Gibo to Musume no Blues: Step-mom and Daughter Blues
January 8, 2025 11:40 AM - Season 1 (Full Season) - Subscribe
(from IMDB) Akiko Iwaki (played by Haruka Ayase) is a career woman who works very hard at her job. She gets married to Ryoichi Miyamoto (Yutaka Takanouchi) who has a daughter. Akiko must now deal with housework and raising her stepdaughter (two different actors), through a ten-episode series that is really two five-episode series shown back-to-back.
I really don't know what to do with this one. On the one hand, that bare-bones description makes me cringe, fearing a Hallmark movie about a career woman who finally realizes her "true calling as a stay-at-home mom" (/barf). On the other hand, the career woman here is clearly neurodivergent (if not an actual robot or Vulcan spy) and remains so throughout the series, staying blank-faced and logical while also applying a monomaniacal drive for perfection to every obstacle from defeating an enemy company to winning her stepdaughter's trust.
For another, we don't actually get to see a lot of her being a successful mother, despite the stated premise of the show (there's a huge timeskip from her first few days as a single mother to her final few days before her daughter goes off to university). I also suspect that I am missing a lot of the jokes: ie, reviewers have noted Akiko's extremely formal way of speaking, contrasting with the baker Mugita's frequent (I assume) spoonerisms, but that is lost on me since I have no Japanese. I'm also thinking that the show is addressing stereotypes of career women in Japan that I'm not familiar with.
That being said, i enjoyed the whole thing, especially when Akiko gets to apply her formidable intellect and sleep-is-for-the-weak work ethic to whatever problem is facing her at the time. Refreshingly, the series ends with her gleefully (I think) sending her daughter off to university so she herself can take a high-powered corporate job in another part of the country.
There's also a subplot with her husband that informs the narrative but doesn't really dominate it. A Hallmark movie would have been all over that shit.
Available on Netflix in Canada, under the title "StepMom and Daughter Blues"
I really don't know what to do with this one. On the one hand, that bare-bones description makes me cringe, fearing a Hallmark movie about a career woman who finally realizes her "true calling as a stay-at-home mom" (/barf). On the other hand, the career woman here is clearly neurodivergent (if not an actual robot or Vulcan spy) and remains so throughout the series, staying blank-faced and logical while also applying a monomaniacal drive for perfection to every obstacle from defeating an enemy company to winning her stepdaughter's trust.
For another, we don't actually get to see a lot of her being a successful mother, despite the stated premise of the show (there's a huge timeskip from her first few days as a single mother to her final few days before her daughter goes off to university). I also suspect that I am missing a lot of the jokes: ie, reviewers have noted Akiko's extremely formal way of speaking, contrasting with the baker Mugita's frequent (I assume) spoonerisms, but that is lost on me since I have no Japanese. I'm also thinking that the show is addressing stereotypes of career women in Japan that I'm not familiar with.
That being said, i enjoyed the whole thing, especially when Akiko gets to apply her formidable intellect and sleep-is-for-the-weak work ethic to whatever problem is facing her at the time. Refreshingly, the series ends with her gleefully (I think) sending her daughter off to university so she herself can take a high-powered corporate job in another part of the country.
There's also a subplot with her husband that informs the narrative but doesn't really dominate it. A Hallmark movie would have been all over that shit.
Available on Netflix in Canada, under the title "StepMom and Daughter Blues"
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