Notes on "Influence"

With the super-charged Tengoku no Jigoku wrapping up, I needed a new the new Suspense/Mystery drama to fill the space, and the new drama "Influence" seems to be a good choice!

Tomomi Oikawa (Honami Suzuki) is a succesful novelist who gets a letter from a supposed fan who wants her to write the story of her and her friends’ childhood.

Oikawa gets lots of requests from individuals wanting her to write about their lives and she usually passes. But this time it intrigues her and she agrees to meet with the mysterious woman (Nene Otsuka).

The woman says that her name is Yuri Totsuka and she begins telling the story of her life in high school.

The high-school aged Yuri (played by Kanna Hashimoto) doesn’t have many friends and is happy when she is approached by a girl named Maho Sakazaki (Aoi Wakana) who wants to be her friend.

Through their love of manga the girls get to know each other and are soon close friends! 

Yuri’s parents are pleased with their daughter’s friendship with this girl from a well-off family, unlike Yuri’s past friend Satoko Hino (Ai Yoshikawa) who came from a troubled family situation and later became a juvenile delinquent.

One night as Yuri and Maho are walking home, Maho is assaulted by a thug with a knife. They try to fight off the man, but he is too powerful, and in the end, a panicking Yuri ends up stabbing the man with his own weapon.

The two girls flee the scene and Yuri wakes the next morning in fear of the worst. Her shaken mother wakes her and tells her a man has been murdered in the neighborhood park, to which Yuri is fully expecting to be blamed for.

But to her utter shock, she finds that her former friend Satoko has taken responsibility for the crime and has turned herself in the the police!!! It seems she must have seen the murder take place from her window and later, covered herself with blood from the crime and turned herself in. But…WHY?

As the woman wraps up the first part of her tale, Oikawa asks if she has the full names of all the people in her story so she can check on them, to which the woman has written down on paper.

But going home, Oikawa realizes that the names are all too familiar to her and then, checking her yearbook, realizes that all of the happened in her OWN high school while she was there!!

Does the mysterious woman know that Tomomi went to the same school as them? Is THIS why she approached her to write the story? All of these questions must wait for another day…

Oh wow, I was on the edge of my seat with this one in anticipation of what was going to happen next however in the preview for next week’s episode, looks like it;’s gonna be like Anata No Ban Desu where Satoko tells Yuri that since she took the rap for her crime, she has to do one in favor to HER. Huh, not sure if I like that story development, but we will see!

PS: Really loving the key players here. I’ve already sang the virtues of all THREE of the leads recently, but must make special note of how great it is to see Kanna Hashimoto flexing her chops!

Robin Hood Theatrics In A Lupin The III Vein with “Kaito Yamaneko”

Kazuya Kamenashi is Kaito Yamaneko

 Just watched the first episode of the most compelling and thrilling Crime/Espionage Drama with “Kaito Yamaneko", starring Kazuya Kamenashi as the titular Neko-Mask wearing thief who makes it his mission to steal from the crookedly rich and politically corrupted. 

Cracking the Code to Untold Riches...

You Can't Catch Me!

  MAN! From the very beginning I was completely enthralled by the exploits of Yamaneko and his band of Criminal Cohorts; like Lupin The III before him, this show is full of colorful and captivating characters led by a man whose demeanor, antics and dialog all strike one as someone gone completely off the deep end! 

Yamaneko’s group of like-minded individuals consists of: 

Hiroki Narimiya as Hideo Katsumura

Suspicious First Meeting

Hiroki Narimiya as Hideo Katsumura, a news Journalist who first gets the attention of Yamaneko because of his sympathetic serial write-ups on their doings, and by and by slowly sees the mission that they adhere to- his journalistic sense has him accompanying  Yamaneko on his missions until he has become one of them!

Nene Otsuka as Rikako Hosho

Sexy Nene Otsuka makes her mark here as sultry Rikako Hosho, the woman who uses her feminine wiles to get the inside scoop on the team’s intended victims, as a big fan of hers, I have to sayhow GREAT it is to see her again, aside from an appearance in HERO2, I haven’t seen her in a drama proper since 2008’s “Around 40”!

Suzu Hirose as Mao Takasugi

 Probably the most interesting character is Mao Takasugi, a tormented teen-genius hacker who, at first a proverbial “Arch Enemy” of Yamaneko’s who becomes an ally of sorts when Yamaneko uses his maniacal ways to convince her to fight alongside each other rather than against each other. Mao is played by a new actress I’m seeing for the first time in Suzu Hirose, (oops, Dramawiki informs me that she the actress playing the “younger” version of Ryoko Kuninaka’s Takako character in Gekiryuu ~ Watashi wo Oboete Imasuka?) she’s just great, she and Kamenashi play off each other perfectly!

