
Banner thanks to
berniechan
I love Kamiyama - I love his character, I love his angst, I love the actor who plays him, I love his funky outfits and wind-blown hairstyle, I love the stupid way he dances during Dream Chance...
I've always felt sorry for him but never have I cried with him like I did in this episode.
The main focus of this episode wasn't on the guest. The guest does his best and in the end things turn out okay for him which I was happy to see.
This episode was more drama and less Quiz Show. Kamiyama himself was ill and sweating before he even took to the stage. He fell and doubled over in pain many times yet he climbed back on his feet over and over again. In the end he fainted and was even attached to a drip. Yet the moment he woke, he ripped it out, slipped his sparkly black jacket back on, and stood back on the stage. Everyone - the guest and audience - was gone and The Quiz Show canceled, yet he demanded that the show go on. He yelled at Honma through the camera saying that the guest still hadn't completed the Dream Chance, despite having faced his inner demons.
Throughout the episode, Kamiyama said over and over that The Quiz Show was a place to grant dreams, both the guests' and his own.
There was more action and more secrets and mysteries uncovered but all I can focus on, even after watching the episode a second time is Kamiyama's desperate and futile plea at the end. It makes me cry every time I watch it. He failed and his failure destroyed the show, and there was nothing he could do to fix it.
I think what makes it hit home more is the fact that Sho Sakurai is the one playing Kamiyama. The workaholic Sho Sakurai who one year ago, almost to the day, pulled a similar stunt on live television. The Kamiyama portrayal is a very dramatized version of it but it just reminded me so much of when I saw Sho on NEWS ZERO that evening, doing his report as though nothing were wrong when he should have been at home resting. It was a stunt that made the media question if Johnny's Jimusho is pushing its pretty boy employees too far, and it is what turned Sho Sakurai into something more than just my favorite idol.
It turned him into my hero and someone I very much look up to now.
7 hugz | Leave hugz

