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risyomei
Reviews
Mother (2010)
This is a comment for the review "I wish this series to be finished after episode 10, or has another ending!"
I am a Chinese living in Japan for more than seven years. I am trying to answer the question 'Why Tsunami has to be sent to the children facility' from prospective of Japanese culture.
First of all, Japanese are extremely rule obeying. As an educated normal Japanese, it is uncommon to break the law, even for justice. But Nao did it to save Tsugumi, which seems quite reasonable from the view of Chinese like me, but not the case for Japanese people. It is mainly because if you don't have a legal identity, you will have a serious problem living in Japan. For instance, providing the affiliation ( the company or school name you belong) is mandatory to rent a house or buy cars. Also, 70% of medical expenses is covered by public insurance only if you have legal identity.
Nao knows that even if she abducts Tsugumi again, they will not have any insurance, Tsugumi will have trouble going to school, and most importantly, she can not fake the little girl's death again, which means that police will keep searching for them. On the other hand, Nao watched the video taken in the facility by Shunsuke, and she know that Tsugumi would have a happy life there, so she decided to leave the girl there.
A lot of Japanese people think this drama has 'Happy Ending', I can not agree with them when I finished this drama first time. I think that little girl should stay with Nao. After watching it for three times, I finally understand that it was the best for Tsugumi to stay in the facility until 20.
One possible alternative might be that friends of Nao adopt Tsugumi and give Tsugumi to Nao secretly, which would be preposterous from Japanese perspective.
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I would say I prefer the drama ends at episode 1 or 10. The formar makes it a great movie, and the latter leave a huge imaginaly space for audience.