If love is the drug, then chemistry explains everything, right? That seems to be the premise of the four-part miniseries ¡°Renai wa Kagaku da¡± (¡°Love is Science¡°; Fuji TV, Mon.-Fri., 11 p.m.).
Four popular young female TV personalities ¡ª LiLiCo, Shelly, Mizuki Yamamoto and Chinami Suzuki ¡ª discuss the ¡°mystery and wonder of love,¡± which can be explained by the ¡°power of science.¡±
Each evening they tackle a different theme. On Monday, it¡¯s ¡°how love is born.¡± Tuesday they ponder ¡°the deep river separating men and women,¡± while Wednesday it¡¯s ¡°broken hearts.¡± Everything is wrapped up on Thursday with ¡°finding love scientifically.¡± It¡¯s not quite how The Beatles put it, but fair enough.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the death of Kenji Miyazawa, one of Japan¡¯s most beloved storytellers. To commemorate the occasion, NHK is presenting a series of weekly specials, ¡°Hachiju Nen Go no Kenji¡± (¡°Kenji 80 Years Later¡°; BS Premium, Wed., 10 p.m.), dedicated to different themes associated with Miyazawa, whose value as a cultural touchstone was his depiction of place and the emotional ties that bound individuals to that place.
This week, a group of internationally famous artists provide personal renderings of Miyazawa¡¯s children¡¯s stories in a variety of media, including hand-drawn animation, computer graphics and live-action re-creation. Participating artists include Kazuo Ebisawa, Haruo Inoue and PantoGraph Animation.
CM of the week
DMM.com : The company formerly known as Digital Media Mart once dealt mainly in rental DVDs ordered over the Internet. But it has since expanded into a number of other online services, including stock trading, foreign-currency exchange and even gambling. Its latest ad means to get viewers hip to its new biz in a clever way.
TV personality Rola, famous for her giggly cluelessness, sits on the edge of a sunken bathtub with her feet in the water, talking to her mother on her cellphone. ¡°I¡¯m in a commercial for the No. 3 company in the world,¡± she says excitedly, as a title explains that in terms of online transactions DMM.com is the third biggest company in the world. She pauses and says, ¡°What kind of company? Hmmm. I don¡¯t know!¡± Most viewers probably won¡¯t know either, but DMM.com hopes they will want to find out.
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