Call Her Lightning: Aoi Yu in "Raiou"

Aoi Yu as Rai in Raiou

 Man, I have just finished watching the most awesomest movie! Years ago I saw a super fun episode of Kuwazu Girai (which I detailed here) featuring Okada Masaki and one of my very, very favorite actresses, Aoi Yu, who were at the time promoting a movie called Raiou (The Lightning Tree) and the couple was so much fun and seemed to get along so well that when I found the movie up for grabs, I downloaded it right away!

Okada Masaki and Aoi Yu

    Now, you would think that after how much I love Aoi Yu, I would have immediately watched that movie as soon as I got it, but truthfully, when I read the movie summary stating Raiou as a story of “a girl and a boy in the Edo Period who fall in love but are separated by class status”, it didn’t really grab me and the movie fell onto the pile of “watch when I have time” flicks…before I knew it, I’d forgotten all about it!

So just the other day I was going through those old stacks of discs, and once again came across the movie and figured it was about time I checked it out! Even though the romantic storyline seemed basic, I reasoned that any movie with Aoi Yu is one worth watching! So I sat down to watch it and BOY I was I glad I DID! WOW was this movie GOOD! How come it took me so darn LONG to get around to watching this?!   

  First thing I gotta say is MAN, this movie is NOTHING like what the synopses I’d been reading had indicated- far from a typical romance separation by class, Raiou took that basic premise and took a MAJOR left turn with it, turning the movie into one featuring not only romance but Action, Adventure, and Human Drama!

Beyond the tale of a high class young nobleman falling in love with a peasant girl, we’ve got the male lead Narimichi (Okada Masaki) as a prince plagued by illnesses that not only make his sickly but prone to bouts of delirium as well, meeting Rai (Aoi Yu), a gruff wild-child raised in the mountains by the assassins who stole her away from her family when she was just a baby. Put these two together and you’ve got a whole new tale on an old tale!

  And the second and probably most important thing about Raiou is the awesome acting, ESPECIALLY on the part of Aoi Yu, my GOSH can this chick ACT!!!! MAN, her scenes were always so gripping, emotional and intense- I have to say that by the end of the movie, I was just DRAINED! Man, NOBODY sells a character better than her, NOBODY! What will this girl do NEXT?!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Crush Of The Day: Kimura Fumino

Kimura Fumino as Kahiyama Rika

       Just started watching the wacky mystery/suspense drama Henshin Interviewer No Yuutsu, and already I can tell it’s going to be a fun romp! After the heavy handed Nagase Tomoya drama Kurokochi, I needed a light comedy to let the breeze back in, and this show seems like a perfect fit! 

  The story of a mystery novelist named Shirakawa who, suffering from writer’s block on the eve of his 100th book, takes to the mountains to investigate the details of a real-life mystery called the Tulip Murders (to hopefully rejuvenate his writing) sounds like a straight-forward tale, but his eccentric way of disguising himself as a dapper young flatfoot journalist and his eagle-eyed sense of details makes for a zany and intriguing story all in one!

   The plot’s an interesting one, and Nakamaru Yuichi of KAT-TUN fame is terrific as main character Shirakawa Jiro, but honestly, the real reason I’m loving this drama so much is all because of ONE person, and that’s actress Fumino Kimura! As Shirakawa's nerdy and eager book editor Kahiyama Rika, she is so adorably spastic, dramatically goofy, and yet sweetly feminine, that she MELTED MY HEART after just ONE episode!

Nakamaru Yuichi and Kimura Fumino

As Shirakawa’s dutiful editor, she feels obliged to follow him as he goes out to investigate the unsolved mysteries, and the charm of Kahiyama is her sensibly uptight persona- besides carefully scrutinizing every scene and pooh-poohing most of Jiro's theories, she's practical to a "T", carrying this ENORMOUS bag full of the most peculiar and unexpected things, all “just in case of emergency”... Laptops and tape recorders make sense, but I even saw a hardhat in there! 

Watching her pull out a pair of sneakers before a big hike and happily put them on before cutely lacing them up had me in a BIG smile, YES, she can even make putting on SHOES adorable!

Throughout the show, every time Kahiyama (or, as the easily-annoyed Shirakawa likes to call her, “Gebi-yama) peers up from those thick glasses and curiously squints, I realize that there’s an extremely pretty girl under there (in fact, she kind of reminded me of gravure idol- actress YUKA for awhile there), but it’s her dorky aura that’s got me in SUCH a crush right now!

