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| Kimura Takuya as Ieji Hisashi in "I'm Home" |
From the first glance at the promotional picture of Kimura Takuya’s new drama “I’m Home” with his wife and child’s face covered with ominous silver masks, I thought it was going to be another in line with his recent Sci-Fi adventures like Ando Lloyd, but after watching the pilot episode, it is (seemingly) anything but, rather a dark dramatic story of a man who suffers five years of memory loss due to a head injury he sustained in a huge gas explosion at his factory.
When our story begins, Ieji Hisashi (Kimura) is just getting released from the Hospital after 6 months in care. He rushes home to be with his family, tidies up the house and makes the meals…until his wife Kaoru (Mizuno Miki) and daughter Subaru (Yamaguchi Mayu) come home and, shocked to see him there, inform him that they are his FORMER family and that he has been REMARRIED to a new woman for YEARS!
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| Ieji thinking he's Home Sweet Home |
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| Daughter Subaru (Mayu Yamaguchi) thinking WTF is Dad doing here? |
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| Ex-Wife Kaoru (Miki Mizuno) thinking "Why is my Ex-Husband Here?" |
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| "Dad, You and Mom divorced years ago." |
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| "Oh...That's Right." Remembers Ieji. |
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| He needs help, this guy. |
He slowly begins to grasp the situation and eventually finds his way to his current spouse and child…where he is appalled to find that he cannot register their faces or expressions as they are covered with those aforementioned masks. Why is this? Why can he not perceive their faces, why does he have such a hard time connecting ot them…and why does he still have actual feelings for his FORMER family in his heart? Ieji struggles to understand.
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| "Oh Yeah, THIS is where I Live..." |
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| Gazing upon his loving wife Megumi (Aya Ueto) and his son... |
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| Only to find that instead of their faces... |
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| All he can see are cold, lifeless masks. |
His therapist isn’t much help. When he hears of Ieji’s “Mask” dilemma, his doctor (Oikawa Mitsuhiro) shrugs and says “The Brain is a very mysterious thing, and much of what you’re going through may be psychologically affected.” Perhaps, but man, there’s just something about any character that Oikawa plays where I just CANNOT trust ANYTHING they say, LOL
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| Unhelpful Therapist Yoshiaki (Oikawa Mitsuhiro) |
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| "My Doctor is a quack!" |
At work, things are just as tousled about- due to his injuries, he can no longer do the high-speed and intelligent work he once did, He is demoted to the basement department, a drab and shabby dead-end of washed up workers that resembles the SHOMUNI department not just a little! The Department is even run by a Leo Morimoto-type of older man, Kozukue Yukio, played by the likeable Nishida Toshiyuki.
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| Movin' On Down To The Small-League |
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| A SHOMUNI like atmosphere... |
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| Section Chief Kozukue (Nishida Toshiyuki)... |
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| ..and pretty Takanashi Yua (Yoshimoto Miyu) |
Though this is the lower end of the heap, with the co-operation of his fellow section employees (like the babe-a-licious Yua Takanashi, played by cutie Yoshimoto Miyu) Ieji takes on his work with a willing and optimistic mind.
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| Effective Takanashi always ready to help... |
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| ...though we find that even she has secrets of her own... |
Because of his memory loss, Ieji spends most of his time scribbling reminders to himself in a notebook as he re-learns things, this act (plus the hint of mysterious words scratched out), reminded me a bit of the Christopher Nolan Movie “Mememto”, but as the story progressed and we see that before his accident this Ando was a real ruthless SOB, it began to remind me more of the Harrison Ford Movie “Regarding Henry”. And just like that movie, we find that the new, gentle Ieji may just be the thing that everyone needs.
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| Writing Down the Pertinent Information |
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| Getting to know his family all over again |
Because of his memory loss, Ieji is a virtual “man out of time”, and there was this one particularly funny scene where they take him to a Karaoke bar where he finds that because of his accident, he doesn’t know any of the recent music. Then he brightens up when he recognizes a song, and begins to sing KARA’s “Mister”, to which the rest of the employees nod and say, “He IS living 5 years in the past!” HAHAHAHA
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| Ieji Doesn't know the Current Hits... |
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| ...But does a Killer KARA, complete with butt-shaking! |
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| "He really is still back 5 years." |
Though I spent most of the first episode kind of confused as to where the story was heading, things are shaping up nicely and I am getting really into it. You can usually count on Kimura Takuya’s dramas to have a certain amount of weight to them, and this one seems like another winner!
BTW- Say, what is happening with Aya Ueto’s casting choices lately, in the dramas I’ve seen her in recently, she’s been playing these same kind of pretty-but-passive Housewife characters, like in Hirugao and Hanzawa Naoki…though those roles were good and surely benefited by her playing them, whatever happened to the femme fatale Aya of AZUMI fame? Let’s get back to THOSE roles! Heh Heh!
