Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Silly

Just started watching Kangoku No Ohimesama, and what a wacky drama it is! Starring Kyoko Koizumi as an ex-convict named Baba Kayo who is targetting a businessman named Goro Itabashi (Yusuke Iseya) who is responsible for framing one of her colleagues, Shinobu Ewdogawa (Kaho) whom she met in prison, this drama is zany on the levels of Kuroi 10 Nin Noi Onna!

Itabashi has no idea that plans for revenge are afoot, while he enjoys his successful life as the EDOMilk mogul, the people he has unwittingly surrounded himself with are all part of the bigger conspiracy, including

Celebrity author Chinatsu Katsuta (Miho Kanno) whom he is having an affair with....

Socialite Akemi Adachi (Aiko Morishita) whom he goes to the races with....

Would-be Actress Yoko Daimon (Maki Sakai)

and even the personal assistant to Itabashi himself, super-efficient Futaba Wakai (Hikari Mitsushima)!

Baba was sentenced for attempted murder of her cheating husband and it’s while incarcerated that she first met the women who  would become her partners in this diabolical plan.

Though at first seen as an outsider and subject to all the trials and hazing new prisoners get, she soon wins the hearts of her new cellmates, and its then that they hatch their plans for revenge.

Together they wage war on the befuddled Itabashi, brazenly kidnapping his son in order to get justice! Now, this plot doesn’t seem like something to base a comedy around, but Baba Kayo and her team are so inept at what they do that their shenanigans are more like Wile E. Coyote’s attempts at catching the Roadrunner than any real crime drama (at one point even kidnapping the wrong boy and then hilariously having to get rid of him when they get the real child, LOL)!

But will their eccentric ways and odd attitudes get in the way and prevent them from completing their mission? Judging by their efforts so far, looks like these girls have a long way to go before turning professional criminal!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Will The Real Kamen Rider Popy Figures Please Stand Up

Though I loved the Japanese SuperHero shows of the 70’s like Kikaider, Rainbow Man and Kamen Rider, I wasn’t a huge fan of the dolls. I preferred the music, spending my allowance on the tokusatsu related albums and singles instead.

 But there was one doll series I DID like and that was the Kamen Rider series released by toy company POPY. Back then the dolls were ubiquitous in Hawaii and everyone had one or two of them. The dolls came individually or in sets and I clearly remember seeing the set of 6 of them on the shelves. In fact, it was here that I (as well as some of my friends) first saw Amazon Rider, and later, in an updated set, Kamen Rider Stronger!

I’ve always had a sentimental attachment to these dolls but out of all of them, the Kamen Rider X doll was the only one to survive my childhood. It was beat up to hell and stained brownish (from playing in the yard) but I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Over the years, my friend Jas has managed to purchase most of his beloved toys from his childhood via online sellers and dealers at Collector shows, and when I mentioned to him how I wouldn’t mind getting back some of my old Popy dolls, he said he’d look of for them on the auction sites, and if they were decently priced, he’d let me know.

 He managed to locate for me a well-worn copy of both Kamen Rider V3 and one of that striking Amazon Rider doll, and they looked so great on the shelf next to my X-Rider! He then told me he had a dealer selling two copies of the Rider-Man doll, and when it came in, he gave me one free of charge!

I gratefully accepted it, but I found my first discrepancy when I placed it on my shelf. Standing next to the others, the Rider-Man doll just looked…wrong. He was shorter than the rest, thinner in design and oddly colored. “I don’t think this Doll is from the original Popy Set.” I said, and Jas said he wasn’t sure, but agreed that it didn’t quite match the others.

With only Kamen Rider One and Two to get, Jas went back to the auction sites, and it was then he really started to notice how much the sizes of the dolls seemed to VARY! Some seemed smaller, some seemed bigger! Some figures arms looked wrong and the fists were off. sending me pics to the dolls, he finally admitted, “These all look different from the ones you have...Sh*t, I don't know what's WHAT anymore!"

Sadly, we still don’t know! And the hardest thing is that unless we can see them next to the other dolls, we won’t know if them ‘match” the ones we have until we can place them physically side by side!

Ah, the headaches of the nostalgic collector!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Meisa Kuroki: The Goddess Returns

New Meisa Kuroki Photobook Incarnation Slipcover and cover

Regular readers know of my love for Model-Actress-Singer Meisa Kuroki and how hard it hit me when she took leave of the business to get married, give birth and take time out to raise her kids. At the time she was right about to start promotions for her album “Unlocked” when she was suddenly spirited away and it was years before I’d see her again!

