Regular readers of this blog know of my drooling attraction to svelte, sexy and stoic actress Yo Yoshida and it looks like the time has really come for her fans as we’ve got not one but TWO excellent dramas showcasing her awesome acting sensibilities!
First up we’ve got “Medical Team Lady Da Vinci No Shindan” which from the get go reminds me a lot of the Maki Horikita drama “Higanbana” with its’ crackerjack team of eccentric yet excelling women, only in this show it isn’t a police station where the girls do their detective work, but though the operating rooms of the Hospital.
Yoshida plays a neurosurgeon named Shiho Tachibana who withdraws from practice when she begins having fainting spells. She is then approached by an old colleague named Kitabatake Masayuki (Takahashi Katsunori) who says he is creating a super-team of doctors who can “Solve medical problems on one else can”.
She agrees to join up, but when she gets there, she finds that the rest of the team are cold and unfriendly to this new outsider and it is only once she shows the others how capable she is do they grudgingly accept her.
The team is led by Yoko Iwakura (Ran Ito), a celebrity surgeon who even has her own television show who is used to being the center of the team, she and Tachibana will butt heads on more than one occasion!
We’ve got Aibu Saki in another one of her “Bitchy chick” roles (hmmm, seems she’s been playing a lot of these lately) as Yukino Nitta, a girl who is reserved and yet fascinated by Tachibana..
Pretty Yuko Fueki (whom you may recall stunned me with her looks way back in Otenki Oneesan) as Iwakura’s gushing second…
Satomi Ai (Kumiko Shirotori), a no-nonsense member who seems to ignore the power playing amongst the head doctors and just does what is need.
Saori Takizawa in yet ANOTHER one of her “man-hungry over 30 woman” roles, still looking as luscious as ever, as Yui Uematsu. Man, who would have thought Saori could make an entire career out of playing these desperate ladies?
…and finally we have cute and cuddly Riho Yoshioka as Ayaka, the girl chosen to be Tachibana’s assistant and befuddled partner in crime.
Together these women team up to solve the hospital’s more bizarre cases, using their extensive knowledge of maladies, expert footwork and a whole lotta spirited speculation.
And then we’ve got a lot darker murder mystery type detective show featuring Yo as an able detective in the Japan remake of the successful American detective show COLD CASE.
As usual for WOWOW, this is a detective show that is a LOT darker than others, every scene seems to be drenched in this sickly greenish blue tint making everything seem bleak and dour, and from the get go things are grim, grim, grim.
In this show, Yoshida is once again heading a team of crackerjack agents, only this time they are gruff, seasoned detectives whom look upon this wisp of a woman as a curiosity more than a prime leader in her field, but they do work together to get things done.
First we have Tomokazu “Mr. Momoe” Miura as the head of the Cold Case department...
Mitsuishi “He Always plays the Dad” Ken:
Kenichi “That guy from Hanzawa Naoki” Takito...
..and Kento Nagayama as the young man assigned to the team who HATES having to work under a lady, LOL!
Like the CBS Cold Case series, this drama deals with a team assinged to solving old unsolved cases using modern CSI technology that didn’t exist back then to bring the criminals to light, and I was tickled when they showed a flashback to 20 years ago and the song they chose for the scene was “Namonaki Uta” by Mr. Children…GADS, has it been 20 YEARS already? LOL
So far I have to say I like Lady Da Vinci a bit more than Cold Case- not only is it a lot brighter in both tone and actual color, but Yoshida is allowed be goofy and cute, usually executing her detective work with a mischievous twinkle in her eye:
With Cold Case, it is so dense and so serrrrioooouuuusssssss.... I think y0u can easily see the "mood" of both shows by simply taking a look at these two screencaps!
Additionally, Cold Case is so similar to other generic Japanese Detective dramas, one wonders why they felt the need to secure the licensing for it. Wouldn’t it have been easy enough to create a cold case series of their own? I mean, it’s not like CBS has the lock on the cold case theme, even Aya Ueto’s Zettai Reido used the similar format of old unsolved cases resolved through modern means, right?
Ah well, no matter what, i'm definitely gonna be watching both of these wholeheartedly, after all, more Yo Yoshida in my j-drama viewing life is ALWAYS a good thing!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com
