Notes On "Utsubora"

Recently wrapped up the dark noir/erotica WOWOW drama "Utsubora" (Moray Eel) and had some thoughts on it...

I was captivated by this story of a faded writer named Mizorogi (Yukiya Kitamura) who, upon the suicide of a woman named Aki (Atsuko Maeda) whom he had stolen a manuscript and plagiarized as his own, is confronted by an identical woman named Sakura (also Maeda) claiming to be the woman's twin sister. 

Captivating and mysterious, the woman takes over Mizorogi's life in both his writing and "under the sheets" as they eventually engage in a sordid romantic tryst, even as he struggles to uncover if this woman is truly a twin sister, or the deceased victim herself seemingly back from the grave!

Meanwhile Mizorogi's own editor Tsuji (Fujiwara Kisetsu) himself is starting to doubt that the recent stories he is penning have come from his own hand. And when talking to fellow authors like Yatabe (Ikkei Watanabe) and Nomiya (Akiko Hinagata), they seem to share the same opinion!

And while all this is going on, the police detectives (Hajime Okayama,Kohei Takeda) are not far behind, concerned because not only does the deceased Aki have no credentials to prove who she is, neither does the mysterious Sakura! They suspect foul play, and if, as they suspect, Sakura is simply Aki pretending to be her own twin...then who is the dead person lying in the morgue?

A GRIPPING drama that had me on my toes throughout its ENTIRE run with its twists and turns, and a SPECTACULAR performance by Atsuko Maeda who simply SLAYED as the dual roles of both the deceased writer Aki and her brooding twin counterpart Sakura!

A really great cast- when was the last time I saw Akiko Hinagata in anything? LOL!

Ooh, and also MUST mention the always adorable Yuna Taira, here as the naive niece of Mizorogi, the eternally cheerful and wide-eyed waif Koyomi...who, behind her happy smile holds some dark secrets of her own!

I wasn't planning on writing an after-viewing wrap up for this one,(while engaging, I found the conclusion a bit underwhelming)  but I found I just could not stop thinking about Utsubora even days after finishing it! Finally had to jot down my thoughts and in the end did a write up proper!

WOWOW certainly are becoming the kings of the murky, dark and desperate dramas!!!

Props to them for keeping me on my toes with these fresh ideas and concepts!

The Secret Life of Plants in “Prism”

 Satsuki Maejima (Hana Sugisaki) is a girl working part-time at a Garden Shop but what she really wants is to work as a voice actress.  As the garden job is just a stop-gap til she finally passes an audition, she has no real interest in the Garden Shop or even the Plants she is handling!

She does make wonderful little terrariums, however, which catches the eye of a customer who comes in frequently, though he never purchases any of them. She doesn’t know it, but this man Riku Morishita (Kisetsu Fujiwara) will become a big part of her life!

Satsuki is living in Tokyo with a roommate named Ayaka Nogi (Anna Ishii), another voice talent who also works at the garden shop with her. Ayaka has just passed an audition for an upcoming anime, and though she puts on a smile,it is hard for Satsuki not to feel jealous. “Why is it never me who is chosen?” she wonders.

As it happens, Ayaka has a voice job on a day she is supposed to do garden work, and asks Satsuki if she can substitute for her. 

She readily agrees, but her lack of knowledge causes a bit of a quandary when doing the weeding, as she pulls out not only the weeds, but the plants that were meant to stay!

The problem is explained to the garden designer, who happens to be Morishita, the same customer who would regularly look at her terrariums. He recognizes her from the shop, but berates her for working at a garden shop and not caring enough to even learn the kinds of plants she is dealing with. 

This humbles Satsuki, and though she is smarting from the assessment, she realizes she has been half-heartedly doing things ever since coming to Tokyo, and needs to make an effort to be more involved.

When Satsuki returns to the garden the next day, she pays mind to the flora peppering the garden and is mindful of learning as much as she can about them. Grateful for the lesson, she leaves Morishita a gift- one of her terrariums he’s been looking at.

The next day, Morishita thanks her for the gift and commends her at how well it is put together.

Satsuki admits she has no real knowledge of how the plants and moss would grow in real life, and only focused on building the terrariums so she could avoid customers (LOL), so Morishita invites her to come along hiking with him and see the moss growing in the wild.

Satsuki takes him up on his offer, and though it is a long trek up the mountains, it is an eye opening experience that awakens a passion in her to work hard at this. And as she gets close to Morishita, a romance between the two also blooms! 

But as the episode ends, we are introduced to Yuma Shiraishi (Mirai Moriyama) who will eventually be returning to Japan and into the lives of the new couple as they tackle a new garden project…

Wasn’t sure exactly what Prism was going to be about, but I’m always up for another Hana Sugisaki drama. Here she looks just like she did in Koi Desu: Yankee-kun to Hakujou Garu, and at first I had to remind myself that she wasn’t blind! LOL.

Anna Ishii stars as her roomate, and it’s a funny thing that I always thought the two looked really similar to each other, seeing them in this drama, they look like sisters!!

I was fairly charmed by this first episode, crossing fingers that it doesn’t degenerate into a generic romcom…