 I was happy to see her return to dramas guesting in the Karasawa Toshiaki drama TAKE FIVE (and later her own shows like Time Spiral and Designer Baby) as well as movies like Lupin the III, but I wasn’t sure if she’d return to her music career (and so far there hasn’t been anything on that front), but I was positively STUNNED when I saw that she had returned to modelling and had recently released a brand new photobook!

Back cover and back slipcover

Now as you know, Meisa has a pretty good track record of releasing some of the SEXIEST and most drool-inducing shashinshuu EVER (such as the fantastic LOVE MEISA), and though I wouldn’t have expected her to return to her risque themed shoots of old, I was THRILLED to see (at least judging by the cover) that with INCARNATION, she had INDEED shot yet another tantalizingly SEXY photobook!!

I wasted no time ordering that one, and when I got it, I was FLOORED to see that INDEED, this book was as SULTRY and SEXY as she ever was, with glorious photos of Meisa posing that curvy body in the most tantalizingly SKIMPY of bikinis!

Still rocking that luscious pout of hers, she shared the most provocative of positions, and even took the time to give another one of her signature “Hand Bra” pics, those teasing shots where a topless  Meisa covers the goods with her hands and arms and crossing the line is only an inch away!

When the news of  her latest photobook came out, netizens were quick to jump on the negative train, saying that she was “an old hag” (how young do you have to be for a 29 year old woman to be an old hag???) and for her to stop “trying to pretend she’s still sexy”.They said she would have to be photoshopped to hide all her stretch marks, wrinkles, etc....
Well, although I do suspect a bit of photoshop assistance in some of the shots regarding her fabulous skin tone (and I DID see a peek of stretch marks here and there), ANY woman who can give birth to TWO kids and still look so GODDAMN ROCKIN’ BEAUTIFULLY SEXY is worthy of Goddess-status in MY book!

HOLY HELL, Meisa looks positively radiant!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Favorite J-Pop Artists: Shizuka Kudoh

 
As less of newer music seems to interest me, I’ve found myself going backwards, digging back into the 80’s and early 90’s J-pop of yesteryear. I originally got into J-pop in mid-1995 and though I did get into the older music then, there was still SO MUCH MORE to discover!

 Right now my favorite J-pop artist must be Shizuka Kudoh, a singer I’ve always liked but now am getting into 100%, doing my best to acquire all of her music and listening to at least one of her albums every day!

I first fell in love with Shizuka with her song “Kuchibiru Kara Biyaku” after seeing a clip of her singing it on the classic “Hey Hey Hey Music Champ”. What a cool freaking song!!! I ordered a copy of the single immediately!, and when I got it I loved not only the single’s A side but the beautiful and sweet B side “Serenade”.I was interested enough with her enough to pick up her (then) latest single “Blue Velvet” and it was through an appearance of Utaban promoting this song where they showed clips of her singing her debut singles like “Mugon Iroppoi” and Fu-Ji-Tsu” and I had to get those, too!

The first Kohaku I ever saw was the 1995 Year show, but through local Japan Video rental shops and old copies my friend had recorded, I was able to see show from 1994, 1993 , 1992 and even earlier! And it was on the 1993 Kohaku that I first saw her wonderful performance of “Doukoku” which would go on to become yet another HUGE fave of mine! 

Next my friend Dan-O burned me a copy of his Twin-Best Shizuka Kudoh Collection “SHE~ Best of Best”...This was back when burning a CD for your friends was an art and he even printed pictures on the CDs as you can see here…what a pal!

 I was grateful for the discs and wasted no time throwing it onto my latest ‘cruising mix tape”, and  there was ONE SONG that stood out for me. I always knew Shizuka’s music was a bit on the more rock style (though she had a lot of ballads) than her counterparts like Miho Nakayama and Kyoko Koizumi, but there was one track on side one of SHE Best of Best that simply ROCKED the HOUSE! Such a masterpiece of a song: pounding drums, blaring horns and a dense bass track growling underneath, this was one song that begged to be BLASTED on FULL VOLUME! 

Sadly, the track was written in a  kanji i couldn’t read, and without the immediate help of the internet (ah we were so innocent back then!) I just called it ‘That Rockin’ Song”, and it became my reason to pop in the disc!

