Manhattan Love Story: Zany Beyond Belief

Masahiro Matsuoka and Kyoko Koizumi in Manhattan Love Story

Just got finished watching "Manhattan Love Story"and it was a very, very, very silly drama indeed! When you're watching show featuring the screenwriter and cast from wacky shows like Kisarazu Cat's Eye and Ikebukuro West Gate Park, you can expect a certain amount of zaniness, but WOW Manhattan Love Story went beyond anything I'd have thought possible! But, ya know, somehow, when the show was over, I realized part of me really liked it- funny characters and funny scenes that I have to admit were pretty great and I'd want to watch again...and the ending song "Love Love Manhattan" by TOKIO always ended the episodes on a nice note! Not quite recommended but still one I put on my "good" list, LOL!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

"Okitegami Kyoko" Continues To Enthrall!

Aragaki Yui and Okada Masaki

Just finished watching the seventh episode of the mystery drama "Okitegami Kyoko No Biboroku" and I'm thrilled to say it's STILL my favorite J-drama on the air right now!
This latest episode had Kyoko attempting to find a clue to a mystery writer's apparent suicide by reading all 99 books in his catalogue, and since she'd forget everything once she fell asleep, she was trying to read them all without going to sleep at all! As the marathon reading assignment days went by, the bond betwen Kyoko and Yakusuke (who'd been recruited to keep her awake throughout the ordeal) became closer than it had ever been, and by the end, the two had a new understanding of each other.. soooo good!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

A Double Trouble Update!

Hinako Sano and Anna Iriyama are Back!

YATTA! Just watched the latest episode of the Fumino Kimura/Tori Matsuzaka mystery drama “Siren”, and I was thrilled to find that my earlier wish that those adorable Call Girls played by Hinako Sano and Anna Iriyama become recurring characters came true! Yes, seems both Ai and Rena have become relevant secondary characters on the show, characters that actually do things,and they are as cute as ever!

Aww, they are so much fun in every scene they're in...I'm just praying that they don't end up like so many of the OTHER call girls on this show...Not so cute when you are sleeping with the fishes!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Double Trouble with Hinako Sano and Anna Iriyama in "Siren"

Hinako Sano and Iriyama Anna

Was watching the latest episode of the wildly captivating mystery drama SIREN, when who should appear onscreen but pretty Hinako Sano, that cute little thang I discovered and liked so much in Jigoku Sensei Nube! 

As "Double" Call Girls Ai and Rena!

Detective Satomi (Tori Matsuzaka) has been investigating a Host Club undercover as a client to see how they operate. Under the guise of a Rich potential client, he plays along when they set him up in a room and ask for his order. The naïve Satomi gamely tries to order like he knows what he’s doing, but doesn’t know what he’s in for when he inadvertently orders a “Double” special from the club. His heart just about leaps out of his chest when he realizes he has ordered himself not one, but TWO flirty and giggly young callgirls to his room!

Hinako as Ai and Anna as Rena

Such sweetly Inoocent faces...

As soon as I saw the character “Ai” I laughed out loud going, “It’s Sano Hinako!” At the time I didn’t know who the other equally adorable actress playing “Rena” was, but I was to later find out it was Iriyama Anna, she of AKB48 fame!

...that quickly turn catty!

Aw, these two girls were so much FUN! Taking his reluctance to engage in sex as shyness, they are all over him, teasing  him and smothering him as he tries to get information about the club!

Satomi trying to keep his Composure...

But can he win against the cuteness of Ai...

...or the sultriness of Rena?

He can't! Satomi makes a break for the Bathroom!

You had to laugh because those two dizzy girls really stole the scene, and it was even funnier when Satomi goes to investigate the Host Girls dorm, and encounters the two girls AGAIN! When they answer the door, he’s like all “Ooooohhh Noooo Not THESE girls again!!!!” But they have good hearts and spacey as they are, try to remember any details about the club that can help Satomi!

Interviewing the girls again!

Trying to remember what they can.

And ultimately resulting in Perfect Pouts!

So freaking adorable, I’m hoping that these two become a recurring character for the show!!

What's In A Name?

While watching the latest episode of "Okitegami Kyoko No Biboroku" (The Memorandum of Kyoko Okitegami), that wacky mystery drama about the keen detective who has to solve her cases by the end of the day because her memories reset when she goes to sleep, where I hwas hit with a case of "Sudden Clarity"!
In this episode there was this one scene where Yakusuke is on an excursion with Kyoko, who has been excitedly looking forward to it.  He receives some bad news, but doesn't want her to know because it would spoil the trip for her, and, because of her memory rest malady, knows that "For Kyoko San, There is Only Today".