Nanao as Sakura Kirishima

And WHOA! If THAT wasn’t enough, we’ve even got luscious, luscious NANAO as a pretty young Police Detective Sakura Kirishima who’s made it a point to try and capture the elusive Yamaneko, little does she know that her childhood sempai Katsumura is actually AIDING the felons! 

Poor girl really has her work cut out for her…besides not knowing of Katsumura’s misdeeds, she also sadly is working under a sleazy superior anmed Sekimoto (Sasaki Kuranosuke, playing another icky role) who in fact is working behind the scenes with the same corrupt politicians Yamaneko and his crew are exposing!

Oh Man, this is such a great  and FUN show!!! Can’ wait to get back to even MORE!!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Otsuka Nene sipping Soup

Crush Of The Day: Otsuka Nene

Huh. Well, HERE’S one I NEVER saw coming, not in all my years of watching Japanese dramas and Japanese actress-lusting. Because you see, while Otsuka Nene may have been a good little actress and easy enough on the eyes, I have ALWAYS associated her with fractured j-drama Aito wa Keshite Koukai Shinaikoto, a show about a brother and sister’s incest relationship, and every time I saw Ms. Otsuka after that, I just couldn’t get that drama out of my head!
I mean, taking on a touchy subject like that is hard enough, but having the theme song sung by wacky funsters TUNNELS, crooning ‘Omae ga Hoshiiiiiiii” over home footage of the brother and sister playing as little children during the opening credits just added that extra amount of creepiness to the mix! So I’ve always felt weird seeing either Ogata Naoko or Otsuka Nene in anything after that, and before long, I didn’t see them in any new dramas and eventually put them out of my mind!

It wasn’t until 2008 came around that I suddenly started seeing Nene Otsuka appearing in dramas again. Honestly speaking, the first time I’d seen her again after all those years (in Uchino Masaki crime drama GONZO), I didn’t recognize her at all, and actually mistook her for fellow 90’s actress Asou Yumi at first!

Then came her appearance as hard-as-nails Maijima Misa in TOKYO DOGS followed almost immediately with her portrayal of ramen-lovin’ Todoroki Furuko in ARASHI SP Saigo No Yakusoku and it seemed to me that Nene Otsuka was suddenly everywhere! I wondered- had she recently come out of retirement or something? But a quick check on Dramawiki informed me that Nene had been solidly working since I’d first seem her in Ai To Wa Keshite Koukai Shinaikoto, so it simply had been a case of me not noticing her, I guess. Watching her in the aforementioned GONZO, I noted that time had really worked well for her, and she’d turned into a pretty fine MILF-ish type actress. But her character of Psychiatrist Matsuo Risa was just a little bit too “granola” for me, and it wasn’t until I dug up her previous drama AROUND 40 that I got to see just how sexy she could get!Watching the first episode of Around 40 (which I’d dug up primarily for my love of warm and quirky actress Amami Yuki), when Fashion Editor Morimura Nao first came onto the screen, I ONCE AGAIN thought, “Hey, It’s Asou Yumi”! I thought she was a hot little number indeed, and was quite taken aback when the beginning credits rolled and I saw that the role of Nao was in fact played by none other than Otsuka Nene ! My first thought was, “Ohh, Nooo! That hot chick I was drooling after was the sister in that incest drama!” But by the end of that first episode, I was beginning to like her too much, and by the time I was halfway though the series, found that she was my favorite character in the show and that I was utterly in love with her! By the time the series ended, any old feelings I might have had harbored against Nene were totally obliterated! As Nao, Nene had it all: Sexy as well as subdued, Confident and at times heartbreakingly vulnerable. Because of her perf in Around 40, I now LOVE Nene Otsuka, and can cherish her as the hot little actress she really is! PS: Funny thing about always mistaking Nene for Yumi Asou- In the Sanma/Kimura Takuya drama Sora Kara Furu Ichioku no Hoshi, when I saw sexy as hell Maho Toyota appear onscreen, once AGAIN, I though, “Hey! It’s Yumi Asou!”! And even stranger is the fact that when I actually SAW Yumi Asou in Toshishita No Otoko, my first thought was, “Who the heck is that?” AHAHAHAHA!