Keigo Higashino's "A Death In Tokyo~The Wings Of The Kirin"

Continuing on with my new hobby of reading the Keigo Higashino novel and then watching the film/TV adaptation, I recently re-watched the 2012 movie "Kirin No Tsubasa~ The Wings of The Kirin" after reading the 2022 English translated domestic release "A Death in Tokyo".

As I had mentioned before, though I really enjoyed Abe's crime drama SHINZANMONO, I had no IDEA that The Wings Of The Kirin was a Movie featuring the characters from it when I originally watched it- I simply thought Hiroshi Abe, Junpei Mizubata, etc, were playing stereotypical crime drama roles that I've seen them play a hundred times before! You would have thought the characters NAMES would have tipped me off, but honestly, I didn't remember what any of them were! LOL

This was a crime drama that I originally grabbed mostly because I mistakenly thought it was a Yui Aragaki Movie. Aragaki IS in the movie, but she was more part of an (admittedly stellar) ensemble cast than a starring role, not that it mattered because I was captivated throughout the movie anyway! If there's one thing that's been proven, when times are tough and things seem hopeless, Hiroshi Abe is THE MAN when it comes to cracking the cases and bringing the guilty to justice!

  Kirin No Tsubasa follows the mystery of a Factory Owner who is found dying on a bridge in front of a huge Gryphon statue. At first no one knows where he came from or who the assailant might be, but soon a suspicious young lad is discovered hiding in some nearby bushes with the murdered man's briefcase in his possession! 

Mizobata Junpei and Abe Hiroshi

Miura Takahiro

Aragaki Yui

The cops give chase, but before they can get any information out of him, he is struck by an oncoming vehicle and  later dies from the injuries. Despite the evidence, the suspect's girlfriend (Aragaki) firmly believes him innocent, and as the force begin digging deeper into the people connected to the case, they find more and more secrets and lies, til they've stumbled upon another crime buried beneath the surface!

Kuroki Meisa and Abe Hiroshi

Nakai Kiichi

Matsuzaka Tori

Mizobata Junpei, Taketomi Seika

Tanaka Rena

Mizobata Junpei, Matsushige Yutaka

Aragaki Yui

Mizobata and Abe

Tanaka Rena  and Aragaki Yui

QUITE fun to both read the book and novel together for a whole new experience! Strangely, even though I watched the movie first, it had been so long since I'd seen it, that I didn't picture ANY of the movie stars as their novel counterparts, except for, perhaps, Hiroshi Abe himself!

Still found it fun to match the actors and actresses faces with the roles, and, as mentioned before, the visual medium DOES have one advantage of SHOWING you all the breathtaking scenery and locations, something that you can only do in your mind when reading the ebook, additionally, music score does a lot to convey feeling and mood.

Whichever you choose, both have  fine tale to tell!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Cheat, Cheat, Cheat: Unfaithful Shenanigans in “Rikon Shiyou Yo”

 Light-hearted romcom about a power couple who are miserable in their present married lives, yet each have their own personal reasons for clinging onto their marital status...

 To keep the illusion alive, they appear as the perfect husband and wife in public, but behind closed doors, are constantly bickering!

They even have a weekly livestream where they appear all cheerful and genki...

...only to have the facade immediately  DROP once the cameras are off! (Hey, this is exactly  like the set-up in “Ousama ni Sasagu Kusuriyubi”, is this fake livestream thing going to be a new cliche for the internet age?)

Our Story:

Yui Kurosawa (Riisa Naka) is a beloved actress famous for a stint as a small-town heroine in a popular television show (seems like an asadora), and has lately made a career out of her seemingly wedded bliss by playing the perfect housewife in commercials. if it gets out she is not the happily married wife she projects, she may lose her contracts...and even have to pay reparations!

Taishi Shoji (Tori Matsuzaka) is a small-time politician who got his position through his father, who himself was a prominent figure. But unlike his father, Taishi is slow, uncouth and clumsy and usually botches his speeches and appearances by saying and doing the wrong thing. 

The only thing he has going for himself is his marriage to Yui, whose personality and popularity brings the crowd to his lectures. He knows that  the people who turn up at his events are only there for their love of Yui and he fears that without her he may not make it.

One aspect of his wife’s acting that he can never get over is her having kissing and sex scenes with her costars (like Kamio Fuju), that of which he has to endure any time one of her shows is aired. 

And just when his feeling of inadequacy is coming to a head, Taishi meets a brash young secretary named Sakurako (Lisa Oda) eager to get involved with him, and he ends up having an affair with her- which gets outed in a very public way!

The end is nigh, and after a terse confrontation after an event, both Yui and Taishi officially decide to get divorced.  To that end, they have met with their respective lawyers, Yui with the natty Henry K. Ishihara (Furuya Arata)...

...and Taishi with the svelte Kaoru Inden (Yuka Itaya) Each gives their honest reasoning why the marriage should be dissolved, and the lawyers seem to agree…But it won’t be as easy as they think!

The harried wife gets told  by her ornery mother in law that she should just deal with the husband’s cheating and stand by him for the sake of integrity, but there is little time for sympathy for Yui before she goes right out and cheats herself, this one with the smooth talking Kyoji Kano (Ryo Nishikido)...

I was just talking to a friend about how much I loathe dramas  with infidelity as a primary plot point, and it seems I’ve been rooked into yet another one, because  the cheating in this one is as rife as a Woody Allen movie, and all I can think is, “I’m supposed to LIKE these people?” LOL! 

Also has the “Bride comes from poor family with loads of kids and if you divorce the rich guy, how will the poor family survive without their help?” cliche I really can’t stand either! (Though Reiko Takahashi DOES plays the no-good mom in a hilariously wacky style!)

Despite any misgivings I might have, I’ve been reading that this drama has been doing swimmingly, maybe the general audiences are  tired of the recent morose and serious fare like First Love , Silent, et al, and want to kick back with a fun, no-frills comedy. In THAT, I guess it delivers.

I will say one thing, it’s full of stars and additionally, Risa Naka is looking more DEVASTATINGLY gorgeous than EVER, and this might be her SASSIEST role yet! 

One scene that had me CRACKING UP is when she’s telling the lawyer she can cry on command, and when he doesn’t believe it, she grabs a box of chocolates and begins emotionally reading off the ingredients and proceeds to lose it like she’s reading the last will and testament of her mother! 

And then as quickly as she began, she instantly regains composure and wipes the tears away, making Lawyer Ishihara gasp, “Scary!!” AHAHAHAHA

LOLOL, She's definitely one of the BIG reasons I will be tuning in each week!