They made a point of showing this statement printed poem-style onscreen, and it was only then, seeing the kanji for both "Today" and "Kyoko" printed onscreen, that I realized what an apt name they had given the character, for, of course, "the name "Kyoko" can be read as "Today's Child"! How Clever!!! Just another small thing that makes this drama so good!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Sexy Stalkings in “Siren”

Fumino Kimura (foreground) and Nanao in SIREN

I’ve been looking forward to seeing the new Fumino Kimura/Tori Matsuzaka crime drama “Siren”, and I have to say that after checking out the first episode, Fumino's awful haircut aside, it’s everything I hoped it would be! Rather than an “episodic” drama (where there’s a new case every episode), this is one long, linear story of a couple of Mobile Unit Police officers Shinobu and Inokuma (whom also happen to be lovers on the side) who, while investigating a routine suicide death, become involved in a deeper mystery involving a chain of serial murders.

Shinobu and Inokuma at Work...

...and at Play!

Kimura and Matsuzaka as the aforementioned partners play well off each other and they’re likeable and great to watch (not so keen on some of the other clichéd characters in the police force or in Inokuma's home life though) but what REALLY makes this show is stunning actress NANAO, playing the mysterious femme fatale Kara Tachibana whom, besides having this IMMENSELY disturbing stalker obsession with Inokuma,  seems to somehow be involved with all of the murders and supposed suicides sprouting up all around them! 

Shinobu and Inokuma on Patrol...

When suddenly a Wild Tachibana Kara Appeared!

Making small talk with this way-too-forward woman...

Shinobu already doesn't trust Tachibana...

Inokuma leaving as Kara continues to stare longingly.

Fans of Nanao take note, THIS is the role you’ll want to see her in- besides getting to see her sink her teeth into a fat, truly three-dimensional role, you’ll also get your daily recommended allowance of pure Nanao SEXINESS- as s cabaret club hostesss by trade, you get to see her slinking up in the most alluring of outfits, but you even get to see her in all the classic stages of undress, from nude shower scenes to stellar locker room scenes showing Nanao in all her Bra-and-Panties GLORY! 

Ah Hell Yeah, THIS is what Nanao is famous for!

Even Inokuma is impressed!

Obligatory Shower scene that would be more alluring...

...if it wasn't for the fact that Kara is clearly not in her right mind!

Oh man, and if THAT weren’t enough, Siren features two MORE former “Crush Of The Day” alumni here with pretty Sayaka Yamaguchi as Kimura’s supervisor Chitose Hiroko:

Sayaka Yamaguchi

...as well as fetching waif Rika Adachi,who. as Kara's ditsy friend Nohana,  is one of the cutest roles I’ve seen of hers in a while! Wow, FOUR Crush of the Day girls in ONE drama! No WONDER I’m loving it so much!

Rika Adachi

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

My f(x) & Girls' Generation Albums Arrive!

New Arrivals!  SNSD' s Lion Heart and f(x)'s 4Walls

   After an agonizing seventeen months since their last release, my copy of the awesome new album from f(x) arrived today (along with girls’ Generation’s latest album Lionheart) and as expected, it is freaking BEAUTIFUL!
Very, very beautiful artwork and packaging, the cover featuring the girls printed in blueprint blue over the album’s orange mechanical draftwork is just the COOLEST cover while the CD album itself is a thick 70+ page photobook with the girls looking smoking as hell (especially my twin biases Krystal and Luna, who look positively RAVISHING!

Amber and Krystal

Victoria and Luna

Of course, the package isn’t anything if the contents aren’t equally as great, and I gotta say that for both the new f(x) album as well as the new Girls' Generation release, they’ve heartily SUCCEEDED! Though I just received my physical CDs today, I downloaded MP3 files of them on release day, so I’ve been listening to them for a few weeks already and so far, this is how it breaks down for me!

4 Walls

A pretty subdued intro track (and the lead single to boot!) when you consider that f(x) have always started their albums with In-Your-Face Kick-Butt songs (Electric Shock, Red Light etc) but this swirly and dreamy song really sets the mood for 4Walls, while their previous album openers have had a “hotter” feel, this album is pure purples and blues…

Glitter 

This song has a wind-up music box feel for me, which is a coincidence because I remember feeling quite the same way for Pink Tape’s second track “Shadow”…

A nice second song to settle your mind and get you to relax…

Deja Vu 

 When I heard this next song, I knew that despite the withdrawal of Sulli, f(x) would continue to be the fun, rambunctious, playful group I knew them to be!

Extremely catchy chorus that harkens back to teasingly coy songs like “Thrill Love”, this is without a doubt the happiest track on the album!

