So I was watching the 2006 movie “A Cheerful Gang Turns The Earth” [Yoki na Gang ga Chikyu wo Mawasu] the other day. And all through the movie, I was racking my brains trying to figure out who the lead actress was. She was BEAUTIFUL, man, some scenes I just couldn’t concentrate, she was so smokin’! It didn’t hurt that the character she was playing,cool, calm and calculating, just added to the allure of this gal!
So I’m watching this, and in EVERY scene, I’m saying to myself “Grphgh…I KNOW who this Actress IS! Just gimme a MINUTE!” But the answer just wasn’t forthcoming! She looked so much like ALWAYS SUNSET ON THIRD STREET star Koyuki that even though I knew it wasn’t her, that was the actress I kept coming back to. At some point, after scraping the barrel of my brain, it occurred to me that she looked ever so slightly like this actress I loved years and years ago that played Lady Oichi (Nobunaga’s sister) in the Taiga Drama HIDEYOSHI, a woman named Mitsuko Yorichika. But wouldn’t she be too old to play this hot young gal? But then again, I said to myself, that actress had makeup and a headpiece and was done up in Feudal times in HIDEYOSHI, maybe she was a lot younger under all of that!
But even there, the actress didn’t look QUITE like her either! Argh, She looked SO familiar, part of me decided she must be a new actress that I’d just seen recently in some drama or movie. BY the time the movie was winding down, I was thinking to myself, “C’mon, C’mon, get to the ending credits already!” I just hadda know! But then, guess what happened? The ending credits weren’t SUBTITLED! Agh! I rewound the credits and tried to read the japanese characters as they quickly scrolled across the screen, but the ending theme song was a very wonky song sung by Wada Akiko, and after rewinding and hearing the song three times, I eventually gave up.
Funny thing is, at one point in my life I DID know exactly who the stars of the show were, because CHEERFUL GANG TURNS THE EARTH was shown here in Hawaii at the International Film Festival, and it was the terrific cast that made me want to check it out in the first place! Unfortunately, by the time we found out that the movie was showing, it was already starting and we just didn’t have enough time to get down there.
So I always kept in mind that when the movie came out, I would just buy it, and that’s about ALL I remembered, the only other thing I really remembered was that Osawa Takao was one of the actors in it! So I’m watching the movie, and not only was Osawa Takao in it, Sato Koichi AND Matsuda Shota (the kid playing the new Shogun in ATSUHIME) were in it as well! Very famous actors...how did I forget! And that gorgeous mystery girl. Ah, back to my story.
So with the movie providing no ultimate answer for me, It was off to the mighty Wikipedia site, where perusing the cast listing for Cheerful Gang finally gave me the name I was looking for…
Kyoka Suzuki!
WHA! I couldn’t believe it! That was ONE actress that never crossed my mind! I mean, granted, she WAS a really pretty actress and I DID know her pretty well back in the 90’s, but MAN, she looked SOOOOOO different from the last time I saw her! I loved her in dramas Like GAMAN DEKINAI, KIRA KIRA HIKARU, and especially AFRICAN NIGHTS, but she had a very different look about her…Seems like she finally lost the ramen-styled hair she had before and replaced it with a stylish bob. No wonder I didn’t recognize her!
She went from looking like this pretty lady:
To THIS sleek beautiful vixen!
I was flabbergasted! WOW, Kyoka Suzuki!! I went onto the internet, and began downloading alla these new pictures of her, damn, she looked so good! And I realized she’d adopted this “newer” look awhile ago, at least four or five years now.
It’s a funny thing, too…She’s one of those actresses that (to Me, anyway), get just better and better looking with age. Even back in the African Nights days, I preferred that look to her early “gravure” idol days. Which is too bad, ‘cause I don’t think you’re likely to see the mature Kyoka squeezing into a skimpy two piece bikini anytime soon, though I’m sure she CERTAINLY could pull it off!
Oh, and the Movie Itself? As you may have guessed by now, I LOVED it! The story is about these four individuals with unique powers: Osawa is a human lie detector, Suzuki clocks off time in her head like a computer, Matsuda can pickpocket anyone, and Sato is the charismatic talker who charms the audience/captives while the heist is commencing. The four individuals happen to be at a bank when they are witness to a half-assed robbery, and after stopping the would -be thief, they decide THEY could do better, and become a slick crime unit making daring and theatrical robberies!
I’ve always loved movies where a team of eccentric people who are aces at “what they do” join together and execute perfectly planned heists, like that team at the beginning of that first Tom Cruise MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE movie, the HUDSON HAWK museum thieves, heck, even OCEAN’S ELEVEN had that spirit I’m talking about…well, CHEERFUL GANG just exudes the same stuff! Dressed in loud, flamboyant clothes, the look of the gang resembled a Sentai Group that even Ishinomori Shotaro would be proud of!
Okay, I’m off to go search for more recent Kyoka Suzuki pics.
Jya.