Ninja ni Kekkon wa Muzukashii

Although the Nanao action comedy “Ninja ni Kekkon wa Muzukashii” was pretty high on my list of “Want to Watch” dramas from the past season,  now that they’re finally getting around to subbing it, I must confess it hasn’t really been wowing me.

I know they were going for a “Lupin No Musume” vibe, with all the secret identity action going on, but in execution it struck me more like the recent Mitsuki Takahata vampire Comedy, which you may recall I felt very slapdash in its take, as if it were a high school production rather than a professionally produced drama. But that’s just my feel.

Nanano plays Hotaru Kusakari, a pharmacist struggling with her marriage to her husband Goro (Nobuyuki Suzuki), a Postal Worker, who never seems to understand her feelings and what she wants.

Their differences have made the two even consider divorce, but what neither of them know is that their significant others are BOTH part of clashing Ninja Clans, and when they’re not bickering at home about housework , they’re covertly duking it out on the battlefield!

Their differences have made the two even consider divorce, but what neither of them know is that their significant others are BOTH part of clashing Ninja Clans, and when they’re not bickering at home about housework , they’re covertly duking it out on the battlefield!

I was expecting  action-packed laugh out loud comedy, but so far I feel it's been a fairly mundane affair. As you can see, it wasn't even enough for me to bother screencapping! Too bad because I love most of the actors and actresses in this, including Maika Yamamoto, Rie Tomosaka and even Alice Hirose as Nanano's point-man!  Seriously, this cast is almost TAILOR MADE for me!

Ya know with the talent involved, I'll be sticking around....Guess we’ll see how this one goes!

JIN For Juniors: Yuina Kuroshima Goes Back in Time with “Ashi Girl”

Yuina Kuroshima as Yui in Ashigirl

Following in the footsteps of time-slipping historical dramas like “JIN” and “Nobunaga Concerto” comes Ashi-Girl (Ashi-Gyaru, playing on the pun of the Japanese foot soldiers called Ashigaru), the story of a high school runner named Yui Hayakawa (Yuina Kuroshima) who gets inadvertently transported back to the Sengoku Warring period via her brother’s time machine.

Yui is a clumsy and not-too-bright student who can barely keep her eyes open for classes and can’t keep up with the class and its history lessons. The only thing she’s interested in is running, and in that she excels! In fact, the teachers are considering her for state finals! But something happens that suddenly makes her take a vested interest in history…

 One night she is in the family’s outside shed, where her genius brother has created a time machine to “send his bullies back into the past” (LOL).

Unfortunately, the always unlucky Yui just happens to grab the sword which serves as the switch for the time-transfer, and before her brother can stop her, she has unwittingly sent herself off to the past!

When Yui opens her eyes, she is shocked to find herself in the company of some fatigued soldiers regrouping after a devastating attack. She dons some armor and a hat to conceal her looks, and her tomboyishness comes in handy when the soldiers think she is just another boy serving the war.

 She tries to escape from them and make it on her own, but she soon weakens from hunger. She is met by a young man on a horse who she later finds out is the son of a Lord, named Hagi (Kentaro Ito). After some argument, he leaves her, only to be astonished when she runs after him and keeps up with his horse! Impressed, he helps her back into town, and so dazzled is Yui by him that she decides to go to the castle and offer to be his runner.

But things aren’t as easy as that and Yui finds herself promptly thrown out on her butt. After all, she’s just some peasant girl and despite her declaration that she was invited by the young lord, they ignore her and keep her out.

She meets the older brother of Hagi named Shigeyuki (Yuya Matsushita) who treats her kindly, but in the end she must find out a different way to get into the castle and serve Hagi.

 She finds a place to eat and sleep  with the kind woman Kitsuno (Rie Tomosaka). Kitsune is the mother of the fallen soldier whom Yui has been pretending to be, and instead of being angry, takes her under her wing. She offers Yui a chance to be a hard-working part of their family, but after only a day of farming, she knows she just can’t be happy unless she can be the runner for the young lord. For she’s properly fallen in love with him!

 After one month living in the past, during a full moon, she abruptly slips back to present day, where her brother informs her that the machine is synchronized with the moon patterns and one can only travel back and forth during those times.

Yui goes back to school and, now with a keen interest in the fate of the young lord, begs the teacher for information about the past.

 She’s excited to learn of the historical events which happened  in the very lands they’re living in now…but her excitement turns to despair when she finds out that the entire castle, soldiers and men had all perished in a battle shortly after she’d returned home! She just HAS to get back to the past to warn them!

Hahaha, this is a really fun story to watch, and despite its high-school setting (I really hate high school dramas), you jsut can’t go wrong with these time-traveling kind of shows! And though this is the first time I’m seeing Yuina Kuroshima, I’m already a big fan of hers. Her portrayal of Yui/Yuinosuke is so likable and FUN!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Requiem For One Long Gone

Just started watching another dark and surreal drama with the new mystery Gekiryuu ~ Watashi O Oboetemasuka? starring Rena Tanaka, Kenta Kiritani, Ryoko Kuninaka, Tomosaka Rie and Koji Yamamoto.

