Princess Princess on the Kohaku Uta Gassen!!

Was surprised to read that fave girl rock group Princess Princess will be making their first ever appearance on the Kohaku Uta Gassen this year- Amazingly, they never did the Red and White in their entire career as they'd always had their own concert activities to perform, somehow I suspect this will still be the case and the "appearance" will be nothing more than a satellite broadcast to the station in the vein of Masaharu Fukuyama (who'll almost certainly do the same)... Still looking forward to it!
My prediction song: "Diamonds"...
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

LADY Once More, With Feeling

Kaname Jun and Kitagawa Keiko in LADY

 Been loving Keiko Kitagawa's performance as Ayami Mutoi in the drama Akumu Chan so much that I've actually gone back and decided to try watching her show LADY~ Saigo No Hanzai Profile again, which some of you may recall I bailed out on after the first few episodes.

Initially I was disappointed because I thought her role would be like Kimura Takuya in Mr. Brain or Fukuyama Masaharu in Galileo, but she served more of a team-player role like Ueto Aya in Zettai Reido, but watching the past few episodes (currently up to episode 6) I do think they give her a lot of time to shine, so it's OK. Plus, she looks deadly pretty here...We'll see if I can make it all the way through this time!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Love La Luna

   Just the other night I was watching an old episode of the awesome variety show Star Golden Bell with f(x) as the guests and was reminded of how much I love, love, love member Luna for her eternally sweet and sunny disposition and was merrily going along screencapping all her adorably cherubic gestures. Not even one day later my friend gave me a bunch of DVD discs filled with clips of shows he recorded that he thought I'd like, and among them was episodes of the music show IMMORTAL SONG featuring f(x)'s resident songbird herself!!

    Now, I've always known that Luna was an incredible singer (in fact, it was the first thing I loved about her) but there was this one particular performance she did of a classic song called "Fool" that took my appreciation of her vocals to new heights! I was watching the performance with my mouth agape, thinking "Holy TOLEDO can this girl SING!!!"

I thought for SURE she was going to win this round, sadly she came up short when the votes were counted, but never mind, this was STILL one of her most moving performances, brought both me AND the audience to tears! Aw Man, Luna's always been my favorite member of f(x), but this has REALLY solidified my love for her!!!!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Manga Pencil Art

Was going through some folders of stuff I had bookmarked as possible blog entries from awhile ago, and came across this one screencap I took from the Masahiro Matsuoka / Tabe Mikako drama Yasuko To Kenji that actually still looks totally cool and post-worthy!!

Tabe Mikako and Masahiro Matsuoka

 Yasuko To Kenji tells the story of an ex-yankee gangbanger who's now an established manga artist (though under a female pseudonym) who's also taking care of his rambunctious younger sister. 

The Manga Work Team

As the drama revolves heavily on the details of life as a Manga artist, a lot of real manga devices and tools are used, one episode showed  the pencil-work of  some pages that Kenji did as he was musing about the strip's direction and looking at it, I was blown away by how FREAKIN' BEAUTIFUL the artwork was! As an artist myself, I have to say it amped me up and made me want to drag out my drawing table and do some sketches of my own!!! I wonder who it was that did the actual artwork for the show. Somebody talented, that's for sure!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Gots Me Some Downloadin' To Do

So a few weeks ago, I accidentally deleted my folder where I keep all my Japanese downloads: Dramas, MP3 Music and Movies.  I had been getting rid of some old torrents off my desktop, and when I emptied the trash, KNEW something was up since it took so darn LONG to empty. When I saw that it had emptied over 40GB of stuff, I knew I’d lost  something important, but at the time, I didn’t know WHAT!

  I only realized the folder that had been deleted was my Japanese Downloads when days later I was looking for the Keizoku SPEC movie, and realized the whole damn thing was gone!  All the dramas I’d been collecting like Kimi Ni Moichido Propose, Mirai Nikki, Kagi No Kagetta Heya, 13sai No Hello Work, Ghost Mama Sousasen, etc, all gone, as well as a bunch of movies, mostly RAWS sitting on my harddrive waiting for subs!
  D'oh! I immediately re-downloaded Akumu Chan and Going My Home (at the time I only had the first couple of episodes, so that was no problem), then spent the last few days re-downloading 13 Sai Hello Work week and Kagi No Kagatta Heya and now am deciding which other ones are worth the effort to download all over again. Sigh...

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Sleeper Agents of Another Kind

Yuiko (Kimura Manatsu) and Mutoi (Kitagawa Keiko) in Akumu-Chan

 Just finished watching the latest episode of Akumu-Chan, and was once again properly blown away! I could say that the show is getting better and better, but even more than that, with episode 5, the show has moved up into another gear COMPLETELY! With its beginnings as a "Teacher/Problem Students" format, this drama has revved up into a real sci-fi action flick, with teacher Ayami Mutoi (Kitagawa Keiko) and student Koto Yuiko (Kimura Manatsu) using their dream precognition abilities like freakin' SUPER-POWERS!

Each Episode begins with Mutoi not wanting to get involved...

But when things get serious, she's determined to help!

  When two of the school's students have gone missing without a trace, it is up to Mutoi and Yuiko to find out what happened, and watching them run to the Health room and get into sleep position was as exciting as watching Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson slide down the pole to the Batcave, it was like, "Aw, HELL YEAH, they're bustin' out the POWERS NOW!

Ayami goes into Sleep Mode...

...and Jumps Into the Dream State!

 No good superhero action drama would be complete without its villains, and Gackt as the sinister Dr. Shiki and his unwitting accessory to the crime, Health Aide Hirashima (Yuka) fit the bill perfectly! At this pivotal point, Shiki has split from the "Good Guys" and has gone on solo to become the enemy!

