Uber Taxi: 101st Proposal?

Uber Japan asked for a social-first film to run alongside the TV cutdowns for Superpower V2, built for phones. The message was Live Tracking: when you can see your taxi coming, you're in control of the ride.

Two rules shaped every idea. Live Tracking had to be the hero, the comic and strategic lever of the film instead of a feature tagged on at the end. And the film had to hijack something unmistakably Japanese, nostalgic or current, and put Uber at the center of the frame.

Missing a taxi in Japan is quietly humiliating. You waved, you waited, the driver didn't see you, and now you're alone on the curb watching it pull away.

Live Tracking fixes that, so every joke had to land back on the product: once you can see the taxi coming, waiting is no longer a gamble. The idea was one of six routes we presented in May. Each one borrowed a piece of Japanese pop culture and landed it on Live Tracking.

101回目のプロポーズ (101st Proposal) ran in Fuji TV's Monday 9 p.m. drama slot from 1 July to 16 September 1991, twelve episodes. Tetsuya Takeda played Tatsuro Hoshino, an unlikely romantic lead with a long record of rejection, and Atsuko Asano played Kaoru Yabuki, the woman he falls for.

In episode 6 he steps out in front of a truck to prove he will never leave her, and shouts 僕は死にません！あなたが好きだから (I won't die! Because I love you). Takeda's delivery turned it into 死にましぇん, and the scene has been parodied ever since. The theme song, SAY YES by CHAGE and ASKA, spent 13 weeks at No. 1, and the final episode drew a 36.7% rating.

For Japanese viewers the scene is shorthand for devotion that goes a little too far. That made it a product truth we could use: the fear of losing your taxi turns into relief once you can see exactly where it is.

The man in the striped shirt had to read as Tetsuya Takeda the second he appeared on screen. Shu Koga is an impressionist with Ohta Production, and Takeda is his signature act: he can restage Takeda's famous scenes from almost any era, and he had already recreated 101st Proposal itself in a TV impression special.

Koga plays every beat completely straight, which is exactly why it's funny. Wardrobe remade the drama's outfits down to the stripes, and his wig was built from scratch.

Rino Hirayama takes the Atsuko Asano role. The director chose her from 50 auditions because she looked closest to the original character and could carry the crying scenes the part depends on.

The board keeps the drama's structure and makes the product the payoff. The fear and the vow are played at full size, and what resolves them is a map on a phone.

These panels come from the director's own hand-drawn board, presented at the pre-production meeting. Director: Ryotaro Nishi, TYO.

The film keeps the shape of the scene and changes the vow. Instead of promising to live, he promises not to let the taxi get away, and holds up his phone as proof.

The film plays it completely straight: a retro title card reading 101回目のプロポーズ? with a question mark, a confession at the roadside, a run into the headlights, and an Uber Taxi pulling up exactly where he stops. She cries, he raises the app, and the last scene is a quiet tutorial in the back seat.

It runs at 90 and 30 seconds, horizontal and vertical, and closes on the launch offer: 99% off the first two rides, up to ¥2,500 a ride.

The vertical versions carry the same scene at 90 and 30 seconds for phones, with the dialogue subtitled on screen.

The side-by-side runs the 1991 scene next to the 2026 remake, so you can see how closely the new film tracks the original's staging.

Dates come from the presentation and the delivered files.

Picked from the comments under the ad, all posted on the day it went up.