A few weeks back I was talking about favorite dramas and mentioned off-the-cuff that he was curious about one of the dramas I always gushed about, Suteki Na Sen Taxi! Yep, I LOVE this drama and wasted no time uploading the drama so he could check it out!
Since I had to upload each episode individually, I ended up watching the WHOLE SERIES all over again and I tell you, it was JUST as good, no, even BETTER than ever! This 2014 show has REALLY endured, and one wishes they’d keep on making ‘em!
We then discovered that there had been a Suteki Na Sen Taxi SPECIAL in 2016! WHA! I had no IDEA! Sadly, all the trackers I visited had no seeders for such an old show.
Once acquiring it, I wasted no time popping that one in and MAN, it was so GOOD!
Specials are a weird thing…recently most dramas have been using these as unofficial “last” episodes for the shows, but back in the day they were almost always reunion shows which reunited the cast for a fun feature-length movie, and the Suteki Na Sen Taxi special as all that!
Well, when I say the entire cast reunited, I mean that loosely as the SP takes Edawakare on a Trip to a Hot Springs, so we only see Cafe Choice at the beginning of the show- Bakarhythm and Nao Minamisawa are back (as well as that wacky show they keep watching) and although Nana Seino couldn’t make it, they had a hilarious gag to explain why she wasn’t there!
Sometimes these reunion specials are unnecessary addendums to the series (the Zettai Kareshi SP comes to mind) but sometimes you get a story that really deserves its 2 hour running time, and the Suteki Na Sen Taxi Special was FUN and EXCITING (with new twists on the time-jumping) all the way down to the last minute!
Edawakare is trying to enjoy his well-deserved stay at the Onsen, but as usual he has to put his sightseeing things on hold as he finds people in need of his services!
The movie is split into three separate vignettes about three separate guests at the Inn, and at first I thought that that was all it was going to be, but by the fourth act, the three stories have converged and we see the various guest interacting with each other and joining up for the final story!
Act One is a lighthearted and super funny story of an ailing Baseball star named Komatani (Tamayama Tetsuji) who has come to the hot springs with his Coach (Takashi Ukaji) to work out his slump.
But with a weakness for showing off in front of the ladies, Komatani ends up with more injuries than he started out with! Eda comes to the rescue once more!
Act Two involves a young man named Mitsou (Shigenori Yamazaki) and his pretty fiancee Mio (Miori Takimoto) who are making their trip to celebrate his proposal to her.
But, as these thing usually go in Suteki Na Sen taxi, Mitsuo just CAN’T say the right thing, and before he knows it, his fiancee is announcing that she just can’t marry him!
Will the use of Eda’s Time Taxi help him resolve his issues?
I have to say…I forgot how doggone adorable Miori used to be! She looks so grown-up nowadays, she used to have this real Chipmunk cheek look to her!
The third act tells the tale of a teacher named Kanemoto Sensei, a teacher who would like to be like GOKUSEN, but thanks to constant berating by her fellow teachers and students' monster parents, has been reduced to a sensei who is afraid to voice her opinion on anything.
But when one of her students runs off after an apparent failed confession to the boy she likes and is rumored to have gone to a suicide spot, she must take stock in herself and make an effort to engage with her class!
As played by adorable Fumika Shimizu, Sensei Kanemoto is the most hilarious, spazzy and hyper teacher ever! As you may recall, I LOVED her in Kaseifu No Mitazono and was sad to see her leave after the first season, happily I get my full quota of Fumika goodness in this special!*
Throughout the movie there are cutbacks to the characters chatting with a sombre old man named Kubota (Yutaka Matsushige), and by the time of the fourth act, he becomes the main focus of the story....
And in a wonderful turn, all the characters from the previous stories team up to help Eda solve this final case!
More hilariously, a fun ode to the original series is when the gang crams into Eda’s Time Taxi and the headgear they are forced to wear (To make the time trip seem more Sci-Fi) are all props from the previous episodes!
Must say this was QUITE a treat seeing brand new stories of Edawakare and his Time Traveling Taxi after YEARS since the original show, and Oh, if they’d only make MORE!
*PS: Funny thing about Fumika- I was SO sure it was her playing Kanemoto that I was shocked to see the drama credits listing the actress playing her as “Sengen Yoshiko”. I was like, “wait…WHO?” After reading up, I found that for some religious reason, Fumika Shimizu had adopted this new name under the Spiritual Movement’s company. Stranger than fiction!
