I finally watched the documentary about
Yamapi's life.
I'm kinda surprised I haven't see any fan reaction to it (in the form of a long rant of a related fic) around here. It's the most extensive piece of information
about him that we have got since last year's
Shounen Club Premium interview. And I can't think of any other before that one. I mean, you can pick a lot of information if you follow written interviews and his nikki, but there's nothing more telling than body reactions and face expressions, or the lack thereof.
Most of the things I assumed of him are confirmed in this (as real as it can get, of course). Yamapi's a workaholic with serious self-esteem and absent-father-figure issues. He's very driven and motivated by his own goals in life, extremely down-to-earth since a very young age, and he really, *really* doesn't like to lose. He's perfect material for fics, people, why haven't you write him like this??
He's very family-oriented for obvious reasons, and is kind of refreshing to find a guy in the entertainment business that has this amount of respect for his mother
without being a mamma's boy! It's really amazing that being a kid he was smart enough to find a way to contribute to his family working in something that he also liked. Yes, he did enrolled himself in the agency because he wanted to do what
Takizawa-senpai was doing, but doing that he got a job, and a lot more job opportunities, at age eleven! Just what he needed to help out at home.
The way he goes about it IS dangerous, though. I mean, even the people making the documentary seemed worried about him and his overworked schedule. I can only think of a few people in the agency that could be as overworked as him, and even then I can't think of enough stuff to keep up with what Yamapi does in a week. Even if they don't get as much exposure because of it, it's a wonderful thing
NEWS doesn't have its own TV show. I cannot see how Yamapi could fit *that* into his schedule. Same goes for the rest of NEWS, for that matter. No wonder
Massu is the one with the biggest smile of them all, he's probably the only one that's taking things a little more lightly, even if by being in NEWS he has to deal with releases, promotions, photo-shoots, cms, concerts... you have to double that if you're talking about
Ryo because of
Kanjani8 (plus a lot of trips to Osaka and back), have to add hosting
Shounen Club, stage plays and having his own radio show to
Koyama, and dorama shooting and promotion, plus school, for
Shige,
Tegoshi and Yamapi, and again, with Yamapi you have to add now a movie! Come
on!! How is it possible that he has not collapsed yet? The fact that, at age twelve he was learning sixty different songs for three concerts in a day does NOT amuse me. If that isn't child abuse, I don't know what is.
I'm guessing the people behind the documentary wanted to show somewhere what Yamapi did for fun and to relax. Of course, they didn't get to see any of that because Yamapi doesn't have time for it. BUT, we do know he hangs out with his friends from time to time. It's understandable, though, that his "from time to time" is quite different than ours and involves longer periods between going outs. We also know Yamapi has a close and small group of friends, and they are the same friends he has had for years now. In any other case I'd think of the possibility of "friends outside the business", but here... as established before, Yamapi doesn't have free time. He doesn't have time to *make* new friends, so he sticks to the people he grow up with. It probably makes him feel more comfortable the fact that his friends are almost as huge workaholics as he is. In any case, it is also very telling the fact that he's usually the one asking to go for drinks and he pays for it, more often than not. Here's one of the times his insecurities and his obsession with being "the right kind of man" shows up at the same time. He's honest and smart enough to not want to form meaningless relationships, so he doesn't make nice or small talk just to fill out silence when he meets new people. But he will do everything in his power to show someone he likes and respect that he'd like to be worth of their friendship. This guy doesn't see money as a way to commodity, he see it as a tool for fulfillment, whatever the form that takes. It's a little twisted, even if it's better than the alternative.
This is why it bugs me a little when they portrait Yamapi as a friendly, talky, even outgoing type of guy in fics. He probably is friendly enough with the cast and crew he is working with in any given dorama, but that doesn't make him *friends* with them. And there's nothing *wrong* with that! It's like fandom looks down upon being quiet and shy. They're not shown as bad qualities to have, they just not show up in the person that has them! Which is funny enough, 'cus probably the only guys
in NEWS that are really outgoing are Koyama and Tegoshi, (and Kusano), the rest of them are a lot more calm and quiet and they don't do much craziness,
except when they are *with* Koyama and Tegoshi!
I do laugh a lot when they portrait Yamapi as dumb 'cus they usually show *everyone* as a little dumb and that's excuse enough to make them do crazy shit in crack fics. But is getting a little old. People forget he's about to finish school, and what he got himself into was a particularly good move on his part, *again*. Studying marketing and economics in his line of business will give him a chance to continue IN the business long after his fame is gone. Yes, he complained about it during the documentary like any other university student would when he's tired and really doesn't wanna think of doing his homework, but in last year's interview he made a very good explanation as to how his classes have helped him understand how the world that he lives in actually works. And again, nobody out there shows this calculated thinking on his part in fics, or even rants about him.
The fact that I'm writing this when I know that, what? two people are gonna read it and understand what I'm talking about, doesn't speak very highly of me, because I tend to write here about stuff that don't matter a lot more than of stuff that do. But, real life is boring and I've done rants like this about *fictional* characters, so this is an improvement from the time I wrote extremely long posts about
Digimon and
LOST! Yamapi is an interesting guy to follow around. I fell in love with him not because I found him atractive or because of NEWS, I actually found NEWS thanks to him *because* of his other work. The fact that he kept showing up in doramas that I liked and ended up
always playing the character I liked the most, and the fact that those characters where rather different from each other... He did win me over with Akira in
Nobuta. I haven't look back since! ^^
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amused
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tired