"Future Diary" format heading for ABC

[Aaron Gerow]

>Presumably, this is the
>FUTURE DIARY which was made into a documentary last year.  Directed by
>Sugimoto Toru and released theatrically on 26 August 2000, it must be one of
>the highest grossing documentaries of all time ... anywhere.

Whether this is a documentary or not is very debatable--though the debate 
itself might be interesting.  As with the segment in TV's Unnan no 
hontoko, young people who auditioned for the show/film are thrown 
together and given scripts along the way as they play out a romance. Part 
of the attraction of the concept is the supposed reality of the feelings 
that are developed, but we can't deny that some of the pleasure stems 
from the simultaneous transformation of reality into a well-scripted TV 
drama and TV drama into reality.  Basically, this is representative of 
Japanese TV's version of reality TV, along with Denpa shonen and Urinari.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171