Strangers On A Train, J-Drama Style!
Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on The Train” tells the story of two men who meet on a train. They both have someone they want to kill, but know they will be arrested immediately for it because of their association with the victim. Their theory goes like this: since they’ve just met on a train and have no connection to each other, if they each kill each other’s adversary, the police will have nothing to connect them to the murder and they can get away scot free.
New drama Anata No Ban Desu (Your Turn To Kill) has a similar set-up, where a group of tenants at an apartment meeting admit they all have someone in their life they’d wish disappear. After some goading from the blowhards of the group (loudmouth Naoto Takenaka as the Landlord), they are all pressured into playing a ‘game” where they write down a person they want gone, and then put it in the box.
"Everyone has SOMEone they'd like to get RID of, right?"
Pressured into participating in the macabre game.
They then are passed out the sheets with the names on it and are told that this is the person they have to kill. “But this is just for fun, right?” worries newcomer Nana Tezuka (Tomoyo Harada)...They assure her that it’s all a game.
Nana has just moved in the the apartment with her fiance Shota (Kei Tanaka) and doesn’t want to play the game but is nervous about making a bad first impression. In the end, she plays the game but opts not to tell hubby about the strange game she got involved in. They are an otherwise happy couple, but things are about to get dark!
She tries to put it behind her. But when the loudmouthed landlord hurtles from the apartment balcony to his death the following evening, the unwitting participants realize that to some, the game is all- too real, and one by one people begin turning up dead!
A thrilling drama to watch, even though they’ve already defeated the purpose of the switching: The Hitchcock movie worked because the two men met by chance on a train and have no connection whatsoever, but in Anata no Ban Desu, they’re all living in the same apartment and are on he same committee no less! Surely the murders will end up sticking to them one way or another!
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| Naoto Takenaka |
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| Maho Yamada |
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| Soko Wada |
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| Nao |
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| Nanase Nishino (so pretty!!!) |
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| Rie Minemura |
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| Yoji Tanaka |
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| Miho Kanazawa |
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| Reiko Kataoka |
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| Jin Katajiri |
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| Tae Kimura |
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| Yoshihiko Hakayamada |
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| Namase Katsuhisa |
And indeed, as the deaths pile up, authorities and fellow tenants alike begin looking upon their neighbors with much suspicion, wondering who will be next on the list!
Been YEARS since I’ve seen pretty Tomoya Harada in a drama, (since 1996’s “Dessin”!!) , and it’s wonderful to see her here! She’s still as warm and lovely as ever, but BOY, the girl STEALING the show for me HAS to be actress NAO as the creepily odd neighbor Mikiha Ono.
From the beginning Mikiha seems like a strange girl, but when she begins stalking Nana’s fiance Shota every day, waiting for him after work and following him around, she becomes the most interesting character on the show!
She already wowed me with her smouldering sexuality in the Nozomi Sasaki drama “Ame ga Furu to Kimi wa Yasashii” (which also starred Tae Kimura), this adds a new dimenion to her that I’ve never seen- I LOVE this character….Hope she doesn’t turn out to be the killer, AHAHAHA!
Another character I really like is Nurse Ruri Sakuragi, played by actress Miwako Kakei. As the assistant under scatterbrained and arrogant Atsushi Fujii, she is no-nonsense and really puts her FOOT down on his spazzy personality! Another character that lights up the screen whenever she’s on, I hope she doesn’t get written out soon, however, if Fujii gets murdered then I guess that’s that, LOL!
CAN’T WAIT TO GET BACK TO THIS DRAMA!!!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
