Sprout First Impressions

Decided to take a look at Sprout and while it is not knocking me off my feet I will probably watch it when I can when I have time to kill.

To say the least I am not really impressed with this series. Mostly because I feel I have seen this all before and done better. This is about as standard and generic as shoujo (girls') romances get and it does not seem to really add anything unique to it.

Not to mention the main character Ikenouchi Miku, played by Morikawa Aoi, is not the kind of character I feel any desire to support. She is very much a typical teenager, thinking that the world revolves around her and her problems, and seems to spend a large amount of time daydreaming about her "destined one", who is really some stranger that helped her out once.

Honestly I would love to see a series play with this trope to have the "destined" person be someone that the main character not only does not end up with, but would not want to in the first place. But unfortunately that will not be this series.

Even though I do tend to worry about Chinen Yuri's acting skills he is not so bad so far. Of course this is not a challenging role by any means but he does not come off as wooden as I have seen him so I am willing to think he may have actually improved. There is not much to say about his character, Narahashi Souhei. He is your typical nice guy (though thankfully not a Nice Guy) and that is just about it.

While I loved Lewis Jesse in Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou I cannot get myself to care for his character in Sprout. Of course a good portion of this is because he is stuck as the "cool" guy with playing Katagiri Hayato. This means he has to pretend to be emotionless for the most part and is the trope I really hate in shoujo romance stories, the asshole that the heroine will somehow have feelings for. Thankfully it is pretty transparent that even if (though I am almost certain this will happen) Miku ends up in a love triangle with Souhei and Hayato she will end up with the nice guy over the jerk which is actually the reverse of what usually happens in these stories.

I kinda feel sorry for Souhei to be paired up with Miku as he does seem like a genuinely nice guy. And I fear for whatever reason the story will think up for why he will be eventually breaking up with Miyuki to be with Miku instead. Because really this series is that transparent. And Miku is pretty self-absorbed, which makes sense since she is a teenager but it rarely makes for an endearing character.

Probably the real reason I will keep watching this drama is for Hashimoto Ryosuke's character, Takigawa Naoharu. The character is pretty much Miyata Toshiya but with a pretty face. He has the highlight of this episode and makes watching another one worth it as long as he shows up.

Other than that there is also the eye candy that is Fujii Shuuka. Tanaka Juri and Yasui Kentaro may have small parts but they are not bad. In fact I would take a drama about Miku's friends over Miku already as they seem to actually have interesting personalities.

This is very basic shoujo fare and I do not expect to be surprised by anything that happens in the drama. It looks like even for the genre it plays it safe with being as generic as possible for the most part. In fact I would say that Hasshi's character is the only thing that is stand out about it.

But as generic as it is it is not what I would consider bad. Boring if you know the tropes well and most likely forgettable, but not bad.