On a Kiko Mizuhara High with “Kokoro Ga Pokitto Ne”

A cautious Abe Sadao approaches the fiery Kiko Mizuhara

On a Kiko Mizuhara high right now and so when Hamanosilence suggested the 2015 drama  Kokoro Ga Pokitto Ne with Kiko as the headlining actress, my curiosity was piqued, and when I read up on it and found Tomoko Yamaguchi also starred in it, well, I just HAD to have it!! And sure enough, from the very first scene with Kiko spazzing out over getting fired from her job, I knew I was gonna DIG this one!

Kokoro Ga Pokitto Ne tells the very wacky story of a man named Kojima (Sadao Abe) who hates interaction with others and refuses to love.

This is because in the past he had a nervous breakdown at his job and lashed out at his wife. His world crashed around him: he lost his job, his wife, his home, and, in fact, his sanity! Eventually ending up as a homeless man, it was only through the help of a kind man named Shin Otake (Naohito Fujiki) who took him in and gave him a job at his secondhand store that he began to life again. But he is so afraid that he might slip back to the angry , abusing man he once was, that he tries not to talk to others and make contact. To be alone is the only way to insure he won’t hurt anyone.

  His life of solitude is shaken to the core when he meets the explosively lively, loud and energetic Miyako Hayama (Kiko Mizuhara)! 

 

Bumping into him one night, she makes quite an impression on the awkward and reserved Kojima, and when they cross paths again at his workplace, they become friends, or at least, if Kiko has her way, anyway.

For Kojima, despite his efforts to be alone, finds that not only is his entire time occupied with her, he even feels the twinges of attraction~this cannot be! He tries to keep his distance, and fight his feelings, but Miyako is too full of life to resist!

Furthering the stress, his home life is shaken when Otake’s fiancee moves in upstairs. Where the nights were once nice and quiet, they are now filled with the thumping sound of boxes and furniture moving, dishes clattering and loud laughter.

But nothing can prepare him for the biggest shock of all when he finally meets her, and he finds that Otake’s fiancee Shizuka (Tomoko Yamaguchi) is none other than his ex-wife! And when Miyako (who conversely has a crush on Shin) is ALSO invited to live at the Otake house, all manner of wacky hijinks ensue!

Watch with delight as the four characters attempt to have a nice dinner and pretend nothing is going on when beneath the skin every person (save the simple minded Shin) is raging with nervousness! LOLOL

Well! This is one ZANY show! Very entertaining as an all-out comedy,and  Kiko Mizuhara is a whirlwind of spazzy energy in every scene she's in!

Also very entertaining is Eri Tokunaga as Kojima's overproctective co-worker Fumi Itoyama, who has a crush of Kojima and hovers over him at work like a hawk, driving his nervousness to its limit! So funny!

And special mention must be made of Tomoko Yamaguchi... she's so great! Her "machine gun reparte" reminds us why she was so great as Minami in the classic Long Vacation!

Kind of hard to accept that Tomoko’s character of Shizuka is supposed to be the abused wife of Kojima’s since she dominates over him in every scene she’s in, and also hard to take how dense Fujiki’s character of Shin is supposed to be! But if it’s just about SILLINESS, then Kokoro Ga Pokitto Ne is the way to go!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Frankenstein no Koi 終わり

Wrapped up the Go Ayano/ Fumi Nikaido drama "Frankenstein No Koi" the other night and wasn't disappointed!

I especially liked the episodes leading up to the end where you finally get to see where Fukashi Ken, the "monster" of the drama, comes from.

Very Intriguing! And although the way the drama concluded was maybe a bit underwhelming, after it was all done I couldn't get certain scenes of the show out of my mind! And that's a good thing!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

A Wonderful Addition To My Yukiko Okada Collection!

50% of Yukiko Okada’s “Okurimono” CD songs were what I assumed were unreleased tracks, as none of them were on any of her four regular albums. Love Fair, Peppermint No Soyokaze, Futari No Blue Train, these were all fantastic songs that I immediately loved, and I couldn’t understand how these hadn’t made it to any of Yukiko’s albums.

Then I saw a list of all of Yukiko’s 45 singles and was to realize that there were a bunch of songs of hers that were released as standalone single releases and B sides! It was here that those non-album tracks came from that eventually made it onto the Okurimono CD collections for us Yukiko fans, but the collector in me wanted to get ahold of some of those physical singles!