Checking the dramawiki stats, it seems I’ve seen Fumino before in dramas like ATARU and Mitsu No Aji, but I didn’t remember her at ALL, and that’s probably due to the fact that she was in her “regular” guise as a pretty actress! Funny though, once I dug those old dramas out to take these screencaps, I DID remember thinking her “Rai Yoka” character in “Mitsu No Aji” was a cutie, guess that shows that even THEN she had that special something!

in ATARU

above and below: as Rai Yoka in Mitsu No Aji

Going onto Youtube and checking out some of her many CMs, I gotta say, I was STUNNED my how gorgeous she was- Holy Crap, who knew Kahiyama was so good-looking under all that mousey camouflage? Just freaking BEAUTIFUL!

And is it just me or does she look a bit like actress Nagasawa Masami here?

Aw MAN,  such a pretty young actress/ model, but you know, the more I see the gorgeous side of her, the more I wanna get BACK to more episodes of Fumino so I can see her once more as Kahiyama! She's just TOO PRECIOUS!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Sweet K-Pop With AOA Black's "Moya"

AOA Black

One early morning I was driving out listening to a K-pop Mix CD that I made a few months back (complied from songs I’d acquired through various forums and such), and though I’d played it a bunch of times before, somehow, it was for the first time listening to it that morning that I realized what an absolutely CUTE song AOA’s “Moya” was! With adorably sassy singing against a slow, jazzy beat, it was such a perfect little tune, I wondered why I hadn’t realized its’ greatness before, and after hitting the “repeat” button on the player two more times, I made sure that when I got home that afternoon I’d go look up MORE on the song!

Jimin: Guitar , Vocals and Rap

Yuna; Keyboards and Vocals

ChoA: Vocals and Guitar

Mina: Bass Guitar and Vocals

Youkyung: Drums and Percussion

I’d liked AOA(Ace Of Angels) since their song “Elvis” and “Get Out” earlier this past year, and I guess that’s why I continued to download their later songs, but I have to say that besides seeing Hyejeong regularly on “The Romantic and The Idol” I didn’t know them that well or pay any special attention to them. Come to find out that this song “Moya” was technically released under the banner “AOA BLACK”, which was four members of AOA plus a drummer who perform as a rock band, whereas AOA Proper is seven members minus the drummer. (I was to even realize that Get Out was in fact another 5-member release!)

Anyway, so I’m watching the performance by AOA Black of “Moya”, and MAN, if I thought the song was cute, I was even MORE floored by how damn CUTE the girls were, not just physically (which they were, extremely) but in their actions, especially lead singer Choa, who gave the more disarmingly sweet and affectionate smiles and batted her eyelashes coyly after each verse she chirped, SO FREAKING ADORABLE!!! 

By the way, if you're watching this performance and think the girls' instrument playing is more on the side of the "Partridge Family" style of miming (i.e. only pretending to play), I can assure you by watching their unplugged clips that the girls really can play those instruments, and very well, too! Such an awesome little group!

Funny, I've only just started getting into AOA's newly released latest song "Miniskirt" , but though the new song is cool and catchy and the girls look sleek, sultry and sexy performing it, I'm gonna have to go on a limb and say there just AIN'T anything better than these girls when they're at their CUTEST! In fact, it looks like an order is upcoming for me!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

J-Drama Femme Fatales: Ashina Sei

Sei Ashina as Luscious Lab Temp Yaeko in Kurokochi

 You know, while I remember Sei Ashina in the thriller Bloody Monday as THIRD-I agent Kaoru Minami as being a really pretty woman, starring among such highly sexualized characters like Kichise Michiko’s Maya Orihara and Minase Yashiro's Ladybird  made her character seem more of a “cool and tough” chick than one of sexiness, but MAN, as super-sultry forensics scientist Yaeko Madarame in the latter episodes of Kurokochi, Ashina is going ALL out with the sleek SEXY SLUTTINESS and making her one of the MAIN reasons for me to turn in!!!

Ashina came aboard early in the Kurokochi series as a Temp in the Police Investigator Unit's Forensics Lab filling in for a strangely-absent Sawa Machiko (Yu Kashi), and what an entrance it was! Looking simply stunning and showing off sleek, killer legs, WHOA! Though part of me was wondering where Machiko had gotten to, another part of me wasn't too worried about it if THIS was the substitute they'd gotten!

