Tuff Love: Takane no Hana-san

 Takane no Hana-san is one Wacky and FUN rom-comedy starring Rika Izumi as Hana Takamine, a svelte and sexy businesswoman who is highly efficient in work, but sadly at grade-school level when it comes to romance!

One of her subordinates is a naive and wide-eyed guy named Tsuyoshi Yowaki (Yuki Ogoe) who, though well-intentioned, is constantly screwing up and coming up with the lamest and most useless ideas! 

His constant screw-ups cause his superior Takamine to explode with anger and frustration at his feeble attempts, a bitter blow to be sure, because he is unashamedly in love with her! 

But what neither he nor anyone else in the company knows, is that Hana is in love with him, TOO!!!

Yes, she’s has feeling for the innocent Yowaki for some time now, and it simply kills her to have to scold him every day. But no matter how much she tells herself to go easy on him and praise him, she always (and hilariously) loses it!!!

There’s this one particular scene that just KILLED me: Hana is determined to praise Yowaki and NOT scold him. But when he presents her with yet another mind-numbing proposal, she cannot contain herself, and ends up smiling and praising him…even as her hands SHRED his proposal into tiny pieces and hurls it onto the AIR AHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

There’s also this wonderful storyline with co-worker Ichigo (Kanon). She’s one of those tarty little flirts who gets all the guys to do her work and enjoys the power she has over them. 

She is frustrated because she can’t get her claws into Yowaki due to his admiration for Takamine, and tries every way she can to “get back’ at Takamine by sabotaging her work. 

But even when Ichigo successfully ruins Hana's hard work...

Hana is so darn EFFICIENT that her attempts to dethrone her only elevate her higher!!!

This is a cute little drama, a light-hearted and easily-digestible show that you can watch at any time, with Rika “Sailor Mercury” Izumi showing her comedic chops!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Kyoko Fukada All Year Long March-April

Since Kyoko Fukada's team has done the dirty trick usually reserved for wall calendars of putting TWO months per picture, we get her picture twice, so do enjoy this increment's installment for the months of March-April!

Your Monthly Keiko! April 2021

 This is your monthly dose of Keiko Kitagawa goodness this time for the month of April!

ENJOYYYYY!

PS: Getting back up and running here at the Zdorama blogsite and in the coming weeks I’ll be not only posting up new write ups but also retroactively posting up all the essays, notes and blog entries I’ve been working on during my hiatus!

"In Your Dreams"; The Signature ZARD Line!

 Talking to a friend once and we were discussing the songs of ZARD, when I mused, "whenever Izumi needs to throw in a catchy hook, she uses her "In Your Dreams" line!" When my friend said he didn't know what I meant, I said, "You know, like in Yureru Omoi, she sings that line "Kimi to Aruki Tsuzuketai...In your dream", and in Fushigi Ne, she says practically the same line, "Sotto nemurasete in your dream"!" And with a little variation, she used it in at least two other songs, Nemurenai Yoru O Daite and  If You Gimme Smile!

In Your Dreams, the signature Zard Line!

I See What You Did There

 As some of you may have guessed by the long-time banner above of NHK asadora Agri, one of my big fave actresses of yesteryear was Misato Tanaka, and I was thrilled to see her as a guest character in an episode of the Shingo Katori drama “Anonymous”.

Playing a woman who has begun cheating on her husband, she secretly takes out her phone to use a dating app to contact her lover…and I had to laugh to see that the app was named “With Love”!

As some of you may know, one of Misato’s first starring vehicles was a romance drama with Misato and actor Yutaka Takenouchi in a “You’ve Got Mail” scenario, and the drama was called..you guessed it, WITH LOVE!

LOL, Just a little inside joke for her fans!

Tengoku to Jigoku: Psychona Futari 終わり

 An absolutely RIVETING conclusion to Tengoku To Jigoku, the body-swapping drama which had been EASILY my FAVORITE drama of 2021!!!

The tale of a determined detective who switches bodies with the psychotic serial killer she is chasing took the best acting efforts from both Haruka Ayase and Issei Takahashi, and I have to say that by the show’s conclusion this may be some of the finest acting I’ve ever seen by either of them!!!

Also props to the supporting cast like Junpei Mizubata and especially Kazuki Kitamura, the brash, arrogant and yet highly intelligent and motivated detective Mitsuo Kawahara who is always hot on the heels of the body-swapped duo as they try to wrangle themselves out of their predicament- This was a character that I never quite knew what to expect from and he surprised me every time!

An A+ drama that had me on the edge of my seat as the show took you through its elaborate twists and turns culminating in an entirely satisfying Wrap-up!!

I was excited about this ever since first hearing about it in the new drama announcement, blown away by its first episode and throughout its entire run, Tengoku to Jigoku has ALWAYS been my #1 favorite drama on the air! A definite 10/10!!!

The Return Of The Unfortunate Detective

 A FUN mini-drama FINALLY gets a proper series!!!
Some of you may remember how much I LOVED the VERY short mini drama series "Oshii Keiji" starring Shunsuke Kazama as the titular Takafumi Oshii-san, the Clouseau-like bumbling detective and his ever-suffering partner Haida, played with great candor by Ren Ishikawa...
I was ALWAYS in stitches each episode and at the time I moaned how tragic it was that this great comedy only got a mere THREE episodes, wishing for a full series. Well, I finally got my wish as the newly christened “Yappari Oshii Keiji” just started and it’s gonna be a full 10 episode drama!!! So far at two episodes in, it’s as fun as I remembered and I’m confident that it will continue to tickle my funny bone!!!!

When we check in on Oshii, his suspension is over and he is back on the force. His former partner Haida has long since been promoted out, but he is now aided by the cool but apathetic Toru Yokode (Atsuhiro Inukai) and the mousey but hard-working Kurumi Mirayama (Sei Shiraishi).

With such an oddball assortment one wonders how they will do on a case, but the team manages to function as well as can be, and together they crack the murder mystery wide open!

Was disappointed with the lack of Ren Ishikawa in this- as some may remember, this is the drama which made me a big fan of hers, thankfully she is replaced by yet ANOTHER huge favorite of mine, Sei Shiraishi, who continues to win my heart over and over again!!!

Kind of a running gag that, while Oshii is constantly immobilized and hypnotized by all the beauties he deals with, the dorky Mirayama holds no effect on him at all. Bet they build up to an episode where Oshii finds out what a FOX Sei Shiraishi is under all that mousey makeup!!!