The Fine Art of the J-Drama Ending Credits

Nakama Yukie in Gokusen's Ending Credits

American Culture TV Sitcom fans know well the power of a good, catchy theme song, and it’s even been proved that the songs for shows like Gilligans Island and Brady Bunch were more than just the jingles that played during the cast and crew listings- it’s a HUGE part of what MADE the show!
  Sadly, by the 90’s, TV shows began to adopt a disturbing trend of  disposing of the lengthy theme songs altogether and began to replace them with shorter sound bites of music and began running the cast credits during the show’s undercrawl in an effort to minimize screentime for more advertising slots. Understandable but still a bummer for the Pop Culture fanatic!

 Fortunately, it was JUST at this time that I began watching Japanese dramas, and it was here I found that the opening and closing tunes were very much alive, and in fact still treated as an important component to the shows they were promoting. Not only were songs written and recorded by artists specifically for the show, but the clips and images running during the song are just as beautifully crafted and magnificently put together as the drama itself!

Case in point: Just the other night I was going through an old harddrive of J-drama stuff, and came across the ending song for Yukie Nakama’s wildly successful drama “Gokusen” in MP4 format. Remembering how much I liked the theme song “Feel Your Breeze” by V6, I clicked on it, and I have to say, watching the song play with the set images rushing by of teacher “Yankumi” playing Kick the Can with her students gave me goosebumps, and then when it got to the chorus of the song, I remembered that it always played at the scene where she’s holding the can up and running from her students, PERFECTLY matching the song, and I have to say, watching this made me tear up with emotion, it gave me SUCH a warm feeling!

After it ended it made me remember that the ending song for the old Emi Wakui drama “Pure”, which featured the song “Namonaki Uta”, ALSO employed this style of affixing a certain phrase of the song with a set image, in the case of Pure, the Rickenbacker Guitar chiming into the chorus was ALWAYS set to the image of Emi tossing an armful of feathers into the air at the same moment each time, til the viewer found he was always waiting for it!

Wakui Emi in Pure's Ending Credits

  I then began to try and remember other shows with favorite ending credits and in fact, MANY of them have already been uploaded and talked about here, including the aforementioned Pure with Mr. Children’s “Namonaki Uta”, Okane Ga Nai with “Over The Trouble” by Oda Yuji, NAOMI’s ending “Girls Be Ambitious” by True Kiss Destination, Masahiko Kondo's "Ai Wa Hitotsu" from the crazy drama Stalker~Sasou-Onna, "Himawari" by Sugar for the drama Shiawase Ni Naritai, and the incredible Shomuni ending "Sunaona Mamade" by IZAM with Astral Love! 
     Others I've still to do write ups for eventually are credits for shows like Tengoku Ni Ichiban Chikai Otoko featuring TOKIO's "Oh! Heaven", KinKi Kids' "To Heart" from the Domoto Tsuyoshi drama of the same name, and probably much more I can't recall right now!

Fukada Kyoko and Domoto Tsuyoshi in To Heart End Credits

And for ending credits that are simply heartbreaking to watch, try  "Only Human" by K from the drama One Litre No Namida, Seija No Koshin's "Ito" by Miyuki Nakajima or Yutaka Ozaki's "Oh My Little Girl" from the morose Konoyo No Hate!
     Though most of the J-drama ending credits I highly regard are from the era I was watching them most vivaciously (mid 90’s to 00’s), show like the aforementioned Gokusen prove that they’re still on top of the game! In fact, thinking now, later shows like Yaoh with TOKIO's "Mr. Traveling Man", "Orange Range's "Kimi Station" from Loss:Time:Life, Oda Kazumasa's "Sayonara Wa Iwanai" from Triangle, and "Wonderful Life" by &G from Boku To Kanojyo to Kanojyo no Ikiru Michi are just as powerful, and even the Horikita Maki drama Hanazakari Kimitachi e ending song with Ai Otsuka’s “Peach” gives me the same sense of warmth and wonder!

I’ve been watching J-dramas for a good 20+ years now , and I think I can positively state that when it comes to the sacred thing known as the ending song credits, those folks have REALLY elevated it to an ARTFORM!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Executive Crush Status: Toda Erika

You know, watching the Tomohisa Yamashita drama Summer Nude, I really thought this was going to be the show where I finally fell in love with pretty actress Karina (whom I've always liked but never got to the point of obsession), but as each episode went on, though I loved Karina's character a LOT, slowly but surely I began to get that tug in my heart every time Erika Toda was onscreen! 

