Greeeen -- Hoshikage no Yell（星影のエール）

Ordinarily, Japan would be entering one of the biggest holiday periods of the year, Golden Week. However with COVID-19, that's not going to be possible. In fact, this will end up becoming the largest mass staycation in Japanese history, and I hope that this record will be achieved. So, certainly, all of my good wishes are going out to my friends and relatives over there to stay safe and healthy during this time.

The last time that I showed any interest in an NHK morning drama serial (8:00-8:15) was all the way back in 2012, the year that I started "Kayo Kyoku Plus", when I watched "Ume-chan Sensei"（梅ちゃん先生）. Right now, with the schedule being vastly changed on TV Japan, there is this huge block of time between 5 pm and 9 pm Eastern Daylight Time in which we're getting NHK in real time. So that means getting the 2-hour morning news followed by the current morning drama serial and then the information show "Asaichi".

I have watched the news and then "Asaichi" with the latter being usually presented at 1 pm on tape delay on weekdays when TV Japan used to have its regular schedule. I didn't have much interest in catching the morning serial, but frankly, I think it would have been rather churlish of me to just step away from the living room for 15 minutes between the end of the news and the beginning of "Asaichi" just to avoid the drama so I decided to grin and bear it.

Strangely enough, "Yell"（エール）hasn't been too bad at all. Basically the biography of sorts of songwriter Yuuji Koseki（古関裕而）, whose works including the Hanshin Tigers fight song have already been represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", it's been pretty entertaining because there seems to be more comedy than what I would have expected for an NHK morning serial. There is the star, Masataka Kubota（窪田正孝）as songwriter Yuuichi Koyama（小山裕一）who looks a bit like David Hyde Pierce from "Frasier" and has the fidgety timidity of Don Knotts transmitting through his face and gangly limbs. His co-star, Fumi Nikaido（二階戸ふみ）, who plays force-of-nature wannabe singer and future wife Oto Sekiuchi（関内音）, has also displayed her own share of goofiness. The narrator, Kenjiro Tsuda（津田健次郎）, only recently played a literal corporate lizard in an anime.

Of course, there is the theme song that always plays during the opening credits. This time, it's "Hoshikage no Yell" (Starlight Yell) by the band of dentists-cum-musicians GReeeeN, and I gotta say that the song is growing on me as I watch the show. It comes across as an optimistic happy-go-lucky march that foretells the musically-inclined couple's weathering of the usual obstacles (such as World War II) to happiness and success, including something to do with the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

"Hoshikage no Yell" will be released as a digital download single next month. As for the show itself, I'm not sure whether I will catch every episode, but so far, it's been a nice re-entry for me into NHK morning dramas again. I just wonder whether the current pandemic will cause any disruptions in filming future episodes.

As an update, "Hoshikage no Yell" hit No. 1 on the Oricon digital single charts.