Iguana no Musume (1996)

Iguana no Musume is a bizarre 90's drama intended to be viewed as a modern fairytale, complete with magic. (Alternately, it can be viewed as a romantic and family drama studded with devastating mental illness. I prefer to view the show through this lens.)

A high school girl, Rika, has lived her entire life shunned, villified, and verbally abused by her mother. Her mother is disturbingly mentally ill and openly unable to love Rika. This mistreatment all stems from the fact that Rika's mother only sees an ulgy iguana when she looks at her. Rika grows up entirely convinced that she is actually an iguana and that everyone will shun her when they find out the truth.

The story mostly follows painfully shy Rika in high school, finally coming out of her shell, making friends and falling in love. Her mother attempts to sabotage progress at every turn and is quite easy to dislike.

This show very clearly shows its age, is based on a ridiculous premise and has some aggravatingly oblivious and over-simplified characters portrayed by blunt actors. However, it does have its strong moments. Highlights include clear, consistent character growth and an unexpected level of tradgedy. It's a wonderful example of the incessantly victimized heroine of shoujo manga. It's an easy, engaging and entirely bizarre watch.

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Mom Hating Her Own Daughter!

The premise seems weird and creepy: The mom (Yuriku) sees her daughter (Rika) as an iguana, an ugly lizard, but this premise captures their relationship well: Rika is a remainder & reminder of the mother's traumatic ugly past, so she hates her daughter to the point of killing her and committing suicide herself. She wants to get rid of her past, but the daughter's existence doesn't let her do so. At the same time, she needs the daughter always beside herself, because by abusing her, she can deal with her uncontrollable anger; this is her revenge for her past. She's addicted to her victim-daughter.

The dorama also shows well how destructive the relationship is on the daughter: Soon Rika starts to see herself as an iguana too; she's worthless, only adding pain to the world, better to not exist. Besides, the self-hatred makes her a good target for bullies & people who need to project their anger on others and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, there are things that lessen the tragedy: First, it's the father who equally loves his wife and his daughter, so can bring some hope & positivity to the family, however, because he doesn't acknowledge her wife's hatred toward Rika, he can't play an active role in resolving the issue. His denial strategy fails big time. The little sister also later joins her father to make things better, but maybe the real saviour of Rika is her angel-like friend, Nobuko, who acts as a mediator between Rika and the world she's lost connection for a long time.

My biggest problem with the story is something that's common in J-dorama: Showing sympathy when it's not called for. It's true that the mother is a big victim herself, but in any case, she hurts and ruins Rika's life. She needs to be stopped in one way or another, but the drama and the last episode, in particular, kind of normalize her toxic relationship with her daughter, as though no direct solution to the problem was needed.

The dorama's very old, so you should expect many (unpleasant?) things common in that era, but it's Gold! If I consider its production year, I'll give it 10/10, but based on our time rating criteria, 8.5/10 would be my choice!

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