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| 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!
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| 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!
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| in ATARU |
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| 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!