Fast forward to early this year and I come across an 80’s-themed J-pop forum featuring those classic artists and albums of the late 80’s early 90s…and saw they had an album up by Shizuka called “Trinity”.

I’d picked up a few of Shizuka’s earlier CDs from Book Off and Nippon Shoten over the years, such as "Shizuka", "Mysterious","Harvest", and "Karelia", but I’d never heard this album before. I downloaded it right away, and when I loaded it up and played it in my car the following evening, I was hit with one of the most gripping and interesting albums I’d heard in a awhile: full of catchy New-wave infused hits, Sentimental “Big band” pop tracks, smoky ballads as well as a few hard-rockers...INCLUDING that rockin’ song from SHE Best of Best!

Now with the internet at my disposal I did some googling and FINALLY found out the song was called “Kiri No Kanata E" (Beyond The Mist)! and it was this cherry on top that drove Trinity to become my favorite album to listen to so far this year!

With Trinity completely winning me over, I had to hear more, and I began collecting whatever albums I could find of hers that I'd missed out on, Rosette, Mind Universe, Expose, etc, and with each new album I acquired, the more BLOWN AWAY I was by this woman as each CD became a new favorite to listen to! Right now I am trying to get all her Live Concerts but the one I was MOST trying to acquire was her 1992 “Koe wo Kikasete” Concert Tour as this is the one where she performed Kiri No Kanata E LIVE! 

So far I've only been able to get digital rips of the concerts (which some kind soul uploaded onto a forum), but  it will definitely suffice to satiate my Shizuka hunger!!!! And o0f course the first one I checked out was Koe Wa Kikasete and gotta say- this was one totally KICK-BUTT concert! Oh MAN, Shizuka was as FIERCE and SULTRY as I expected her to be and it was a THRILL to see so many of my (new) favorite songs from her being done live for the first time! So many faves but of course the BIG performance for me was getting to see her belt out Kiri No Kanata E...so, sooooo AWESOME!

This seems to be the ONLY clip of Shizuka doing this song. Going onto Youtube I was hoping to see more, but all I could find was this (actually pretty great) video of a Japanese fan belting it out in a Karaoke room. Even in this clip you can feel the energy of the song, and in the video’s description, the girl writes: “Because this was an album-only song, probably only Shizuka fans would know it? ^^…My favorite Shizuka song!”

Indeed, this song wasn’t a single, and in fact, the liner notes of She Best Of Best CD says that the reason the song was included in the Twin Best Collection in the first place was because Shizuka herself loved it so much and always regretted that it wasn’t released as a proper single.  Even SHIZUKA knows how awesome this song is! Speaking of which, Book Off once again came to my rescue when I visited it one evening and found they had a perfect copy of SHE Best of Best for sale! I grabbed that one up right away and now finally own a copy of my very own in my meager (but still growing) Shizuka Kudoh Collection!

For the moment, I am still enjoying discovering the wonder of her album back-catalogue. There are still so much more I need to get- they are all so damn GOOD! For someone whom I once only casually liked, Shizuka Kudoh has moved into my Top Ten FAVE Jpop artists of all time!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Saki Takaoka Still as Beautiful as Ever

I saw Saki Takaoka in a recent episode of the Ayase Haruka drama Okusama wa, Toriatsukai Chuui and I remember being just floored by how freaking beautiful she was. truthfully, I didn’t even immediately recognize her until a  good bit of the episode had passed. All I knew was that this was one stunning older woman!

In "Okusama wa, Toriatsukai Chuui"

I had the same reaction seeing her as a guest in one episode of the Emi Takei/Aiba Masaki drama Kizoku Tantei, too! Just a gorgeous and beautifully refined woman!

In "Kizoku Tantei"

This always happens-I’ll be watching a movie (such as Yokubou) or a drama (such as Omukae Death) and I’ll find myself attracted to an elegant older woman and it turns out to be Saki Takaoka!

Not that she was always so old! Indeed, there was a time when I had the hots for her when she was still a cute young thang, most obviously in the Emi Wakui drama “Pure” and of course with her naughty photobook “One Two Three”!

Her appearance in the Ryoko Yonekura drama “Katagoshi No Koibito” earned her one of my delirious “Crush of the Day” titles, and it’s refreshing to know she’s still stunning me after all these years!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com