J-Drama Catch Up- More Older Dramas I'm Finishing Up!!

Call Center no Koibito

Story of a guy named Wataru Tokura (Kotaro Koizumi), a businessman at a Television Shopping Center who offends the outspoken host (Yuko Natori) and gets banished to the Customer Complaint Department all the way out in the sticks.
Tokura curses his luck at being demoted to such a place, but there he meets the eccentric Kyoko Aoyama (Rie Mimura), a mysterious woman with a secretive past and a burning passion to do what’s right for their angry customers.
Though at first butting heads, Tokura soon begins to respect this odd woman and, along with the similarly eccentric team of misfits running the center, learns that the Call Center is a valuable and worthy place to be!

A very by-the-books drama but I REALLY liked the characters in this drama! This might be the first drama I saw where Koizumi Kotaro played any character of note, but he was really good here- and Rie Mimura...she’s so great as Kyoko Aoyama. Truth be told, for the entire first episode, I thought I was watching Miki Nakatani! But after watching this drama, I am interested in seeing more for this woman! Looking over her stats, I guess she was in Dame na Watashi ni Koishite Kudasai, but I don’t remember who she was. Maybe Dean Fujioka’s ex-girlfriend? I’ll have to dig that one out again!

M No Higeki

M No Higeki stars Goro Inagaki as Mamoru Ando, a reserved man who, because of a childhood trauma, is an overly careful person who frets over every bad possibility, who comes into contact with a mysterious dark woman named Misa Aihara who, though a seemingly chance encounter, targets Ando for a fall, and uses all her wiles to destroy his life. Ando has no idea why this woman wants to ruin him since she is a complete stranger to him,but it is soon revealed that she and he have a darker connection to each other…
Another drama suggested to me at the height of my Kyoko Hasegawa love, I watched the first episode and was SO captivated by this drama’s mystery that I barrelled through the entire series in days! A VERY turbulent drama full of ups and down and twists and turns! 

Diary

Misako Renbutsu stars as Ayaka Miyata, a young woman who has grown up with only hard memories of being left alone as a child while her mother dedicated herself to work.
She has always felt bitter towards her mother for her impoverished childhood where she felt left out and neglected while other kids seemed to have everything they wished for. But when her mother is stricken with a brain aneurysm and left in a coma, Ayaka must come to terms with their relationship.

At a loss of what to do regarding her mother’s living will, Ayaka goes through her mother’s belongings where she finds a huge journal that she had kept up with three other women, seemingly since high school. Without any direction, she makes a journey to her mother’s home town and, using the diary as a guide, eventually meets all the people her mother has touched through her life.

While talking to these people from her mother's past and the memories they have of her, Ayaka sees her mother’s life from a different perspective and learns that, far from abandoning her and leaving her alone, that her mother had been working diligently her whole life to raise her and make sure she had all she needed despite their poverty.
As someone raised by a single parent with lots of sacrifices and not a lot of money to go around, this short 4-part drama REALLY hit home for me!

Setsuyaku Rock!

Takao Matsumoto (Tatsuya Ueda) is an entirely irresponsible rock n roller with no sense of frugality, inf act, being in debt seems rebellious and “ROCK”! 
His pretty girlfriend Makiko (Mina Fujii)  finally has enough and dumps him on the spot. For the first time Takao realizes how lackadaisy he’s been with his money, and, in an effort to win back Makiko, tries to change his ways and become more miserly.

Thought this was going to be a regular romcom drama, but it seems it’s one of those DIY type shows with focus on teaching cheap meals you can make with limited supplies, really more like a “life hack” kind of set up.

Have to admit Mina Fujii was my primary reason for downloading this drama, but it’s been a pretty fun one so far, and besides Mina we also have cutie Ayaka Wilson in a minor role as an employee at Takao’s workplace.

Seeing her reminds me that her drama “Piple  AI to Kekkon Seikatsu Hajimemashita” has been sitting in subtitle limbo for some time now. Wonder if I’ll ever get to see that one through…

Legal High 2

And speaking of Yui Aragaki, Huh, I totally forgot I had this drama! Rather liked the original series with Yui and Masato Sakai as crackpot lawyers, this time returning with a new rival in the business with Haruki Hanyu (Masaki Okada) challenging Kensuke Komikado. 

Bonus with Haru Kuroki as his hippie assistant Honda- the scenes with her and Aragaki are priceless! I’d watch a show with just the two of them doing cases!

Been watching this the same time as Hanzawa Naoki and at times it’s hard to tell the difference between the two passive-aggressive characters going from calm and collected to screaming at the top of his lungs…

OKAY back to more dramas.....

Dark Justice in “Zettai Seigi”

As a child, Noriko Takanori came home a few minutes late and was chastised by her mother. Fleeing from her mother in frustration, Noriko witnessed her mother being struck and killed by a car when she attempted to cross the street to catch her when the light was still red. 

In shock the girl relates her Mother’s death to both her coming home late and her mother disobeying the traffic signal.This random turn of events causes the child to have a psychological abhorrence to seeing anyone break a rule and makes her act out to see “justice” served.

With the scandal raging at her school over the accident, the teenage Noriko (Sei Shiraishi) is transferred to a school in a new district to work out the last few months of her school year before graduating.

With her antisocial behavior and eccentric obsessions, Noriko  seems set to become the school’s outcast, however, a chance meeting on a train with fellow student Yumiko (Hiyori Sakurada), whom she saves from an unscrupulous train molester, becomes her friend and introduces her to her three buddies: Riho (Rina Ono), Kazuki (Naru Komukai), and Reika (Yuma Iida).

They take the odd girl into their group and seem to get along fine- til Kazuki learns of Noriko’s obsession regarding rule breaking. When the school has the girls kneel for skirt measurement, BBB’s comes up a few centimeters higher that code, and rather than protecting her, Noriko breaks out a tape measure and tattles to the teacher of BBB’s shortcomings.

The girls don't know what to make of this betrayal especially since Noriko doesn’t seem to think she’s done anything wrong. And when their class is praised for being the only one who came clean about their violations (the other classes had similar shortcomings but tried to hide it), they begrudgingly accept that perhaps Saya’s way is beneficial.

Time and time Noriko’s calling out of rule-breaking seems mean spirited and callous, but as it always seems to work out in the end, they praise her for her pure sense of justice. But the girls don't realize that this praise may be creating a monster!!

Indeed, Saya’s meddling cannot go without harm to anyone and several people lose their livelihoods because of her machinations- from students suspended, teachers expelled, police officers fired, and worse….

Nonetheless, the five girls make it to graduation and happily embark on their new lives in the real world.

We then tune in to the four women in the present day as 30-somethings struggling to make ends meet from day to day with all sorts of problems upon them. And it’s here in the midst of all this that Saya re-enters their lives! the now grown Noriko (now played by Sayaka Yamaguchi) is even MORE of a rigid stickler for rules and regulations…but is she here to save them or drag them into something dark and harmful?

 Adult Yumiko (Rie Mimura) meets the grown up Noriko:

Nana Katase as adult Riho.

Yuki Sakurai as adult Kazuki.

Minami Tanaka as adult Reika.

That’s the set-up for Zettai Seigi, and so far it is one unsettling and yet thoroughly engaging drama!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com