Kimi wa Petto 2003 VS 2017

Kimi wa Petto is an old favourite of mine - it's a brilliant josei manga about dependence and healing. It's also one of the two manga (I know of) which have been adapted (in the same country) into drama twice. Are either a perfect adaptation? No. Somehow, both dramas manage to feel massively different. I put off the 2017 version for a while, unhappy with the casting, but now I'm watching it I just have to make some comparisons.

The story is about Sumire, a seemingly cool and collected career woman who in reality is crippled with loneliness. An encounter with a runaway dancer, a boy about ten years younger with no name, allows her to become emotionally vulnerable for the first time in years. She jokingly asks him to be her 'pet' - on that condition, he can stay with her. He agrees.

  In this aspect, this manga sets itself about from all the other stories about adults trying to have functioning relationships. It looks at the nature of romantic relationships in modern times - awkward, superficial and unsatisfying - with a harsh lens. For instance, Sumire's upright relationship with the man of her dreams is constantly juxtaposed with her more comfortable, easy rapport with Momo. It offers as a moral that everyone needs a little emotional intimacy. Not seeking that is unhealthy. 

The 2003 drama adaptation of Kimi wa Petto starred Matsumoto Jun and Koyuki. Their chemistry is definitely the highlight of the drama, which was short and sweet enough to trim the fat off the story and focus on them, and their changing dynamic, entirely. Matsumoto, in particular, was so perfectly cast as Momo - he nailed the easygoing persona of Momo delightfully and explored Momo's turbulent emotional state. This drama was so funny, sneaking jokes in the rapid-fire dialogue and building on the best parts of the early manga.
  I would say that the focus on the two main characters did mean that, as a result, the supporting characters were not very well fleshed out - I probably wouldn't be mentioning this if I hadn't liked the quirky characters that Sumire worked with in the manga. Also, since the manga didn't end until 2005, this iteration of the story had an original ending. It wasn't bad, but you could argue its ambiguity was inconclusive of the conflicts set up. 

I'm going to be frank about the 2017 adaptation: I didn't like it. Tonally, its completely different, shown through a dreamy shoujo-like haze. Just watch the opening, its sickly sweet.This drama was longer, giving it a larger time-frame to put the rest of the manga on screen. And yet, there was nothing satisfying about how the episodes were structured - the plot chugged along too slowly - surely, with more material to power through, it should have been tightly written - and the emotional payoffs are glossed over and forgotten too quickly. Whilst, it gave a similar ending to the manga, the road there had been reconstructed. There was no hint of the interesting characters in the manga. 2017, I believe, was trying to do what 2003 did by completely relying on the chemistry of the leads, and that fell flat on its face.

  I didn't like the actors. Moreover, the original characters so meticulously tweaked that sometimes I couldn't recognise them. Sumire is an entirely different woman in this drama. She doesn't smoke. She's a chocoholic. She gets so nervous around people that sometimes she breaks out in uncontrollable sweats. I can't help but feel like these are attempts to make her more family-friendly, which frankly ignores all of the manga's messages. They sucked the originality out of her. 

Ultimately, yes, I think you should watch the 2003 version, because the 2017 version fails to capture the emotional resonance of 2003 and the general tone of the manga in the first place. I suppose the failings of 2017 are caused by attempts to modernise the story, which is now more than a decade old, but that's just not good enough.