Keeping Tabs on FOGDOG

 Just wanted to drop a quick note to express how much I’m enjoying the fun crime comedy FOGDOG- I’m a huge fan of actress Yuna Taira and her take on the quirky and spazzy Kiri Inukai is simply brilliant, so cute and instantly likable that she charms in every scene she’s in!

Ryuhei Maruyama plays the perfect foil with the brash yankee mouthed Saruwatari, watching the two of them bounce off each other is well worth the price of admission! And Shodai Fukuyama as Kiri's jealous childhood friend Masato makes for a very merry set-up each episode!!

Subber Hpriest has warned that they might not continue with this series, but so far they've been releasing subs pretty regularly... I do hope they'll stick with Fogdog, been really loving this one!!!

Notes on FOGDOG

Yuna Taira and Ryuhei Maruyama in FOGDOG

The latest series in those ubiquitous J-drama crime shows featuring a lead detective with quirky “power” or skill comes FOGDOG, a fun and entertaining buddy-cop drama, featuring a yankee lead investigator prone to violence and a near-autistic partner with the inability to see faces but an immaculate memory for facts!

Kiri Inukai (Yuna Taira) is an introverted (and autistic?) police detective currently on leave for mental health reasons, where she is trying to deal with her prosopagnosia, the inability to register faces. What she does have is a savant- level talent for facts, and when we meet up with her, she’s foiled a would-be robbery simply by noticing the inconsistencies of her usual clerk’s behavior!

This is witnessed by detective Hibiki Saruwatari (Ryuhei Maruyama), who is on his way to his new department after being demoted for his many violent outbursts in the field.

When he arrives, he is none too happy to see that this “department “ is nothing more than a closet, and when he is told his job will be to catalog the department’s cold cases, he instead offers to go out and SOLVE the cases on his own!

Concerning a case of a hit-and-run witnesses say was caused by a bear, he decides to visit a bookstore to read up on them, and is surprised to find that quirky detective from the convenience store working there!

Inukai stammers that she isn’t trying to work two jobs, and explains her prosopagnosia to him. She then shows her greeat memory skills, and he immediately has the great inspiration to team up with her!  With these two oddball investigators on the case, one might think it’d be a complete mess, but it seems the two work GREAT together and actually have a knack for closing those cold cases!!!

Regular readers of this blog know how much I love Yuna Taira, and this role of the eccentric Inukai is just fantastic! Instantly fun and likeable! 

And Ryuhei Maruyama is entertaining as the over-the-top brash yankee cop Saruwatari! Guess He’s got to be the face of FUN in Kanjani8 nowadays since Yu Yokoyama is now the King of Creeps, LOL!

HPriest Subs tentatively picked up FOGDOG with the warning that they’d  only subtitle episode one, and if it didn’t interest them, they would drop it. At this point I’m not sure if FOGDOG has passed the muster for them to continue, but it would be nice to see more! Crossing fingers!

Posted by Zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

A Belated J-Drama Viewing With "Jigoku Sensei Nube"

Maruyama Ryuhei as "Nube" Sensei

 I don’t know if it’s the show’s Super Sentai sensibilities or simply how great every character is, but I just love, love, LOVE the quirky drama JIGOKU SENSEI NUBE! A story of a clumsy and inexperienced teacher who secretly holds the power of a demon in his left hand, this show mashes the traditional “Troubled School Students” motif with the “Haunted School” theme and throws in a dose of good old fashioned “Kamen-Rider Heshin” kick ‘em up action on top to create an entirely new and exciting genre! 

Calling Forth the Power

Chanting the Banishment Spell

Malicious spirits (Yokai) have been unleashed on an unsuspecting public, and it was then that this mysterious man arrived in town. Under the guise of a high-school teacher, this man, named Meisuke Nueno, ingratiated himself into the school, keeping an eye out for students or teachers that may be haunted or possessed by the ghosts. When he does find an attacker, he unleashes the demon in his hand and banishes the ghost back to hell. 
Now, this would seem like a flawless plan, but as a teacher, Nueno is so inept and bumbling that he’s looked down upon by his students, who laughingly call him “Nube” instead of Sensei! 

