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| Kuroki Meisa as Natsuki in Time Spiral |
We’re coming into the homestretch for the Meisa Kuroki/Gackt sci-fi drama Time Spiral, and it’s become a favorite show of mine to watch! This tale of the time-jumping adversary Tatsumi Sensei (Gackt) who’s manipulating time and events for his own plans pays homage/steals from just about every time travelling movie out there, but it still somehow manages to seem original and exciting enough to grab my interest!
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| A Directive from the Future |
* * * *ATTENTION: SPOILERS AHEAD * * * *
The show uses a lot of elements from other time tales, but I’ve been mulling it over in my head, and the time traveling story that Time Spiral seems most like to me is the absoluetly awesome 1988 Dean R. Koontz tale “Lightning”.
In that story, a Time Jumper named Stefan comes upon a crippled woman named Laura who captivates him by how strong and passionate she is despite her handicap. Watching over her from afar, he falls in love with her and decides to use his Time-Jumping skills to”fix” her life. He learns that she was handicapped during a botched delivery by a drunken doctor, and jumps to her time of birth to replace the inebriated surgeon with a capable one, thus sparing her handicapped future...But each time he moves towards the future, he finds that some OTHER malady has once again robbed her use of legs. It seems that no matter what he does, FATE keeps trying to “correct” what should have been in the first place.
By the halfway point of Time Spiral, we now know that all of Dr. Tatsumi’s (Gackt) interventions have been for the welfare of his beloved younger sister Mami (played by adorable Taketomi Seika). Somehow, in the future, Mami is deceased, and Tatsumi has been jumping into the past to try and "correct" events so she'll come out alive, but sadly, no matter what he alters in the past, he keeps returning to the present to find she has died.
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| Dr. Tatsumi: Making Plans |
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| Little Sister Mami (Seika Taketomi) |
Somehow Mami's fate depends on Natsuki (Meisa Kuroki) and Kentaro's (Hiraoka Yuta) relationship. Tatsumi realizes that his sister's life is intertwined with those two, but each time he tinkers with their destinies to try to get a favorable outcome for Mami's future, he keeps harming and weakening the foundation of love and friendship Natsuki and Kentaro have. Soon they don't even feel like they know each other anymore. When will Dr. Tatsumi cease his manipulations on them...and to what EXTREMES is he willing to go to? Scary!
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| Confusion as Natsuki and Kentaro's lives get tossed. |
Man, only two more episodes to go, damn this is such a GREAT drama!! At first I was worried because it was only 8 episodes long, but I’m realizing that the drama has the same amount of content as a regular 11 episode drama, except with the side stories and filler CUT OUT! Time Spiral is a lean, right-to-the-point show, and the only sad thing is about how soon it’s going to come to an end!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