Erika Toda! My first instincts watching this show was that there was no way I'd fall back in love with her again with that short bob haircut, but I don't call her the cutest thang ever for no reason- she had her "Manic Pixie" persona on  all the way to 11, and though her character of Hanae was of a decidedly tomboyish vein, I found her stealing every scene she was in!

Erika gets the news that she's been awarded Executive Crush Status

 So yeah, watching the show each day I was like "no... must... resist... cuteness... charms....", but it was of no use, and by episode 4, it was clear that my dear, darling Erika had been turned back into another crush of the day and it was time to promote her to "Zdorama's Executive Crush Status", that distinguished and totally inconsequential award ranking I've created which includes a few other past Crush Of The Day girls like Satomi Ishihara and Keiko Kitagawa! 

 So far it's all well and good, but what happens when I fall in love with her AGAIN? Executive EXECUTIVE Crush Status? Lifetime Achievement Award? Only time will tell....
In the meantime, enjoy the liberal Tomboyish Erika Toda Picspam, all of her turn as the adorable Hanae in Summer Nude!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Darkness Falls in Movie "Kaibutsu"

Koichi Sato in Kaibutsu

Wow, I just finished watching the incredibly Dark Movie special "Kaibutsu"(Monster) and I have to say it's been quite awhile since I've seen a movie that was so unpredictable in its subject-matter, twists and double dealings that I was on my toes (and at the edge of my seat) throughout the entire flick!

Jun Kaname

Chiaki Kuriyama

The story of Kaibutsu concerns a Police Detective named Kosai (Koichi Sato) who is determined to arrest an up-and-coming politician (Jun Kaname) suspected of a crime committed 15 years ago involving the murder of a little girl is intriguing enough, add in a surreal extra-sensory power Kosai has of being able to perceive a murder scene by scent alone, and you've got a slightly X-Files-ish tale on your hands. Going further and adding in another case he's working on concurrently with his new partner Ishikawa (Chiaki Kuriyama) involving a worker named Masaki (Osamu Mukai) working at a Sewage -Treatment Center who's suspected of liquidating bodies with the city's new high-pressure waste disposal unit, and we're reaching DAVID LYNCH creepiness!

Osamu Mukai

Mikako Tabe

  "There are people who want to disappear, and then there are those whom people want to disappear", Masaki tells Kosai one day, and this seems inarguably true in a world where cruel criminals callously murder innocent victims and those slighted burn with taking revenge into their own hands, and as people begin disappearing left and right, the question of just who the "good" people are in this movie and who the "monsters" are begin to blur.

   By the movie's conclusion, we are left with that thought to ponder, and as the movie ended and the characters departed, I for one wanted to see where the events set up in this movie would lead! In fact, the ending left me on SUCH a  "What Happens Next...?" kind of feel, I even rushed to AsianMediaWiki to see if this was the pilot to a new TV series or another movie (like the two-movie chaptered Double Face, for example), but so far nothing yet....
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

Never Mind The Jackal, Here Comes Seo YiAn

Kim Jaejoong and Song Jihyo in Codename Jackal

  I’ve been dying to check out the Song Jihyo/KimJaejoong movie The Jackal is Coming ever since I first heard about it almost a year ago, so I’m kind of bummed to report that I wasn’t overly thrilled with the movie when I finally DID get to see it. The story of Jackal Onda which concerned a hapless Hitman named Min-Jung (Jihyo) who’s on the case to assassinate Hallyu Star Choi Hyun (Kim Jaejoong) while the police are infiltrating the building on the hunt for the mysterious Jackal, actually started out pretty good, but by midway through it got SO slapstickly silly-

 By the time it got to Jihyo hiding behind a couch trying to poison ChoiHyun's manager, it felt more like I was watching a zany SNL skit than a theatrically released movie...and it didn’t help that pretty Jihyo was set up with the most god-awful of afro wigs! Blech! Why couldn’t she have looked like the smoking siren she was in the Theatrical Poster? 