I was initially disappointed that Machiko wasn't around for the sexy hijinks, Yaeko wasted no time taking over the same role as Kashi’s character, almost immediately hitting upon poor Seike (Gouriki Ayame) and escalating the sexual tension til she was literally making Seike sit in her lap during the course of the investigation! ZOUNDS!

"She's right behind me, isn't she?" thinks Seike

Man, who would have ever thought that the girl playing the hard-as-nails straightlaced agent Minami in Bloody Monday could be capable of such utter bawdiness? But then again, one of the very first characters I’d ever seen her play was in the drama “Tsubasa No Oreta Tenshitachi” as a supporting member of Karina’s story as a Cabaclub Hostess, so I suppose it was preordained!

Sei Ashina as Agent Kaoru Minami in Bloody Monday

and standing behind Karina in Tsubasa No Oteta Tenshitachi

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

f(x) Sings "No More"!

  I’ve already mentioned how much I love SM Entertainment artists f(x)’s last album “Pink Tape”, and I’ve also mentioned how much I love the track “No More”, which not only was my hands-down favorite track off the release, but had immediately made it into my top 10 faves of all time- so you can guess how freaking THRILLED I was to see an awesome FANCAM VIDEO of f(x) performing the song LIVE during the recent SMTown Week Concert!

Aw, MAN, the girls sound so good and look so freaking FINE (especially Sulli, who’s looking nice and curvy here!)- and seeing proper DANCE MOVES accompanying the song was mind-blowing!!! So awesome, “No More” was one song I NEVER thought I’d get to see sung in front of an audience since not only was it NOT a single or promoted track, the song itself is much more of a “cutesy” song than the avant-garde electronic stuff they’re more famous for, so I’m doubly thrilled that someone captured it on video since who KNOWS if they’d ever “officially” release this!!

  As I related during my original review of Pink Tape, “No More” is a song about a girl who is sick and tired of seeing her friend flit from one bad relationship to another, each time insisting “this is the one”, and likening her to a “fox-tailed girl” who plays with relationships! The fun, catchy hook of the song where they sing “Yeou Gateun Gijibae!” is actually the part where they’re saying,”You, You Fox-Like Girl!!!”, so it really is like a sassy, teasing song! And yet, during the bridge of the tune, they admit that no matter how bad it gets, they will always be there for them because they are friends. So Sweet!

This reminds me of their happy song “1,2,3”, which was an SMTown Winter Special CD release only, I also thought I’d neve get to see the girls performing it, but during a Christmas Special on TV, the girls came out in festive garb and whaddaya know- THAT was the song they did!!! That’s one of the GREAT things about SME- every song is special to them and deserves attention!!!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Another Litre of Tears with "Boku no Ita Jikan"

Tabe Mikako and Miura Haruma in Boku no Ita Jikan, 

 Watching new drama Boku no Ita Jikan, the story of a teenager named Takuto who finds out during his High School senior year that he has a degenerative disease that will slowly render his body useless til he eventually succumbs to it, the story was SO similar to the infamous “One Litre Of Tears” that with the exception of it being Lou Gherig’s Disease instead of Spinocerebellar Degeneration and the student being a male rather than female, this drama could almost be a spot-on remake!

Thought I’d skip this drama, but I love the chemistry between stars Haruma Miura and co-star Mikako Tabe so much (as witnessed in their movie Kimi Ni Todoke) that I eventually gave in and decided to check it out. So far, so good, nice pacing, and HEY, they’ve even got saucy Mizuki Yamamoto (whom I’ve recently lusted on after seeing her in “Summer Nude”) playing Tabe’s school friend Hina!

Above and Below: Tabe Mikako and Yamamoto Mizuki

Any story focusing on one dealing with a life-threatening disease is sure to be a somber one, Haruma Miura’s other similarly themed movie Koizora (where he was dying of cancer) was depressing as heck, and my GOSH, the original One Litre of Tears completely destroyed me for weeks, but if it’s done right, hopefully this drama will still be as good one worth watching…just better get the Kleenex out again! 

*  *  *  *  *  *

By the way, I just HAVE to mention how happy I am to note that veteran actress Mieko Harada is still looking as fine as ever, MY GOSH did I have the full-on lusting for her back in the day, (in particular in the AWESOME 1996 Nakayama Miho/Karasawa Toshiaki drama Oishii Kankei) and here, as Takuto’s stoic mother Sawako, it looks like she still got it goin’ on!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com