My Verdict on Fuka Koshiba as Kiki: Not Bad!!

 Though I really liked the 1989 Hayao Miyazaki anime “ Kiki’s Delivery Service” (Majo no Takkyubin), I was not even remotely aware that they had made a live-action remake in 2014 until I became a fan of cute actress Fuka Koshiba and found that she had starred in the movie as the titular Kiki herself!

I watched the preview for it on youtube, and while it looked OK, I wasn’t eager to see the movie get tinkered with (like all those recent Disney Live-Action messes), and the youtube trailer clip comments didn't make it sound any more promising:

"Almost All Japanese People Hate this Live Action Version"

HAHAHA, I had no idea this movie was so disliked! I laughed out loud reading these comments, they're so harsh! But the more I read up on it, I saw that despite the bashing, there was an equal amount of folks who liked it and had fond memories of it! So the live action’s ultimate score was still "up in the air" (pun intended)!

As a loyal fan of Fuka Koshiba I knew I was going to have to see it as SOME point anyway, much like when I first made up my mind to check out “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon” when my love for Keiko Kitagawa was at its zenith, and I figured the time was right!

WELL, after having finished it, I have to say that the movie with Fuka Koshiba as Kiki was not bad at all! In fact, I rather liked it!! I think part of what made it all right was that it was based on the original book that the Studio Ghibli movie was based on rather that a direct lift of the Miyazaki film itself, so things flowed a LOT differently.

In fact, there were things I thought were conveyed a lot clearer than the Miyazaki film, especially the part where Kiki loses her powers (and subsequently regains them), which I felt in the Ghibli flick were more abstract.

Also, at some point in the original movie, Kiki loses the ability to hear Jiji’s voice. I’ve read that her hearing him speak is supposed to be a reflection of the child side of her, and once she is faced with reality, she loses it and that makes sense, but it always struck me as a jarring thing. In the live-action (and, I presume the original book) she never loses the ability to hear the cat, though she does lose him literally for a short while after crashing her broom in the woods…

But when she finds him, their rapport remains perfectly intact!

The next BIG complaint people have about  the Live action Kiki, it's subpar CGI. True, a lot of the special effects left much to be desired, but while some of it was downright straight-to-video quality (LOL):

...I have to say I thought of lot of her flying scenes were handled quite well, very fluid and glidey and it always felt believable that she could just get on the broom and fly away in any scene!

There were also a lot of stars in this movie, Rie Miyazawa and Michitaka Tsutsui as Kiki’s parents, Machiko Ono as Osono, the woman who takes Kiki in, Yo Yoshida as Sumire the laundry Lady who befriends her, and even a small appearance by Miho Kanazawa as a troublemaking young lady….

Above all is Fuka Koshiba herself. I watched this primarily for the Fuka Goodness, and she is an absolute SWEETIE here!!! So expressive and energetic in her performance, you can already see in her the manic exuberance that would define her acting style!

She definitely has become one of my very favorite young actresses!

Notes on Unsung Cinderella

After a long delay thanks to the COVID19 situation, the Satomi Ishihara medical drama Unsung Cinderella finally got started up and I JUST finished watching the first episode! Satomi plays Midori Aoi, a hospital pharmacist who prefers a hands-on approach to how her medicine helps her patients, a habit that puzzles her colleagues and  infuriates the Doctors whom she is working under.

As pointed out, Aoi is like this almost superhuman database of medical knowledge, eclipsing her superiors and even the doctors themselves! Fanciful and far-fetched, but I rather like this aspect of the show, watching Aoi racing around up and down the stairs doing her diligence is pretty cool to see-

No, it’s the rest of the characters that I have a problem with- in every show like this, the hero (or heroine) always clashes with SOME naysaying superiors and patients, but BOY, these spoiled patients whine and bellyache like they own the place, and MAN, the doctors and administration are so comically OBTUSE as to be unbelievable! 

Not only are they shown complaining that the nurses DARE call them when a patient is dying, but actually throw FITS when told of repeated misdiagnoses, crying for Aoi to be demoted and harshly reprimanded for her DARING to point out an error that would have KILLED the patient!

SO many of the higher ups DEMAND Aoi to be punished that one gets the feeling like the Hospital WANTS to kill their patients and would have succeeded if not for that MEDDLING Pharmacist!!!

Super heroics aside, I’m waiting to see if they give Satomi Ishihara’s character any depth aside from the super pharmacist persona. It occurs to me that maybe they're leaving the personable storyline to Aoi’s new underling Kurumi Aihara (Nanase Nishino), since she seems to have more personality than Aoi? The show DOES seem to be being told from her point of view?