"Uhhh...Class?" Nueno Addresses the Room

"Haha, Who's this Joker?"

It’s only once the demons attack and he’s forced to reveal who he truly is do the students slowly start respecting him. Nueno is played by Kanjani 8’s Ryuhei Maruyama, and he does a fantastic job of balancing being a goofy teacher and a steel-eyed yokai exorcist.When he’s in teacher mode, he’s as dopey as the Maruyama we‘ve come to know in Kanjani8, but when he’s banishing the demons, he’s super COOL and very believable as a no-nonsense spirit-warrior! 

A DESTRON-ish Villain Invades the Classroom!

Protecting his students against the Wolf Yokai

"Holy Crap, Our Teacher is Cool after All???"

Besides Maruyama, the show holds a whole flurry of other fun characters, including pretty teacher Takahashi Ritsuko, who Nueno has quite a crush on, (and since she’s played by Mirei Kiritani, we can totally understand why), only problem is, she’s a gung-ho facts-only science teacher and has zero tolerance for his tales of ghosts and spirits… and with his constant brushes with the supernatural and his own general clumsiness, he can only look like a loser to her!

Mirei Kiritani is Takahashi Ritsuko Sensei

Nueno and Takahashi

Gung Ho For Science!

It doesn’t help that Takahashi Sensei is attracted to the Home Ecomonics teacher Tamamo Kyosuke (Mokomichi Hayami), who is stylish, perfect and slick at everything he does. What she doesn’t know is that Tamamo is actually a villainous yokai who has been masquerading as the Home Ec teacher to cause trouble and misery! Fortunately, after being beaten by Nueno, Tama has retreated and is content to remain at the school as a teacher, bemusedly watching Nueno’s struggles from the sidelines!

Eccentric Ikemen Economics: Mokomichi Hayami as Tamamo Sensei

Unlikely colleagues

Babe-a-licious Yamamoto Mizuki plays Izuna Hazuki, a ditsy amateur medium whose half-baked spells unleash even MORE troubles for Nueno to deal with- even worse, she has the adoration of Nueno’s students, who excitedly flock to her performances to see her harmful parlor tricks, which they perceive as cool magic, but put the kids in situations that Nueno must rescue them from!

Yamamoto Mizuki as Izuna

Reckless Medium

And if that wasn’t all we’ve even got adorable Jiyoung (she late of K-pop group KARA) as wandering Snow Goddess Yukime who’s insanely in love with Nueno and has even decided that they are a happy couple! Having an adorable sprite clinging on to you may not seem so bad, but she appears at the most inopportune times (i.e. in front of his students) and has a tendency to invite other stray lesser spirits to their home!

Yukime Loves Her Man

KARA's Jiyoung as Yukime

Yukime (Jiyoung) and Izuna (Mizuki Yamamoto)

I know that I’m really late to the ballgame with this drama, which ended quite some time ago. But I was waiting til the team subbing the show finished it up- and now that they have, I’m diving in headfirst and am REALLY digging it! Bad special effects, cheesy monster costumes and overly dramatic situations, I haven’t had this much fun since Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon!

By the way, I still marvel at the power of the internet- in the old days, if you watched a show and liked an actor or actress, there was not much info you could get on them unless they were written up in Eye Ai Magazine- But thing sure are different now!
 Watching Jigoku Sensei Nube, I was curious about the girl playing student Hosokawa Miki, and going online, I immediately found out her name was Sano Hinako- was she only an actress or was she also a singer or idol?

Hinako Sano as Miki

 A quick check found out she was definitely an IDOL! Knowing that, obviously the next question was…did she do BIKINI pictures? WHOA…Not only did I FIND Hinako bikini pics, I was to learn that this girl was VERY amply endowed (and had no problem showing it off)- a fact that somehow was kept “under wraps” in the show! 

Hinako Sano's Curvier Side

Ahhh, the internet…it’s a marvel!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com