X

Right now, “X” (or, as I call it, Chemical X) is easily my favorite song off the album, its droning electronic bopping riffs reminding me of early Depeche Mode (My Secret Garden era), and I just love the girls’ tuff and sultry vocals! Plus, I love that a group called f(x) has a song called X, it tickles me the way Townshend would write songs with “Who” in its titles!

Rude Love

As I prefer to listen to an album a few times before looking at the titles of the songs (I hate having preconceived notions of what the song should sound like based on its name), I spent the first week listening to this thinking they were singing “Rumour” instead of “Rude Love”

Diamond

Very intense deep bass on this song, I LOVE playing this one LOUD in the car!

One of the songs they performed as second stage songs, they looked so freaking fierce, I must say that I like this song  a LOT more afterwards!

Traveller

I didn’t see why f(x) should have a guest rapper for any of their songs since they already HAVE a rapper in the group, but the song Traveller featuring ZICO is a very catchy song and I must admit they’ve utilized his rap verses pretty well into the song!

Papi

This song reminds me not just a little of Girls Generation’s “Green Light” with different lyrics, giving me the vibe of a “album filler” more than a fully realized track. I’ll give this one more time.

Cash Me Out

The penultimate track to 4walls is a laser-effect laden dance track with a thumping beat whose loud, large and excitable sound sets up the listener perfectly for the last song:

When I’m Alone

Before the album came out a fan suspected that one fo the tracks listed might be a Carly Rae Jepsen song that Jepsen claimed she wrote as an ode to masturbation and “gave to some Chinese group”. Well, it turned out that fan guessed right, for that “Chinese” group was none other than f(x) and the song was indeed the album’s closing track “When I’m Alone”.

Didn’t know quite what to think about an f(x) album closing with a Carly Rae Jepsen song, butwow, it ended up being a really great song, very late 80’s new wavey with drenched synthesizers and phased vocals, what a perfect way to end the record!!!

I got the Victoria Card for 4Walls and Yuri card for Lionheart

These are the first releases from both groups without their original line-ups, as f(x) lost Sulli and Jessica left Girls Generation and though I wasn’t worried too much about f(x) because the core vocalists Luna, Krystal, and Amber, were all still there, I was REALLY concerned at how SNSD would sound without Jessica singing, since she made up a HUGE percentage of the vocals. Thankfully I am happy to report that despite Sica's departure, they still sound (for the most part) like the SNSD I love, and there is quite a lot to be happy about here!

Lion Heart

Like the f(x) 4Walls album opener, I was surprised  that Lion Heart’s titular opening track was so gentle and swaying instead of loud and brash! Almost get the mental image of the girls dancing in hula skirts on the sandy shores of Hawaii, and with all the SNSD bikini promo pics circulating for the Party Promotions, maybe that’s what they’d intended all along!

You Think

Another song SNSD performed during their “Party” promotions, this is a cool song with a lot of attitude, but sounds REALLY like it should have actually been a TTS track. In fact, it could have come RIGHT OFF their “Holler!” album! A GREAT bass-driven track!

Party

The cute single where I first realized that if there was one positive thing about Jessica leaving the group was that we FINALLY got to see some of the other girls like Yoona, Sooyoung and Yuri get more lines to sing than the usual half a sentence they used to have to share amongst each other! PS Yoona sound so adorable squeaking ‘It’s a Party!” in the chorus…

One Afternoon

Hmm, another Flamenco styled SNSD song. They already did this with their song “Talk To Me” off their “Oh!” album and much better, too. Eh, gonna have to see if this one grows on me…

Show Girls

A cool, barn-stomping track that makes you wanna break out the dance moves on the floor, this song starts off slow and then builds up into this massive club song!

Fire Alarm

Danger! Danger! Doo Doo Doo Doo… Aw, this song reminds me just why I love Girls Generation in the first place,  with its catchy melodies and soaring vocals, this song is quintessential SNSD, and reassured me that the group would be okay without Jessica.

Talk Talk

SNSD had an unreleased song called “Boomerang” which you could only hear in bootleg form, until it was re-recorded in Japanese for their album Girls and Peace. Kind of funny, but when they finally released a koean version, they changed the name of it to “Talk Talk”. When I saw this title listed on the Lionheart album, I thought, “Oh No, don’t tell me they put that song on AGAIN?” But like their song, Diamond, SNSD just has two different songs with the same name…

Green Light

Green Light first struck me as sort of a re-arrangement of their earlier song “Party”, the beat, feeling and cat call choruses all seem very similar, but of course now I can only hear f(x)’s “Papi” LOLOL

Paradise

When I heard this song, it was so warm and full of 1970’s sunshiney vibes, I told myself, “Ah, this must be the last song! What a happy way to go out!” Imagine my surprise when three more songs followed it! I really like this song, the Fifth Dimension would be proud to call this song theirs! 

