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| Arisa Mizuki |
A few years back I came upon a crime drama called Beautiful Bones, and the cover of the drama looked SO much like the American series “Bones” that I figured it was another of the many Japanese mystery remakes they had been putting out like COLD CASE, SUITS and THE GOOD WIFE:
Since the drama was readily available, I downloaded it for later viewing, but frankly I just wasn’t in the mood for another Japan adaptation of an American Show just then, and so it got buried under the pile of “dramas to watch” that we all have!
So just a few weeks ago, I’m going through old J-drama reviews, and come upon a series called “A Corpse Is Buried Beneath Sakurako’s Feet” about an eccentric and rebellious "osteologist" who solves crimes by analyzing the bones of the cases. Well, that intrigued me and I went to go see about acquiring it- imagine my surprised when it was the Beautiful Bones drama I already HAD!
The Japan proper title of the drama is “Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru” but it seems to be tagged under several titles, Beautiful Bones, Sakurako’s Investigation and the wonderfully aforementioned “Corpse” title.
It was clearly time to get out that drama and check it out, and there was even one more surprise for me when I did- The entire time I had the drama in my possession, I though the girl on the cover was Miki Nakatani!! Only when I begna watching it did I realize that the gal was none other than Arisa Mizuki!!
Arisa was one of the very first actesses I fell in love with during my “golden Age” of J-drama discovery with her show “Nurse No Oshigoto” where she stole my heart each week! Truth be told, I still have a hard time separating that giggly girl with the brash, tuff as nails kind of characters she plays nowadays though of course I’ve seen her in many dramas since. It’s much like fellow actresses Ryoko Shinohara and Miho Kanno, whom also have adopted these tomboy type roles , though somehow, I’ve had no problem getting used to them. It’s only Arisa whom I always have to take a step back and say “That LADY is Arisa Mizuki!”
Anyway, I dove right into the show and right off the bat it reminded me of a female version of the Masaharu Fukuyama drama “Galileo”. Eccentric genius scientist who is awful with social cues and hard to get along with, saddled with a wide-eyed assistant who is unwittingly ‘paired” with him.
In Galileo of course we had Fukuyama as the teacher and Kou Shibasaki as the addled assistant, whereas here we have Arisa as Sakurako Kujo the osteologist and Taisuke Fujigaya as good-hearted guy Shotaro Tatewaki who is assigned to “deal” with her.
I enjoyed the first episode, nice pacing and lots of strong characters, including Takaya Kamikawa and saucy Yua Shinkawa as Tatewaki’s lab partners and the gruff Masahiro Takashima as the Police Detective who always seems to find Sakurako involved in his crime scenes!
Then I watched the second episode about an abused little girl and MAN, this episode was SO freaking great. The characters ALL came to bat, though the show has lots of wackiness and jokes, they took their crimes very seriously and everyone showed their worth.
After I watched it, I have to say I felt really wrung-out! That episode killed me! Marveling at how good it was, I had to laugh at how long I had the drama on my desktop before filing it away and forgetting about it! But now, It’s one of my favorite dramas to watch! So much that I just HAD to stop and do this little write up!
Not many pics because I don’t want to waste any more time before jumping back in!
Posted by zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
