My friend’s Wife has been bitten by the Kimura Takuya bug thanks to NETFLIX’s recent airing of a BUNCH of his shows, including GOOD LUCK, A LIFE, KAREI NARU ICHIZOKU, and most significantly, GRAND MAISON TOKYO, and she’s been simply "Koo-Koo for Kimura” ever since, and ready to explore more of his catalog! “OK, My wife wants to see this “Long Vacation” show that everybody keeps talking about!” my friend requested one day, and of COURSE I was happy to oblige! As some of you know, Long Vacation is just about my FAVORITE J-drama of all time, and the more fans I can introduce the drama to, the merrier!
I told him I’d pass Long Vacation along as well as a few OTHER Kimutaku shows I thought they’d like, and chose classics HERO, A Million Stars Falling From the Sky, and CHANGE to the mix, as well as more recent dramas "Ando Lloyd", "I'm Home", “Mirai e no 10 Count”, “BELIEVE”, and both “BG: Personal Bodyguard” seasons as well. A good assortment of Kimura shows!
Going through my files, however, I found several of them to be lacking in quality- back when I'd originally acquired them, files were usually 250MB in size and from crude sources. Worked fine for the time, but now seemed hard on the eyes to watch. I wanted them to experience the shows as best as possible, and so took to the forums to get better quality files.
Thankfully all those dramas were up and available, and while re-downloading both HERO and CHANGE, I saw that there were a few other Kimutaku shows available that even I hadn’t seen before (he has so many it’s easy for a few to slip through the cracks!): GIFT (1997), Love Generation (1997) and Concerto (1996), so I grabbed 'em all! Began watching them right away and have been having a blast! Of the three of them the one I’m liking most is GIFT, a VERY wacky and zany affair of a man with amnesia who becomes a courier for a shady organization while simultaneously trying to piece back his past.
High points include a VERY cute Ryoko Shinohara in an early role- funny, Ryoko was one of the first J-actresses I knew when I began watching dramas, but she plays such tuff tomboyish roles nowadays that I was taken aback by how gigglishly GIRLY she was here- flirty and OH! Such a BABE!
The biggest shocker for me though is seeing actress Mitsuko Baisho as Inspector Sakuhara- I’m SO used to seeing her as a doddering old lady in dramas, it never occurred to me that there was a time when she was an admittedly pretty HOT Lady!!!! But WOWWW, she sure is HERE! I’m not kidding- I’ve always respected Mitsuko in her drama appearances as those Granny types, but seeing her as this cool, sexy badass character is a whole new experience!
Just LOVE whenever she's in a scene, and at this moment I'm even going to say that Sakuhara's my favorite character on the show! SO KAKKOI!!
Throw in Muroi Shigeru as Kimutaku’s outspoken boss and a sassy Satomi Kobayashi as an eccentric psychic and you’ve got a WILDLY entertaining drama!!
CONCERTO (Kyosokyoku) stars Kimura and Tamura "Furuhata Ninzaburo" Masakazu as architects competing for the affection of Rie Miyazawa. Not a big fan of infidelity and cheating dramas, but there’s so much going on in this one I can’t stop watching it! Great characters and great acting!
Rie Miyazawa in particular captivates, she’s so bubbly and cute in this one and it dawns on me that this might be the first drama I’ve seen with her as a younger girl, most stuff I’ve seen is her as an 0lder lady, playing mature wives and spinster-ey widows in shows like GuGu Gu Neko Datte and Shinhannin Flag! But she's simply a heartbreaker here, no wonder these two guys end up fighting for her....
Lastly there’s LOVE GENERATION- it’s hard to believe this is the first time I’m seeing it as this came right on the heels of Long Vacation and EVERYBODY wanted to see it! Sadly however, no station here picked it up, and unlike my friend Golden, (who soldiered through the series blind), I refused to watch it unsubbed, LOL!
Took a good 10 years til fansubbing became a thing and a team translated it, but it still took me until NOW to get going! Watching it now, it very much seems like a continuation of Long Vacation as the two leads look exactly like they did in the previous show, though in entirely different roles, with Kimutaku as a womanizing "player" type and Matsu as a dorky spastic chatterbox! Great fun!
Speaking of Takako, when they were watching Long Vacation, my friend and his wife really detested the Ryoko character-(guess her wishy-washy naiveity grated on their nerves), but when they began watching HERO, not only did they really LOVE her character of Amamiya, they did not even realize it was the same actress who had played Ryoko! This is a TRUE testament of Matsu’s acting versatility- "We couldn't believe it was the same actress when we saw the credits!" they said with some awe and amazement!
Indeed, Amamiya stands out as one of Takako Matsu's most enduring characters, and it's feedback like this that I love hearing and what makes sharing dramas so rewarding!
LOL, and for some hilarious feedback: While talking to my friend’s wife about Grand Maison Tokyo, I mentioned that I really liked the lead actress Kyoka Suzuki, to which she said, “Kyoka Suzuki? Which actress is that, THE ONE WHO LOOKS LIKE A DUDE?” LOLOL I had to laugh and say “Ye Gads, no, THAT was international model Ai Tominaga!”
Ya gotta LOVE feedback like this HAHAHAHA
