Cell-Phone Soap Opera a Cool New Genre

Love comes to the really, really small screen in a mobile, only-in-Japan, soap opera made exclusively for KDDI 3G cellys. The live-action soap opera, Yokohama 80s, follows the predictable lives, loves, and losses of young, beach-loving Japanese boys and girls back when Madonna was still Like a Virgin. Eighties’ big hair, big shoulders, and big hits have been downsized to tiny, two-and-a-half-minute broadcast bites. The story is adapted from Shogakan Shukan’s weekly Big Comic Spirits-series “Tokyo Eighties” (published as a serial manga) but features all-new original characters and storylines by the same author. Can the mobile laundry soap commercials be far behind?