My Love From the Stars, J-Drama Version!

 As someone who rather liked the original Korean “You Who Came From the Stars”  with Soohyun Kim and the saucy  Jihyun Jun, (which I gushed about here), I was very interested to hear they were making this Japanese version starring Sota Fukushi and Mizuki Yamamoto as the respective main leads!

400 years ago the man now named Mitsuru Higashiyama (Sota Fukushi) beamed down to earth where he met and interacted with a young girl named Kiyo.  Due to a certain incident, he missed the ship back which would not be back for another 400 years! 

 Since then he has since been biding his time, settling into the human way of living until the ship comes around again that will take him back to his homeworld! In this particular century, he's chosen the profession as  a teacher at a college.

Mizuki Yamamoto stars as Tsubaki Sasahara, a hard-headed but very popular actress with a larger-than life attitude and a mouth to match! She always gives her best at work, but as she’s brash and scatterbrained about things, she’s usually the laughingstock of the media, making her even more outspoken!

As the story begins, fate has somehow placed both Mitsuru AND Tsubaki together as neighbors in a High-rise apartment complex, and whenever they cross paths, Tsubaki’s abrasive and larger than life personality against Mitsuru’s stern and conservative outlook creates some very dynamic conversations!!!

At the moment, both have no significant other in their lives, and there’s a reason why:
There’s an overshadowing backstory haunting Mitsuru, of a young girl named Kiyo (Natsuki Deguchi) he met when he first beamed down- something tragic has happened to her, and he’s been lamenting his loss ever since, and has never cared for another.

One day about 17 years ago, Mitsuru had a strange premonition of a young girl that looked just like Kiyo getting killed in a street accident. Using his vision as a guide, he races to the site of the accident and saves her before she can be hurt.

 Little does Mitsuru know that this young girl he saved would grow up to be the obnoxious actress Tsubaki living next door to him!

And as for Tsubaki, though she doesn’t remember the face of the man who rescued her, it’s he that she’s been in love with for her whole life and has been rejecting marriage proposals from suitors such as Hiroya Uwajima (Asuka Kudo) because of it.

The two bickering neighbors have no idea that they are secretly the ones they’ve been longing for all these years, and as their personalities clash, things get even MORE heated!

With Mitsuru’s unhuman sensitive hearing, he can’t sleep when Tsubaki releases stress by yowling songs at the tip of her lungs, and adding further to the fact that she’s just returned to School and has found out HE’s gonna be her new teacher, ya just KNOW things are GONNA GET INTERESTING!

And as all these things are happening, the fated spaceship that is set to to take Mitsuru back home is set to arrive in just a few months! What will happen within that short time!
Also along for the ride are Haruka Kinami in a wonderfully snarky role as Tsubaki’s chief rival Reiko Bando...

Haruka Fukuhara as the sweet and gentle Yukino Tsuji

and Asuka Kudo and Tsubasa Imai as the Uwajima Brothers…

Also Ken Mitsuishi as Kurachi, Mitsuru’s only Earth friend- a lawyer he worked with in what appears to be the mid 1950’s. Now very old, he still meets up with Mitsuru to talk, and is quite saddened to her that his friend will soon be making the trip back.

This going to be a 10 episode treatment of a 21 episode show, and I’m curious how they’re going to tackle it. I’ve watched two episodes so far, and it’s really great! I seems very much like what I remember from the original show, yet it’s been so long since I’ve seen it that it’s like watching it all over again fresh!!!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Some Time For HOPE

I also found time to watch the drama HOPE~ Kitai Zero no Shinnyuu Shain, the story of a young man named Ayumu Ichinose (Yuto Nakajima) who gets accepted into a major Trading Company as a Contract Employee. Though only a High School Graduate, he tries his best to learn the world of business trade, and with the help of his colleagues and kind and caring superiors, becomes inspired to aim for permanent employee of the company.

Yuto Nakajima

Mizuki Yamamoto

Akito Kiriyama

Koji Seto

Yeah, this was your basic salaryman type drama, with kind supervisors, backstabbing partners, caring colleagues and evil company presidents, but my, Mizuki Yamamoto sure looked nice in this! 

Downloaded the drama when i saw she was part of the ensemble cast, and though Ayumu was actually the “main” character,  before I knew it, I’d watched the whole thing! Not sure I’d ever watch this again, but it was a decent drama to check out once….
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Crush Of The Day: Kiko Mizuhara

 I first discovered the wonder of pretty “hapa-haole” actress Kiko Mizuhara (née Noriko Daniel) in the Matsumoto Jun/Ishihara Satomi drama “Shitsuren Chocolatier” where Kiko played the unrequited love interest for Matsujun’s Sota, and then got to know her better in dramas like Nobunaga Concerto and movies like Helter Skelter, but it wasn’t until I got to see her in the new Tusyoshi Kusanagi drama “Uso No Senso” that I realized what a charismatic, stunning girl she could be!!!

The revenge drama “Uso No Sensou” (War of Lies) tells the story of a man named Yoichi Chiba (Kusanagi) who had his entire family murdered in front of him as a child and as an adult has become the con man’s con man in order to trap and destroy each and every person involved in the killing.

   Now, I like revenge dramas as much as the nexy guy (loved the Juri Ueno drama Alice No Toge and the Masato Sakai revenge flick “Hanzawa Naoki”, but Kusanagi’s Yoichi character is such a bitter, callous jerk to those around him that it’s hard to root for him and I find myself irritated watching him play his cons on his not-too-bright targets.  

  Frustrations aside, the one bright star in this drama is Kiko Mizuhara as Chiba’s partner in crime, the alluring Haruko Tokura. With all the hatred Yoichi is radiating, Haruko is just about the only person on his team who is capable of real feelings, and though she is on the con-artist side of the equation, she seems to be the only one looking at things with a level head. 

And if that wasn’t enough, my GOSH is she BEAUTIFUL here!!! Kiko looks absolutely fantastic , and in each and every episode there seems to be at least ONE scene which mandates her dressing up in elegant gowns, smart office suits or exotic ensembles as she uses her feminine wiles to lure her marks into their elaborate traps…Simply hypnotic!

Plus, as a girl who has been harboring an unrequited love for Yoichi since she met him years ago, Haruko is put in a compromising state of mind when part of his con is to meet, sediuce and marry the daughter of his mark, the pretty but naive Kaede (Mizuki Yamamoto, whom you’ll remember I first discovered in Summer Nude…)

 Once Yoichi starts getting close to Kaede, we see Haruko’s jealousy create a rift of sorts between them, and somehow I have a feeling that what Haruko does will play a big part in the drama’s conclusion, but right now I can only keep watching and see…. 

Looks like Kiko Mizuhara is going to be yet another actress I've got to keep an eye out for!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com