Shiki (Gackt) and Hirashima (Yuka)

 Throw in Fumiyo Kohinata as a wizened Commissioner Gordon/Alfred the Butler type Dr. Koto, and you've got yourself another traditional Super-Hero masterpiece complete with all the trappings!!!!! School is now in session!

Kitagawa, Kohinata and Kimura

Another Problem Averted thanks to the Dynamic Dream Duo

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Adventures In Cuteness: Makita Aju

Makita Aju in Going My Home

  As I’ve mentioned before, the drama “Going My Home” works as sort of four or five individual stories getting told to make up a bigger story, and as you all know well, my favorite of all these HAS to be the ones with Makita Aju, who, as Moe, is really the heart of the drama!

  Makita Aju is such a terrific little actress- most of her scenes involve no dialog and must convey  feelings with only facial expressions and gestures, but she does them so well, you actually feel like you are watching a young schoolgirl going about her day.

 Episode three was even more wonderful than usual, because since she is technically “on leave” from school, a good deal of the drama consists of Moe spending her days merrily exploring the small town, its fields, stores and animals, and then of course there’s that obsession with those elusive Kuna!

  She always has a thoughtful and curious expression on her face, and watching her running through town made me feel like I was watching my childhood somehow, through her eyes I was reminded of those magical days of youth when everything was a mystery and magic was around every corner!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Who's That Girl: Kanno Rio

So who's this sweet actress who's been playing the part of Tsuboi Sae's  ever suffering assistant Jun-Jun in the awesome drama Going My Way? After an extensive search, I found out the girl's name is Kanno Rio, and to my amazement has been around for some time now!

Rio Kanno AMUSE homepage

  Rio's had quite a few bit-part appearances in a bunch of Dramas and Movies, though sad to say, most of them I haven't seen. The handful that I HAVE seen that she appeared in (dramas like Star No Koi, Yankee Kun To Megane Chan and the Zettai Reido SP), I sure can't recall which parts she would have played without digging those out and watching them all over again! Sure is cute, though! 

  Though Jun-Jun's role is to play underling to the Martha-Stewart-ish Tsuboi Sae (Tomoko Yamaguchi), she really brings some gentleness to the strictly no-nonsense Sae... The recent episode regarding the vintage Bento-Box was sooooo sweet, mostly in part to her caring nature!Now, if ONLY they'll have an episode or two wearing something besides those tomboyish T-Shirts all the time!

 Ahahaha, just found out she's even a Super Sentai Veteran, having appeared in both GoGo Sentai Boukenger AND Kamen Rider DECADE! Seriously, in light of actors like Takeru Sato and Kobayashi Ryoko,  is this where all the fresh eyed new talent is coming from nowadays? LOL
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Oh My Rika!

Paraphrasing an adage used by my friend on his twitter account with the hashtag #RikaIsGod, I present some wonderfully stunning Adachi Rika scans kind folks have shared over the internet (with some slight color punch-up)...

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Sugar Time Again

  So I was talking to a friend the other week about older K-Pop groups like S.E.S., FIN K.L. and of course Baby V.O.X. (which was the whole reason I was getting so interested in the earlier acts) and asking him which groups he knew of and/or liked.
 He said that though he'd heard a few songs here and there from all of the above groups, he didn't know them too well. He DID mention a group that he WAS into, though, and it came from a rather unusual source- seems he's been a fan of a Korean traveling show called "Tasty Road" and had fallen in love with one of the hosts. There was something about her that made his sure that she MUST be more than "just a host", and going online, he was to find that this girl, Park Soo Jin was indeed more than that- she was from  an early 2000's K-Pop band, and the band's name was... SUGAR!
 Sugar! You know, the whole time I've been into K-pop I don't think I ever connected Sugar with K-pop at ALL! Though in the back of my mind I knew they were from Korea and had a long Korean career, they have always seemed like a J-POP band to me! But I DID love them so, and even did a blog entry about them and my favorite song of theirs, "Himawari', from the Fukada Kyoko drama "Shiawase Ni Naritai"!

 Man, I was SOOO EXCITED when he told me that he was into Sugar! I  began blathering on about how much I loved them, in particular Himawari and its parent album COLORS 4 WISHES, which ironically enough, was just about the last album they put out before breaking up! I promised him I would be making a copy of this album for him and have subsequently been replaying it over and over again!

Ahhhh, sure brings back some happy memories!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

The Sexy As Hell Adachi Rika

Sexy Rika Adchi

 Went online to see what pretty actress Adachi Rika has been up to because it seems like I hadn’t heard from her or seen her in anything for awhile (been years since GeGeGe No Nyobu, that’s for sure!) and though it looks like she’s had bit parts in several small things, she hadn’t appeared in any major dramas since 2011!  What she HAS been keeping busy with, I was happy to find, was her awesome GRAVURE model career, and I was blown away to discover she was just as HOT and SEXY as ever! 

 Several of the sexier situations the curvy tarento gets into are the clips like the one where Rika's playing a sort of Batsu-Tennis, where she has to remove an article of clothing each time she misses a shot, til she's basically playing in her underwear...

...And the scene where she arrives at the church for her Wedding, but somehow forgets to put on a Wedding Dress, LOL (This scene was in fact so hot that they used it for the Cover shot for the DVD!)

...And what Gravure video wouldn't be complete without a melancholy, introspective sunset/dusk beach shoot to wrap things up nicely (and end with a bit of class, LOL)...

Checking out these AWESOME latest videos assures me that even though she may not be appearing as much acting-wise, Rika Adachi's MODELING CAREER is still full speed ahead!!!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

"Check It Out, Yo!!"