This is another example of Kankuro Kudofs talent of mixing the hilarity of a screwball comedy with the despair and the loneliness of the people living at the fringes of society. Most of the characters are seeming nefer-do-wells and losers: a dying 21 year-old cancer patient, juvenile semi-delinquents, owners of failing stores, a pathological shop-lifter, a strip tease dancer, a call girl, an unlicensed barber, a teacher who has decided to get back at the students who have tormented her at school. All of them somehow come out as individuals with dignity and humanity. (Kudo does not condone criminality. He describes the brutality and savagery of real predatory criminals (gangsters involved in juvenile prostitution and extortion) without any sympathy.)
As many critics commented, this drama is irreverent, unpredictable and funny, but the undertone is pathos, as was reflected in the scene where one of the characters, Ozzy, who has been brain-damaged in an accident during a baseball match, suddenly remembers the following phrases from Macbeth he played in his high school days. Kudo gets him to recite:
. . . Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Pathos does not diminish hilarity.
A few words about some older actors who are relatively unknown among young JDorama fans: Ozzy, the character who appears in the first scene, saying gIt is the MORNING!h and who later recites Macbeth is played by Arata Furuta who is a star player of the enormously popular Shinkansen Theater Group. gYouh plays a call girl on roller skates. (gYouh played the mother in Kore-edafs gNobody Knows.h) Sadao Abe (who played the incompetent policeman in Ikebukuro West Gate Park and Donta in Tiger & Dragon) plays the Cat. Fumiyo Kohinata, who plays the father of the leading character (Bussan by Junichi Okada), is in numerous movies and TV series including Fuurinkazan.