A Private Banker, Banker For Money….

Can always count on Toshiaki Karasawa for an enthusiastic performance, so I was looking forward to his new drama PRIVATE BANKER, and at 2 episodes in, is as engaging as hoped!

Karasawa is Koichi Anno a self-professed Private Banker who, for the right amount of money, will step in and protect clients from losing their money due to mismanagement, shady back dealings, and flat out swindlers!

We meet a woman named Kumiko Iida (Honami Suzuki) who has just lost a huge fortune on a bad investment and is on the verge of ending it all- until Anno shows up, and declares there may be more to this case than mere bad investing….

With his trusty assistant Mikoshiba (Shohei Uesugi), Anno researches the case history and the sinister motives behind the culprits, sifting slowly over the facts, getting to know the players involved, and then using the extensive banking knowledge he has to get the optimum results!

Finally, with all the facts before them, the true motives behind the conmen is revealed, and togetehr, they decide on a plan of attack that can bring her back her investment… But when she sees him seemingly working both sides, Iida has to wonder- is this Anno truly a knight in shining armor …or does he have his own personal agenda behind helping her? Only by going through with the case and standing up for herself will Kumiko get back what is rightfully hers!

For good or bad, wherever Anno goes, he produces results!

A fun and entertaining drama with lots of familiar faces from the classic era of J-Dramas, especially Honami Suzuki who is winning brand new fans due to the NETFLIX airing of the classic 1991 TOKYO LOVE STORY!

With classics like GOOD LUCK, ODORU DAISOUSASEN, LONG VACATION and Tokyo Love Story, we may be seeing a whole new renaissance of J-drama popularity- it would be wonderful, and HEY, isn't it TIME?!

Notes on "Influence"

With the super-charged Tengoku no Jigoku wrapping up, I needed a new the new Suspense/Mystery drama to fill the space, and the new drama "Influence" seems to be a good choice!

Tomomi Oikawa (Honami Suzuki) is a succesful novelist who gets a letter from a supposed fan who wants her to write the story of her and her friends’ childhood.

Oikawa gets lots of requests from individuals wanting her to write about their lives and she usually passes. But this time it intrigues her and she agrees to meet with the mysterious woman (Nene Otsuka).

The woman says that her name is Yuri Totsuka and she begins telling the story of her life in high school.

The high-school aged Yuri (played by Kanna Hashimoto) doesn’t have many friends and is happy when she is approached by a girl named Maho Sakazaki (Aoi Wakana) who wants to be her friend.

Through their love of manga the girls get to know each other and are soon close friends! 

Yuri’s parents are pleased with their daughter’s friendship with this girl from a well-off family, unlike Yuri’s past friend Satoko Hino (Ai Yoshikawa) who came from a troubled family situation and later became a juvenile delinquent.

One night as Yuri and Maho are walking home, Maho is assaulted by a thug with a knife. They try to fight off the man, but he is too powerful, and in the end, a panicking Yuri ends up stabbing the man with his own weapon.

The two girls flee the scene and Yuri wakes the next morning in fear of the worst. Her shaken mother wakes her and tells her a man has been murdered in the neighborhood park, to which Yuri is fully expecting to be blamed for.

But to her utter shock, she finds that her former friend Satoko has taken responsibility for the crime and has turned herself in the the police!!! It seems she must have seen the murder take place from her window and later, covered herself with blood from the crime and turned herself in. But…WHY?

As the woman wraps up the first part of her tale, Oikawa asks if she has the full names of all the people in her story so she can check on them, to which the woman has written down on paper.

But going home, Oikawa realizes that the names are all too familiar to her and then, checking her yearbook, realizes that all of the happened in her OWN high school while she was there!!

Does the mysterious woman know that Tomomi went to the same school as them? Is THIS why she approached her to write the story? All of these questions must wait for another day…

Oh wow, I was on the edge of my seat with this one in anticipation of what was going to happen next however in the preview for next week’s episode, looks like it;’s gonna be like Anata No Ban Desu where Satoko tells Yuri that since she took the rap for her crime, she has to do one in favor to HER. Huh, not sure if I like that story development, but we will see!

PS: Really loving the key players here. I’ve already sang the virtues of all THREE of the leads recently, but must make special note of how great it is to see Kanna Hashimoto flexing her chops!

