My Girl (JP) / マイガール

2009, 10-episode JDorama that stars Arashi's Aiba Masaki as 23 yr old Kazama Masamune, a guy who fell in love with an older woman while still in high school, and then she left the country and he folded.

Six years later, and living in the upstairs room of a charming, European-style house outside Tokyo, but with oddball homeowners for his landlord, Masaki-kun finds out that his old flame is dead, and that she has a five-year-old daughter he is now expected to raise as his own child.

The cute, little girl misses her mother terribly and has a few trinkets in her possession to help remember the good times - while she is also politely accommodating to the strange man she must now live with.

He's worried that the crotchety, old man landlord will kick him out if he finds out about the girl, and then he worries that he'll lose his job if he keeps having to leave work to fetch her from school or leave early on account of her being sick or something implausible but necessary to the storyline like that.

He's worried, too, that his mother will be upset once she finds out that the little girl is her grandchild - for reals - and as the episodes progress, so does his level of maturity, understanding, and acceptance for everything from the past to his inevitable future as a father.

This is based on the Manga My Girl Sahara Mizu, and almost everyone at aznv.tv agreed that the Manga was better, more tearful than the drama, but that Aiba did a terrific job.

I didn't like him, and then I did like him, and then I quirked a curious brow at him, and then I smiled at him.

Aiba is peculiar in a number of ways, and not at all like the stereotypical pop-band boy image in my head, either.

My impression of him and his acting skills aside, this was a nice movie that unfolded seamlessly, telling a story of interest and acted out with ease by all the characters.

Read More

Saigo no Yakusoku / 最後の約束

January, 2010, Japanese movie starring the Arashi Five as various insiders or outsiders who converge along with about two-hundred others inside a glass tower office building when three o'clock strikes and all hell suddenly breaks loose.

Ohno Satoshi as Mashiko Satoru is a maintenance worker who ends up inside the absent president's office with a new employee who ends up being an ex-con who finally got busted for B&E after nearly forty years.

Sakurai Sho as Tomizawa Yukio is an insurance salesman at the risk of losing his job if he doesn't make a sale, and his target is a woman who works inside the building.

Aiba Masaki as Tanada Akira sells coffee at a kiosk on the fifth floor.

Ninomiya Kazunari as Yamagiwa Shoji is the head of the security department inside the building.

and finally, Matsumoto Jun as Goto Nozomu, who is a bike courier that ends up losing part of a package delivered to the president's daughter, so he's there waiting for a return call from the shipping place where he works.

So, at the strike of three, lock-down happens, the security guys, Shoji and Fujiki Naohito as Okanaka Shinichiro are held prisoner by armed hijackers.

They demand in ninety minutes the delivery of a boat-load of yen by the company's president, and if their demand isn't met, BOOM!

Satoru is following the old, ex con through the duct work, Yukio is stuck in the fifth floor lobby with the other, two-hundred or so building employees, and Akira is holed-up inside the men's room - the only one there still with a cell phone, where he can stay in contact with the police.

Nozomu chases after the president's stubborn but determined daughter, (Kuroki Meisa as Niimi Yuriko ) who hurries up a ton of flights of stairs in order to destroy the prototypes for bio-fuel she thinks the terrorists are really after, and then she puts the research data on a flash drive, locks everything of value in a steel briefcase and then heads toward an escape route, arguing with Nozomu along the way.
She's really beautiful.

There's an unexpected twist in the plot about 3/4 of the way through, and I, for one, did NOT see it coming (embarrassed).

Highly recommend this one.

Read More

Yamada Tarō Monogatari / 山田太郎ものがたり / The Story of Yamada Taro

2007 TBS drama that stars a couple cuties from the JPop group Arashi: namely, Ninomiya Kazunari and Sakurai Sho.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

This is yet, another spin-off of a manga series, and in 2001, Taiwan based Ping Qiong Gui Gong Zi : Poor Prince (with Vic Zhou) on the same premise.

Kazunari plays Taro Yamada (An-chan), a boy living in poverty with his okaasan and six, younger siblings in a dilapidated shack tucked neatly away somewhere in Tokyo.

He's extremely intelligent and makes it into a prestigious high school, where on the first day, he happens to enter the grounds at precisely the same moment as the real rich dude with just as notable good looks, Takuya (Sakurai Sho).

In increasingly annoying, Japanese teenage girl fashion, a daily procession of cheering twits in uniform line both sides of a 'red carpet' that leads to the school, and the two, handsome boys make their way through the adoring throng acting as if it is natural, expected, and no big deal.

I would beg to differ, but that's just me.

In actuality, it breaks my heart to think about the way Asian pop stars are idolized, worshipped, and their private lives scrutinized while their private decisions are severely sanctioned by agents and a totally whack fan base.

Mob mentality, hero-worship, and misguided assumptions all cater to and encourage an entire country to adopt the ways and immature mind-set of an already generalized segment of the population that has no idea of the difference between their head or their ass.

Scary sh*t.

Anyway, Taro is adorable and unassuming - caring only about food and making enough money to keep the family going.

Takuya finds him to be interesting and strikes up an immediate friendship with the guy whose smile sends the entire school (boys included) to the floor in a swoon.

Taro gets high marks all the time, and an annoying woman (made to be annoying on purpose, since this is a tweeny-bopper drama, so making 'old' people look stupid is only natural) is determined to change Taro's mind about not entering college.

There's a girl who is crazy about Taro (even though they all are) and since she is determined to become --- "ama no koshi", she pursues him under the misinformed notion that he is wealthy and therefore socially acceptable.

Y'know, this is actually true over there?

yeesh ---

on with the story.

So, rather early on in this interesting piece of work, An-chan's otousan arrives, and I'm sorry, but when I first saw him, it made me gasp in shock.

Matsuoka Mitsuru of SOPHIA

Having a rock & roll dad would be cool, yes?

I'm not being mean, either - I swear it.

He just shocked me at first because ... well, because he looked like a plastic surgery nightmare is all.

It just seemed, to me, that there was something overly fake about his face - (like he had on a mask or something) - but then I got used to seeing him and it didn't bug me anymore.

The weird didn't end there, though.

Turns out this guy portrays a wandering artist who travels the world on a whim.

Yea - like, while his wife and seven kids are stuck in that hovel scraping together pennies for food, and he's traveling around having a good ol' time doing what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and to hell with responsibility.

THEN they had the audacity to make him out to be paternal and wise!



Regardless, it was minor and not a big deal - but still a tad on the irksome side for me.

Yamada Taro Monogatari was a nice drama with a feel-good attitude that I would recommend despite a few flaws and annoyances.

Read More