries to do a romance dorama but doesn’t always have the same knack as K-dramas. I’m also immensely grateful that Pi’s hair looks good here, still forever traumatized by his fried capellini hair in BB.
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