Seo Yi An as YoungSun

Thankfully, there was ONE bright star in this whole mishmash of silliness, and that was the pretty young actress playing the part of the protégée Police Detective Young-Sun, a “Level 9 Ranked Officer” according to her. Stats say her name is Seo Yi-An, and she was just about the only reason I stuck around when the film began moving south! In fact, strangely enough, the sillier the movie got, the more serious and pretty SHE got! 

  When she first appears in the scene with Inspector Ma at the Police Station, I was like, “Whoa, that girl in the background is kind of cute!”, then when she accompanied Ma to the Crime Stakeout and I got to see her in her “regular”clothes, i.e. tanktop, flannel shirt and demin skirt, I was all like “Aw Heck yeah, this chick is freaking FINE!” 

From a character who started off in the movie simply as the assistant to Inspector Ma who makes her the errand girl whose main job seems to be to get snacks and drinks for the stakeout team (where she silently demands money from the head inspector, so funny!)...

...before you knew it, she began to emerge as the only competent agent there! While everyone else is out and about getting into zany situations, Young-Sun is the ONLY one seriously working the case, poring over the Jackal casebook articles and examining the clues...

...As well as even going undercover as one of the Hotel Staff so she can look through the lodging's past receipts (and all the while getting hit on by the Hotel's sleazy manager, LOL) Look at her face, one of the cutest aspects of this character is how she NEVER shows any kind of emotion regardless of if she's happy, sad, interested or angry, it's always that same blank expression (her apathetitc demeanor kind of reminded me of f(x)'s Krystal, LOL)

 SO yeah, by the show's halfway point, YoungSun was the MAIN reason I was watching the show! And I can't hide how disappointed I was that she wasn't a bigger factor in the show's conclusion (in fact, it seems like as the story wound down, they kind of just forgot about her, tbh)... So much for THIS movie- I’ll have to see MORE of Seo YiAn in some of her OTHER shows!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

At the Halfway Point, "Hanzawa Naoki" Continues to Impress!

Sakai Masato as Hanzawa Naoki

Holy CRAP, just finished watching the conclusion to the first "arc" of the drama series HANZAWA NAOKI and was properly blown away as I've continued to do so throughout the show so far! Now we're off onto the second half of the Hanzawa Naoki saga, and it looks like things are gonna get even MORE intense in the coming weeks!!!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com

A Wild Rika Adachi Sighting!

Watching the extremely silly and entertaining Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo, (the high school drama of the boy named Yamada (Yusuke Yamamoto)and girl Shiraishi Urara (Mariya Nishiuchi) who switch bodies whenever they kiss), and happen to notice that the girl bullying main character Shiraishi looks VERY familiar….

Yep, turns out it’s none other than the lovely Ms. Rika Adachi, one of my favorite gravure idols ever, here baring her claws as one of those clichéd “arms-crossing bullies” I’ve talked about before. Cliched, true, but when you look as good as Rika, you can get away with it, even when coming down to pretending to be friendly with the victim, inviting her to lunch…

"Won't You Join us for Lunch?" purrs the conniving Rika....

Shiraishi on her guard! Are these girls REALLY her friends?

And then watching in glee as she opens her bento and finds someone has messed with it beforehand! Now, WHO could have scrambled up Urara's bento? Hmm, possibly THREE particular troublemakers?

  Little do Rika and her minions know that Shiraishi is in fact Yamada inside, and unlike the ladylike Urara, HE attempts to put a stop to it with a flying punch to the bullying Rika! Sadly, he’s stopped by Shiraishi (in Yamada’s body) who steps in front of Rika and takes the punch to the face instead!, Fortunately, Rika and those bullying girls got SO freaked out they stopped messing with Urara, so the problem got solved anyway, LOL!

Such a fun drama and I'll probably stick around for more...Besides the aforementioned cast, there's also the return of Ryoko Kobayashi and Karen Miyama, in equally mysterious and entertaining roles, so there's THAT to consider! 

Ryoko Kobayashi

Karen Miyama

Very energetic cast, and it's so funny to realize that Mariya Nishiuchi, the girl playing sweet main character Urara Shiraishi, is the same tuff and gruff chick that slapped the heck out of Shida Mirai in the equally fun and zany Seigi No Mikata about five years back! Oh how times and people change!

as Chika in the 2008 Shida Mirai drama Seigi No Mikata

and in 2013 as Urara Shiraishi

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com