That show nobody asked for is on the air again tonight.
A late-night variety show, episode four
Blue Hawaii Aniki is a film director — in his dreams. Literally: only while
asleep. To pay the bills he hosts a worthless B-grade late-night variety
program called Soft Ore Demand.
This time the theme is autumn. Careers, cooking, going back to school,
and a day out.
Four segments, none of them important. And yet, somewhere between them,
you start to make out the shape of somebody's life.
The segments
Goddess of Career Change
Ace career agent Kuri Megumi conducts her interviews anywhere but an office.
Tonight: an office worker on indefinite leave who can't stop visiting the toy
store, and a former accounting clerk whose one point of pride is that she's
very, very good at holding the pads at a kickboxing gym.
Newlywed Cooking
Salmon rice cooked with burdock and maitake. The couple making it met at a
mock interview at the unemployment office, back when neither of them had a
single job offer and February was running out.
Reskilling Academy of Working Adults
A school where grown-ups go to redo their youth, and it's festival season.
Eight clubs, one public viewing room for people who'd rather not attend, and
a planning committee locally known as the only meeting on earth where saying
something is worth the trouble.
Busside Stroll
A comedy segment about not going for a walk with a woman in a bath towel.
Tonight's prompt: autumn outings.
The detours
Between the segments the show cuts away to where these people came from.
Lego bricks at after-school care. Five middle school entrance exams, five
rejections. Two hundred job applications and no offers. A 6 a.m. hiking trail
on a Saturday, because your boss said so.
The program laughs at all of them. It just doesn't say how they got there.
This does.
Notes
Fourth in the Blue Hawaii Aniki series. No prior entries required — it's a
variety show, you can tune in mid-season.