35-sai no Shoujo: The 35 Year Old Girl

Shibasaki Kou in 35sai No Shoujo

 
Our story: Nozomi Imamura is a cheerful 10 year old girl with loving parents and a little sister Manami. She is bright and energetic, and everyone around her loves her as well, including parents, teachers and even classmates!

But tragedy strikes one day when she is riding her bicycle on an errand to the market- the brakes on her bike fail when she is descending a steep hill, and she sustains horrific head injuries.

When Nozomi comes to, it feels like only a day has passed since the accident, but she is to learn a scary truth. She sees an old woman at the edge of her hospital bed and barely recognizes her as a much older version of her Mother (Honami Suzuki) !

Can it be...?

Nozomi...You're AWAKE!

"Who is this old lady?" thinks Nozomi. Surely not her beloved Mother...?

After getting over her disbelief at Nozomi’s awakening, she tells her the unavoidable truth: that she has been in an accident and has been in a coma for 25 years and that she is now a 35 year old woman! Nozomi peers into the mirror and sees only a stranger.

Nozomi is still waiting to awake from the nightmare as she is greeted by her Father (Tetsushi Tanaka) and now grown up sister Manami (Ai Hashimoto). They pretend that things are as she remembers them, but the truth of the matter is, Husband and Wife have divorced and a bitter Sister has long since moved out on her own. 

They keep up the charade as long as possible, with Husband and Manami traveling to the house to pretend to still live there in front of Nozomi. Mom even tracks down a boy that Nozomi liked in school, a man named Yuto Hirose (Kentaro Sakaguchi) to attend and make Nozomi feel at home.

No one is thrilled with upholding the charade, however , and over dinner, while Yuto at first claims to be a Teacher, soon reveals that he’s long since quit that job and informs Nozomi that life didn’t go the way she thinks things did and that people didn't turn out the way she expected.

Sister Manami takes the opportunity to admit that she and Dad aren’t living there, and in FACT, have long since distanced themselves for the home. Seems that with Nozomi’s accident, Mother spent her entire time taking care of the comatose girl, resulting in an ignored Manami and distanced husband, ultimately resulting in a fractured family with no love between them.

Hit with this sudden dose of reality, the delicate Nozomi breaks out in huge sobs of grief. Despite her physical appearance of a 35 year old, inside she is still a 10 year old girl bewildered that her life has turned on her so.

That night as she listens to recording of her previous happy life, she feels like she is utterly lost and alone. 

The next day she makes her way back to the school where she spent so many happy moments, desperate for some proof of her memories, but when she gets there, is stunned to find it has been torn down and a new building standing there.

Yuto is there, send by a frantic Mother when they couldn’t find Nozomi in the house, who quickly advises Nozomi to return home.

But Nozomi is on a mission and ignores Yuto.

The school has changed, but the library is still there, and Nozomi makes her way to it. Back in the day she spent happy moments with Yuto, and she desperately need sto see it.

When she gets there, she realizes that things have moved on. The life she once had has vanished, and she can never return there. And finally, she breaks down.

Through tears she wonders why she ever woke up from the coma, and Yuto takes the chance to tell her something: that she was his first love.

“After your accident, I regretted never being able to tell you, “ he explains. “For the opportunity now to say it, I am grateful you woke up.”

Through her tears, a light sparks in Nozomi’s eyes, and for the first time, recognizes the kindness of the young Yuto in this man’s face. “It’s you!” she sobs again and again. “It’s really you!”

And with that, she is able to achieve a sense of solace.

That evening she makes her way home again, this time, with a look of acceptance in her eyes. going to the covered mirror, she removes the covering and looks at herself firmly, and accepts that this is who she is now.

My GOSH this was one EMOTIONAL episode, Honami Suzuki is heartbreakingly awesome as the Mother who never gave up believing her daughter would return to her, and MAN,  Shibasaki Kou absolutely KILLED IT as the perpetually young Nozomi.

You know, in movies like this, they rarely EVER get it right. In Shazam, I never ONCE believed that the grown man was the kid. Nor did I believe that Tom Hanks was the kid in “Big”. But BRAH, I TOTALLY believed Shibasaki Kou was that little girl. Every little inflection of her eye, every tremble of her lips, I really thought, “This is that girl in a grown woman’s body!” Really blew me away.