Also starring a bunch of old friends as fellow pharmacists with Yuki Sakurai, Kai Inowaki, and as Maya Miki as head supervisor....

Speaking of familiar faces, it’s a hoot to see both Nanase AND Kei Tanaka reunited again after the bloody brouhaha that was Anata No Ban Desu! 

LOL, Kei almost looks like he recognizes Nanase from Anata No Ban Desu!

And it's not JUST them-Throw in Kou Maehara as a young doctor and Kanazawa Miho as a fellow pharmacist and you’ve got FOUR alumni from Anata No Ban Desu in this show!

By the way, there is ONE thing pretty unique to this medical drama- at the end of the episode,  during the ending credits, they showed a dreamy scenario where you see what happens to the patients after they’ve left the hospital and have gone on with their lives and grown up.

Dunno if it was just for the girls in this episode or they’re gonna do that for each chapter. Very cool and actually pretty sweet way to end the show.

OKAY, got two more episodes to watch, let’s see where this thing goes….

Posted by zdorama@zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

All You Need Is Kill: Murder and Mayhem in "Anata No Ban Desu"

Strangers On A Train, J-Drama Style!

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on The Train” tells the story of two men who meet on a train. They both have someone they want to kill, but know they will be arrested immediately for it because of their association with the victim. Their theory goes like this: since they’ve just met on a train and have no connection to each other, if they each kill each other’s adversary, the police will have nothing to connect them to the murder and they can get away scot free.

New drama Anata No Ban Desu (Your Turn To Kill) has a similar set-up, where a group of tenants at an apartment meeting admit they all have someone in their life they’d wish disappear. After some goading from the blowhards of the group (loudmouth Naoto Takenaka as the Landlord), they are all pressured into playing a ‘game” where they write down a person they want gone, and then put it in the box. 

 "Everyone has SOMEone they'd like to get RID of, right?"

 Pressured into participating in the macabre game.

 They then are passed out the sheets with the names on it and are told that this is the person they have to kill. “But this is just for fun, right?” worries newcomer Nana Tezuka (Tomoyo Harada)...They assure her that it’s all a game. 

Nana has just moved in the the apartment with her fiance Shota (Kei Tanaka) and doesn’t want to play the game but is nervous about making a bad first impression. In the end, she plays the game but opts not to tell hubby about the strange game she got involved in. They are an otherwise happy couple, but things are about to get dark!

She tries to put it behind her. But when the loudmouthed landlord hurtles from the apartment balcony  to his death the following evening, the unwitting participants realize that to some, the game is all- too real, and one by one people begin turning up dead!

A thrilling drama to watch, even though they’ve already defeated the purpose of the switching: The Hitchcock movie worked because the two men met by chance on a train and have no connection whatsoever, but in Anata no Ban Desu, they’re all living in the same apartment and are on he same committee no less! Surely the murders will end up sticking to them one way or another!

Naoto Takenaka

Maho Yamada

Soko Wada

Nao

Nanase Nishino (so pretty!!!)

Rie Minemura

Yoji Tanaka

Miho Kanazawa

Reiko Kataoka

Jin Katajiri

Tae Kimura

Yoshihiko Hakayamada

Namase Katsuhisa

And indeed, as the deaths pile up, authorities and fellow tenants alike begin looking upon their neighbors with much suspicion, wondering who will be next on the list!

Been YEARS since I’ve seen pretty Tomoya Harada in a drama, (since 1996’s “Dessin”!!) , and it’s wonderful to see her here! She’s still as warm and lovely as ever, but BOY, the girl STEALING the show for me HAS to be actress NAO as the creepily odd neighbor Mikiha Ono.

From the beginning Mikiha seems like a strange girl, but when she begins stalking Nana’s fiance Shota every day, waiting for him after work and following him around, she becomes the most interesting character on the show!

She already wowed me with her smouldering sexuality in the Nozomi Sasaki drama “Ame ga Furu to Kimi wa Yasashii” (which also starred Tae Kimura), this adds a new dimenion to her that I’ve never seen- I LOVE this character….Hope she doesn’t turn out to be the killer, AHAHAHA!

Another character I really like is Nurse Ruri Sakuragi, played by actress Miwako Kakei. As the assistant under scatterbrained and arrogant Atsushi Fujii, she is no-nonsense and really puts her FOOT down on his spazzy personality! Another character that lights up the screen whenever she’s on, I hope she doesn’t get written out soon, however, if Fujii gets murdered then I guess that’s that, LOL!

CAN’T WAIT TO GET BACK TO THIS DRAMA!!!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com