Going onto ebay, and lo and behold, a dealer in Japan was selling a bunch of Yukiko 45’s and holy toledo, they were freaking beautiful! Gorgeous photos on both back and front of the jackets and picture inserts as well: 

I immediately scooped them up before anyone else could get their hands on it, and my package just came in the other day! Opening the parcel up, I was blown away by how nice they were!

Holding them in my hands, they are even more beautiful than the auction pictures showed- unlike other Japanese 45 singles I have, which come with only a square 7 inch picture inserted in front of a plain paper sleeve, THESE Yukiko Okada single were more like mini albums, sturdy cardboard jackets and two of them even had printed spines! And if you look at the back of "First Date", they even die-cut the back so you could pull out tabs to make the single as a prop-up desktop picture! Simply AMAZING!

And the pictures…as someone who didn’t know Yukiko in her heyday, I have no physical pictures of her (save for the CD booklets) and these singles are almost like glossy magazine pin ups! SO Nice!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Kimi No na Wa~ Your Name

Finally got a chance to see the highly acclaimed movie Kimi No Na Wa (Your Name) and I am happy to say that it was as good as I expected!

Mitsuha: Diligent Girl

Taki: Brash Young Lad

Your Name tells the story of a teenage boy named Taki and a teenage girl named Mitsuha both eking their lives out with school and work, (Taki in Tokyo and Mitsuha in a country town of Itomori) and wondering if there is something else out there for them. 

Mitsuha performing for her Temple

Taki working at the Restaurant

By some strange twist of fate, the two find out just how it is on the other side of the fence when they switch bodies!

At first shocked at the change and then in awe, the two learn to communicate through text messages and notes (Sometimes written on their own bodies!) how to live each other’s lives and not ruin things for the other!

At first a seeming light hearted comedy (Taki checking out his own boobs when he is in Mitsuha’s body is an expected joke) the story takes a turn for the dramatic when the two slowly learn just why it is that fate has decided to give them this gift.

Sniff, Sniff, still wiping away tears even as I’m writing this, it was so darn great!!!!

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

Norwegian Wood in Book and on Film

Finished reading the Haruki Murakami novel “Norwegian Wood” a few days ago and just finished watching the Kenichi Matsuyama / Rinko Kikuchi film from 2010...

Gotta say, I’m REALLY glad I read the book before I watched the movie because there ARE so, so many things they left out that the film seemed more like a digest version synopsis of the book. Which I guess in a way, it was.

The one interesting thing was seeing which actors and actresses they got to play the characters Some I liked and some I had a problem with, but it was still fun to see the characters appear onscreen and see how they’ve been “fleshed out”...

Kenichi Matsuyama as Toru

Matsuyama played Toru a bit more quiet and whiny than I’d like but he wasn’t bad. I kept thinking of him in  “Don’t Laugh At My Romance” which he played pretty much the same guy.

Rinko Kikuchi as Naoko

I liked Rinko’s portrayal of the flawed Naoko, when she first appeared onscreen, i went, yep, that’s Naoko! Plus she really knew how to bring out the nervous breakdown scenes.

Kiko Mizuhara as Midori

I love Kiko Mizukhara and do think she’s an outgoing person, (and she looks great) but I didn’t much care for her portrayal of Midori, my favorite character from the book. She was supposed to be a charismatic non-stop talking source of brightness for Toru during his down times, but in the movie she seemed just as mopey as him!

Tetsuji Tamayama as Nagasawa

Haha, didn’t even recognize Tesuji Tamayama without his signature scruffy goateee thing. He was a pretty good Nagasawa, easily conveying Nagasawa's arrogant attitude...and he pulled off the 1969 look well!

Reika Kirishima as Reiko Ishida

 

I was imagining a woman a bit older than beauty Reika Kirishima (the book talks about all Reiko’s “wrinkles” as if she was a lot more mature than then) but I liked how she looked any way. I wish they portrayed her character more like the book, however. The character in the movie was so cold, in the book, she was so warm and friendly.

Eriko Hatsune as Hatsumi

And lastly we have actress Eriko Hatsune playing Nagasawa’s pretty and affluent girlfriend Hatsumi, and I though she was PERFECT! Not only did she match almost exactly what I was imagining, they kept most of her story intact so I was able to see the scenes I liked acted out! Wish I could see more of this actress!

As a lifelong reader of books, I know it’s a cliche to say “the book was better” but in this case I would heartily say to anyone going to watch this to please check out the novel first! you’ll be missing out on so much of the “good” stuff if you don’t!

Up next on my Haruki Murakami Reading Agenda: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle!!!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com