Check

After getting over the surprise that Paradise wasn’t the last song, I settled into one of the coolest, sassiest SNSD tracks ever with Check! Super catchy tune as the girls check off their list for looking fabulous for a night on the town (Lipstick? Check. High Heels? Check. Hairstyle? Check, Check, Check) and I was THRILLED to find that Check was en of the secondary songs SNSD performed while promoting Party!

Sign

Well, if you wasn’t going to end the album with the happy “Paradise”, then the cool and smoldering “Sign” is the way to go! Oh my gosh, the girls sound so cool here, this is my favorite song off of Lion Heart and in fact is already making its way up my Top 25 List!

As the song rocked me out, I figured that THIS time, this MUST be the closing track, it was just too GOOD! And once again, I was dumbfounded when there was one more song after it AGAIN!

Bump it

Well, Bump It is an OK song, but GEEZ, after the sweetly poppy “Paradise” and the hard-hitting “Sign” as PERFECT album closers, I just have a hard time accepting THIS song as the ACTUAL final track…man, whose idea was it to end the album with this one? This is a song that would have fit in better in the middle of the album somewhere….sigh.
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Favorite J-Pop Singles: Morikawa Miho / Blue Water

Besides making cassette tape mixes of the latest J-pop hits, my friend Dave would also make copies of Live J-pop performances he had, including past years’ Red and White Song Festivals and Record Taishos, as well as concerts of artists he’d acquired.
One VHS tape he made for me included THREE videos, an Asaka Seto video Clips Collection (Yes! Asaka Seto sang!) a KIX-S Video Collection (remember these girls?), and a superb live concert from a lady named Miho Morikawa! Wow, this was a really GREAT live show with energetic performances and hella catchy songs, and above all the one I loved most was the song she opened the show with. Having no tracklisting, I had no IDEA what the song was called, and it wasn’t until my friend, who was a big Miho Morikawa fan, watched it and told me the song she was singing was a little ditty called Blue Water.

  Man, did I love this song! And it was funny- Dave made this VHS tape for me and made me love all the songs in that show, but for some reason, the only Morikawa Miho song he ever put on any of his J-pop mixes was a song called “99 Generation”, an OK song but nowhere near the league of Blue Water or (her other great single), Mezamete Venus. Oh well, my friend came to my rescue and got me a copies of both Miho’s singles so now I've got 'em!

Check out this awesome song!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Konisihiki Kapers

My Autographed Konishiki Sumoworld Issue

Working at a Record Store in Hawaii, we’ve had quite a few local artists come in for autograph sessions or in-store performances, ranging from well known artists (Israel Kamakawiwo’ole) to lesser known acts, but none quite as unusual as the time in 2000 when retired Sumo Wrestling sensation Konishiki had a signing to promote his new project: debuting as a singer on his first music CD simply called "Simply Sale" Sale, of course, short for his real name, Saleva'a Atisanoe.

 We had set up a display table loaded with his CDs and posters to get signed, but I knew there was only one thing I wanted autographed- a copy of Sumo World I had with Konishiki on the cover, purchased back in the days when I really was invested in Sumo. Only problem was, I wasn’t going to be in town when he had the signing! One of my co-workers Holly told me that she didn’t care much for Konishiki one way or the other, but she had to attend the signing because her Granny loved Konishiki and told her she HAD to get his autograph for her.  I was about to ask her if she wouldn't mind taking my magazine to get signed, too, when my manager said, “Don’t worry, Give me the magazine, and I’ll make sure he autographs it for you!” Okay, I could relax!
 Upon my arrival back at work the following week, my manager presented me with the autographed Sumo World issue (you see scanned above) and a little story: He said that everyone was getting the Music CD and posters signed, and when there was a lull in the crowd, he brought out my magazine and told Konishiki, “My artist is a big fan of yours but couldn’t be here and wondered if you could sign this for him.” Konishiki took one look at the magazine, and with a big smile said “WHOA! This is a CLASSIC!” He happily signed it and then went back to signing the music CDs.
  Later that day I saw my friend Holly and asked her if she got her granny Konishiki’s autograph. She said “I went up to him and told him I wanted an autographed poster for my Grandmother. He signed one, handed it to me, and then said, Well, What about one for YOU?”  I was cornered and so I mumbled, “Ummm… Okay.” “So yeah,  I ended up with one for myself." LOLOL, Oh MAN, we all started cracking up! She got stuck with an autograph she didn’t care about, and I ended up with one that I’m pretty happy to have!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com