Back in February of 2009, I was still casually watching Japanese dramas, and it would still be two more months til “Hotaru No Hikari” would come along and ROCK MY WORLD and rejuvenate my entire j-drama watching obsession. At the time, I was enjoying a KIKU drama called “Brother Beat”, and wrote up a little article on how much I liked it, as well as my attraction to cutie Ryoko Kuninaka’s character Chisato Tamura.
Anyway. When going through all my old posts in an attempt to repost some of them to this newly up-and-running google blogsite, the screen-caps I used were taken from the TV and transferred to DVD recorder to Computer, VERY blurry and contrasty. I REALLY wanted to re-cap those pics!
Popping in the discs of Brother Beat that I’d downloaded from D-Addicts awhile ago, I now had some nice, clear episodes to capture from. But even more surprising is, MAN! I’d forgotten how much I LOVED Ryoko Kuninaka in this show! Before I knew it, I’d re-watched 4 episodes of the show, and was INSTANTLY turned back into Kuninaka-crush status!
After going crazy with the screencapping (must have capped about 20 pics!), I realized what an AWESOME character Ryoko’s Tamura Chisato is…Though I’ve seen Ryoko in lots of other dramas since, none are quite like her Brother Beat character… First off, of course, are the glasses. This is without a doubt my favorite look from her, I think she looks just fricking adorable with those specs on, and no one else (outside of Tina Fey) can make that look work so well, enough for me say, “Ehh, I prefer her with glasses on”!!
Plus, there’s the shy and quiet attitude about her- this scene where she’s at home ironing Tatsuya’s handkerchief seems SO sweet and melancholy. You wonder just how in the world a knucklehead like Tatsuya can keep from liking this girl. You just wanna sweep her up in your arms!
So we’ve got sweet, humble and shy… And you know what tops if off is Ryoko is just terrific at throwing out this cute “bewildered” look whenever she’s confronted with the “guy of her dreams” in those awkward situations!
The Tatsuya and Chisato plot is my favorite storyline of the show, and truth be told, I could have actually done WITHOUT the storylines with Riku and Junpei! Yeah, I know, the drama’s called BROTHER Beat, but well…everytime I would be getting into Tatsuya and Chisato’s latest story, I would groan loudly when it would shift to one of the other brothers’ boring-ass storylines! AHAHAHAHAHAHA! MORE RYOKO, PLEASE!
For Your Information: The original Feb 2009 Post:
When I first read the synopsis for the 2007 j-dorama Brother Beat, it seemed like a modern remake of one of my favorite dramas, Second Chance: Misako Tanaka as a single mother raising three boys, all who call her by her first name and do all the chores around the house because she’s too lazy! ( In fact, they even got Akai Hidekazu, who played the Dad in Second Chance, to play the father in the flashback scenes!)
Watching the show, though, I realized the show was more based on the Brothers' relationship with each other than Mom and kids, (given the title, I guess that should have been obvious) and the shenanigans the three siblings get into each episode was more than enough for me to see the show as an entirely separate entity!
There’s Tamayama Tetsuji as Eldest Brother Tatsuya, (the all-business one of the group), middle son Riku (the carefree ladies-man) played by Hayami Mokomichi, and youngest son Junpei (the innocent one who does all the cooking and cleaning), played by Nakao Akiyoshi. (he, of course, from j-dorama Dragon Zakura!) And of course Misako Tanaka, playing Harue, the tough, big-mouthed single mom, a forte of hers, to be sure!
The show revolves around the ups and downs surrounding the boys in their everyday life, and more often than not, involves some SEXY gals as well as a fair share of WACKY characters! For me though, my flat-out favorite character in this drama just HAS to be Chisato Tamura, played by actress Ryoko Kuninaka. She’s easily the most adorable girl in the series, and that’s saying a LOT, considering the crazy amount of super-fine chicks rotating through this drama! Humble and unassuming, she's the one I fell in love with and began rooting for as soon as her character was introduced!
She bumps into Tatsuya in front of the train station, and he accidentally knocks her glasses off, breaking them. He’s in a rush to get to work, and apologetically hands her his card, promising to pay for them. He hardly takes notice of the tiny slip of a girl, but Chisato falls hard for him, believing him to be the man of her dreams! Chisato is one of those girls-in-a-million, the “pretty chick-who-doesn’t-know-she’s-pretty” character, and is SO unconfident of her chances, she asks advice from one of her employees, who turns out to be none other than HARUE!! Twists like this keep me on the edge of my seat, and I’m always yearning to see “what happens NEXT!”
