The Lovely Bones

Arisa Mizuki

A few years back I came upon a crime drama called Beautiful Bones, and the cover of the drama looked SO much like the American series “Bones” that I figured it was another of the many Japanese mystery remakes they had been putting out like COLD CASE, SUITS and THE GOOD WIFE:

Since the drama was readily available, I downloaded it for later viewing, but frankly I just wasn’t in the mood for another Japan adaptation of an American Show just then, and so it got buried under the pile of “dramas to watch” that we all have!

So just a few weeks ago, I’m going through old J-drama reviews, and come upon a series called “A Corpse Is Buried Beneath Sakurako’s Feet” about an eccentric and rebellious "osteologist" who solves crimes by analyzing the bones of the cases. Well, that intrigued me and I went to go see about acquiring it- imagine my surprised when it was the Beautiful Bones drama I already HAD!

The Japan proper title of the drama is “Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru” but it seems to be tagged under several titles, Beautiful Bones, Sakurako’s Investigation and the wonderfully aforementioned “Corpse” title.

It was clearly time to get out that drama and check it out, and there was even one more surprise for me when I did- The entire time I had the drama in my possession, I though the girl on the cover was Miki Nakatani!! Only when I begna watching it did I realize that the gal was none other than Arisa Mizuki!!

Arisa was one of the very first actesses I fell in love with during my “golden Age” of J-drama discovery with her show “Nurse No Oshigoto” where she stole my heart each week! Truth be told, I still have a hard time separating that giggly girl with the brash, tuff as nails kind of characters she plays nowadays though of course I’ve seen her in many dramas since. It’s much like fellow actresses Ryoko Shinohara and Miho Kanno, whom also have adopted these tomboy type roles , though somehow, I’ve had no problem getting used to them. It’s only Arisa whom I always have to take a step back and say “That LADY is Arisa Mizuki!”

Anyway, I dove right into the show and right off the bat it reminded me of a female version of the Masaharu Fukuyama drama “Galileo”. Eccentric genius scientist who is awful with social cues and hard to get along with, saddled with a wide-eyed assistant who is unwittingly ‘paired” with him.

 In Galileo of course we had Fukuyama  as the teacher and Kou Shibasaki as the addled assistant, whereas here we have Arisa as Sakurako Kujo the osteologist and Taisuke Fujigaya as good-hearted guy Shotaro Tatewaki who is assigned to “deal” with her.

I enjoyed the first episode, nice pacing and lots of strong characters, including Takaya Kamikawa and saucy Yua Shinkawa as Tatewaki’s lab partners and the gruff Masahiro Takashima as the Police Detective who always seems to find Sakurako involved in his crime scenes!

Then I watched the second episode about an abused little girl and MAN, this episode was SO freaking great. The characters ALL came to bat, though the show has lots of wackiness and jokes, they took their crimes very seriously and everyone showed their worth.

After I watched it, I have to say I felt really wrung-out! That episode killed me! Marveling at how good it was, I had to laugh at how long I had the drama on my desktop before filing it away and forgetting about it! But now, It’s one of my favorite dramas to watch! So much that I just HAD to stop and do this little write up!

Not many pics because I don’t want to waste any more time before jumping back in! 

Posted by zdoramaagain.blogspot.com 

Putting In My TWO WEEKS

Completely captivated by the new crime drama TWO WEEKS which I just started watching today- simply amazing the way the story is spun- You are first introduced to the players of the story, who they are and what they represent- and as the story moves forward, they begin slowly revealing how each person is somehow connected to each other-I was blown away each time a new hidden relationship was revealed and had to sit back and admire how finely crafted this drama is!

TWO WEEKS tells the story of a man named Daichi Yuki (Haruma Miura), and from the moment we meet him, we see that he is a man of questionable character where things like gambling and prostituting are all a part of his everyday life. 

He works at a dingy pawnshop nad is content to life the rest of his life this way…til an old girlfriend named Sumire Aoyagi (Manami Higa) and tells him that he has an 8 year old daughter who is in need of a bone-marrow transplant which she hopes he can provide.

On the other side of the law, we have Kaede Tsukishima (Kyoko Yoshine), an up and coming prosecutor in the courts, She is green and frequently chided by her superiors, but she has a passion for justice, and one of her big missions is to expose a corrupt businessman named Kaname Shibasaki (Masanobu Takashima).

Her best friend Ai Kashiwagi (Eri Tachibana) is an escort on a glitzy Caba-Club which Shibasaki frequents, and as his “main girl”, has promised to watch him closely and report back to Kaede if she happens to find anything suspicious that can bring him down.

In conversation, Ai happens to mention that there is a guy she’s keen on and has been dropping hints to, but what Kaede doesn’t know is that this guy is Daichi Yuki, an ex-convict who has connections to Shibasaki and will be playing a prominent role in her near future.

There is some good news for Daichi and his ex-girlfriend: His blood is a match and within tow weeks he is scheduled to give his daughter a transfusion which will save her life. As a man who once lived without aim, this chance meeting with his daughter for the first time has given him purpose, and he even manages to smile. But all of this will soon change.

A few days later, Kaede gets a frantic phone call from Ai- seems she’d discovered something about Shibasaki that can put him away and is desperate to get the info to her.

Kaede tries to meet up with her as soon as she can, but with a sense of impending doom about her, she runs to the pawnshop, and, giving the camera with the damning evidence on it, pawns it off to Daichi with a favor asking him “Please don't sell it- I’ll be back to buy it soon!”

With that in mind, Daichi slips the camera in his pocket instead of cataloging it with the rest of the supplies. But that night when he is asked to inventory the stock, he is struck from behind…

...only to wake up with a bloody knife in his hands and the murdered body of Ai lying in front of him! Daichi has NO IDEA how he got there or what transpired, but he knows one thing: he is being framed for the murder of this girl!

With his daughter’s transfusion only 14 days away, prison is an unacceptable fate, but with the evidence stacked against him and a burning desire by prosecutor Kaede to see him pay for his crimes, he will have to use all his wits and knowledge to clear his name!

A VERY intense drama done in a very gritty, realistic style, TWO WEEKS had been on my radar for months- We frequent an Izakaya which plays Japanese Programming on its TVscreens, and have been seeing the promotional commercial of it for weeks! 

Once I saw a subbing team was going to pick it up, I wasted no time grabbing it, and with Anata No Ban Desu, Nagi No Oitima, and Lupin No Musume all wrapping up, looks like TWO WEEKS and the Tsubasa Honda drama CHASE are going to be my GO-TO shows for awhile! (at least til Tsubasa's new show CHEAT starts, which I expect to be a MAJOR BLAST!)

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com