Tanaka Rena as Misumi Keiko

Kiritani Kenta as Higashihagi Koji

Kuninaka Ryoko as Midohara Takako 

Yamamoto Koji as Sabashima Yutaka

Tomosaka Rie as Akiyoshi Miya

20 years ago, seven schoolmates took an excursion on a bus, and somewhere along the way, one of the girls named Fuyuha mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again. Fast forward to the present, and the remaining students have all grown up and moved on, til Fuyuha and her unexplained disappearance have all been mostly forgotten about. When we check in on the surviving students, we find that all of them have been living turbulent and troubled lives as adults, til one day fate seems to bring them all back together, and then one day one of the women gets a chilling email with one single line and signature: 

"Do You Remember Me?- Fuyuha."

As the colleagues reconnect and explore the strange emails they are all suddenly receiving from their supposedly long-departed friend, each is forced to examine the life they've been leading as they look back at their days of youth where everything was bright and optimistic, with their whole futures ahead of them.

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Favorite J-Pop Singles: Tomosaka Rie / Escalation

Going through my files of past Blog entries, I was surprised to see that I'd somehow missed one of my old "Favorite J-Pop Singles" essays on Tomosaka Rie's song "Escalation" when I transferred everything over from my old VOX Blog, so I thought I'd just repost it again. Original post was in 2008... 

Back in 1995 or so, J-pop buyer Dave handed me a pre-order sheet of a new “talento”, a cute idol/singer who ws about to release her very first single. The artist name was Tomosaka Rie, and her single was a song called “Escalation”. “So, you want me to order that single for you?” asked Dave, to which I quickly replied, “Oh yeah, I’ll give THIS chick a whirl..she’s a cutie!”

A few weeks later, the single arrived, and I was pleasantly surprised with the song, since blindly ordering a single based on sheer looks was pretty much a gamble! Soon enough I loved the song, and in a happy coincidence, later that month, I found out that Rie Tomosaka was to appear on MUSIC STATION!  I couldn't wait!

WOW, seeing pretty Rie for the first time was awesome- She was just simply adorable, giggling and winning over everyone there, and my was she CUTE!Then she got up to sing…and I was TOTALLY shocked when, INSTEAD of Escalation, she sang a DIFFERENT song from her NEWEST single! The song she sang was a song called “Kushami” (sneeze), and cute Rie kept giggling throughout the performance, proving (at least) that she wasn’t a lip-syncher! Ahh! Here was a new, fun Rie Tomosaka song that I didn’t have! And though I searched in vain, at that time, the powers that be had decided I would not own a copy of that single! (I'd get a copy of it later from a friend)

Thus we return to the original single  “Escalation” , the song that while NOT the one I’d seen performed, IS the one that got me started loving her. Later, I would know her better as an actress in such shows as UE O MUITE ARUKO (with Nishida Hikaru!) and TABLOID (with Takako Tokiwa), and of course, nowadays people know her as pretty incense peddler Chika in the NHK Taiga Drama ATSUHIME! Going online recently, I was ECSTATIC to see that there in fact WERE clips of Rie promoting "Escalation" on music shows, and I'm finally getting to see them after all these years!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

All The Hot (1998) Young Idols

Tanaka Rena

Looking for some old paperwork, I came across this incredible 1998 pictorial I saved from some long-forgotten magazine featuring eight popular and up-and-coming Idols in a wonderfully beautifully shot spread! Flipping through the eight glossy pages, it was like INSTANT NATSUKASHII seeing all the familiar faces! Really didn't think it had been all that long ago til you see these gals so YOUNG!

Tomosaka Rie

Yada Akiko

Kato Ai

It’s sweet and pleasing to see that quite a few of these girls featured are still among us and have gone onto successful careers, mainstays like Tomosaka Rie, Kato Ai, and the recently gushed-about-here Yada Akiko are all still very much around, but wow, for some like Niiyama Chihara and Kamon Yoko (who were popular enough back then, and  so pretty!) you just have to wonder, “Whatever happened to them?!”

Niiyama Chiharu

Kamon Yoko

Hinagata Akiko

And though it was a kick to see such a YOUNG Rena Tanaka in there, no picture shocked me more than when I came across the newest idol in that article, a then bright and freshly scrubbed 16 year old KAZUE FUKIISHI! You know, seeing her in dramas like SCANDAL, and of course most recently in the Matsumoto Jun drama LUCKY SEVEN, I had NO IDEA that in my files I had idol pictures of her from back when she was first starting out!

Fukiishi Kazue

Keep Up the Good Work, Ladies! We’ll keep tuning in!