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The story
Screenwriter Akiko Nogi’s post on X (formerly Twitter) reading “Please don’t use our drama as a stick to beat VIVANT with” became a hot topic on 5ch’s Entertainment/Sports Breaking News+ board. The remark came after Political Pan, Nogi’s new drama, kept getting set side-by-side with TBS ratings juggernaut VIVANT in comparisons of political content, with social media framing the two as rivals over “which one’s better.” Alongside talk of the ratings gap between the two shows (Political Pan at 4.1% vs. VIVANT’s 21.8% series finale) and debate over each show’s actual quality, the thread split between posters who read Nogi’s comment as a political statement and those who didn’t.
Akiko Nogi
@nog_ak
I’d really rather you didn’t use our drama as a stick to beat VIVANT with. There’s no point or meaning in pitting dramas against each other. Why not just watch both? 👀
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
Down with lookism~~! (mimics an over-the-top protest chant)
Sounds like they don't get along with Fujiko (the Lupin III character)
It's less "bashing the government" and more just talking about the political system, isn't it?
You can get through life just fine without watching either.
Satomi Ishihara felt dated too.
LOL, riding on VIVANT's name for free publicity.
Never even heard of this drama, you clown.
Vivant Season 1 was good.
Season 2 was rough — you could tell right away the writer had changed. Still, once a show's got momentum going, the ratings just don't drop, huh.
For the record, Season 1's writer is currently in hot water over Toyotomi Brothers (the NHK taiga drama).
That bad, huh… So the movie's all buzz and no substance — guaranteed flop, then.
No way anyone's doing that.
Oh, they exist.
This'll keep going into next year.
Both Ohtani and Vivant are just being hyped by Dentsu (the ad agency) — they're probably not even that popular for real.
They keep going off about stuff like "ugh, the nationalism in this" and bash it nonstop.
Having the leads come from poor backgrounds just to sound off about politics and money, with the cheap "nepo kid" criticism on top, is pretty shallow.
And it still won't touch religious groups with political ties at all.
VIVANT's the best!
After all that promotion, it still got totally beaten by Minamida Minami and Lost 10.
But this year every Wednesday-10pm show besides Lupin flopped, so by that standard it's an unusually big hit for this slot.
Part of the reason is also that Mio Imada's show in the same slot on the other network is bombing hard.
"After all that promotion!" — that phrase gets thrown around a lot, but how much is "that much," really?
I barely remember Lupin getting any huge promo push on Fuji TV.
Wasn't it pretty normal-level?
Unusually big hit? When Political Pan's latest episode only pulled 4.1%?
VIVANT's finale was 21.8%, you know.
Do the other dramas in this slot normally only get like 2%?
Ratings: Kyuumei (Lifesaving) > Minamida Minami > Uraraka > Lupin > Kidnap
TVer streaming: Uraraka > Kyuumei > Minamida Minami > Lupin > Kidnap
The fact that Kidnap, the one they spent the most money on, is dead last on both lists is honestly hilarious.
So the curse struck again, huh.
Even after TV Asahi moved the drama's time slot, it still flopped.
You'd think the real tough draw would be the 10pm slot going up against Hodo Station, though.
A garbage drama like this couldn't pull off that role anyway.
Maybe if it were something like Lost 10 saying it, sure, but…
Oh, someone's actually talking about LOST10.
but Lupin loses outright — both as entertainment and as political commentary, I'd say.
Nogi probably has more she really wants to say too, but if she's holding back to avoid offending a certain religious group, that's a tough position to argue from.
VIVANT's script went after opposition parties knowing full well it'd cause backlash.
VIVANT 2 — writer changed, totally fell apart!
Toyotomi Brothers — the script's a total mess!
Both are losing out here.
I mean, a taiga drama written by someone whose morning drama (asadora) already flopped was never going to be good lol
Japanese TV dramas and movies are nothing but misses lately.
Even here in Japan, Korean dramas are more popular.
Did you not see that one she did with Kamenashi recently…?
That one was really something…
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
“Tataki-bō” (literally “a stick for hitting”) is internet slang for using one work or person as a comparison tool to put another down — and that’s exactly what sparked this thread, with two politically-tinged dramas getting pitted against each other. VIVANT, a socially conscious drama about the dark side of the state, closed out its run with a 21.8% finale rating, while Political Pan, airing the same season, reportedly pulled just 4.1%. In the thread, some read the matchup as a simple popularity comparison, while others questioned the quality of the political messaging in each show. What’s easy to misread here is that this isn’t actually a fight over real party politics — it’s just an online dispute over how each drama handles, and gets judged on, its subject matter. A few replies did include blanket claims about real political parties or stances, but this article leaves those out and focuses on the exchanges that stick to discussing the shows themselves.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Entertainment/Sports Breaking News+) thread “[PR] Political Pan screenwriter: “Please don’t use our drama as a stick to beat VIVANT with… why not just watch both? 👀”“
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