Chonmage Purin / ちょんまげぷりん

#4 FIVE-STAR review

Summer, 2010, Japanese movie that stars Ryo Nishikido-kun as Kijima Yasube, a samurai from the Edo period 180 years ago who ends up in modern-day Tokyo after praying for a better job before a Buddha statue in his country hamlet.

Yes, its based on another Manga turned anime, but that's entirely beside the point as this happened to be one of them that I appreciated being turned into live-action stuff ~ what's more, I super appreciate the fact that they chose RYO-san to play the part of the confused but dutiful samurai!

Baby boy who stole the show (Fuku Suzuki as Tomoya Yusa) and his single mother are on their way to work/school when Yusa notices a samurai standing stiff in front of a convenience store near their apartment building, and while the mother seems somewhat alarmed by what she sees, it isn't enough to send her screaming for the police and instead, she takes hold of her adorable son's hand and encourages him to be on his way.

After school/work, they return to the apartment when Yusa decides its time to play hide & seek without telling his mother - and as she is darting about the parking lot looking for him, she encounters the samurai - still dazed and slightly pissed off about his confusing circumstances.

Baby boy creeps up behind them under the cover of a box, and when he jumps out yelling 'Boo!', the samurai does what any samurai would do - he draws his sword, aiming it at the wide-eyed boy's throat.

Yusa wants a playmate, and the samurai looks to be a great catch, so he's delighted when his okāsan decides to take in the bewildered and obviously lost or homeless, young man who must have hit his head and now thinks he's a samurai from the Edo period.

In exchange for room & board, Samurai Kijima Yasube offers to play the role of 'Josei' or woman by doing the housework, cooking, and taking care of kawaii baby boy, Yusa.

There was a funny scene when the phone rings while he's cleaning house, but aside from that, Yasube seemed not to find the 'future' all that shocking, which disappointed me, but not to such an extent that I didn't want to watch the rest of this absolutely FABULOUS show!

Right away, Yasube makes himself useful by taking up pastry making, for which he turns out to be a natural, and he ends up in a contest that pits him and Yusa against other dad/child teams in creating a fantastic cake based on a design of their choosing.




Yasube ends up leaving the Josei role to work in a bakery run by one of the judges of the contest, breaking both Yusa and his mother's hearts.

In between, though, he spent quality time with them both, learning more about the future from the woman while also instilling some of his staunch mentality on the baby boy.


Toward the end of the story, he encounters some bad guys, and since he's promised not to unsheathe his sword and risk going to jail, Yasube decides on an unconventional way to put the bad guys to rest.


It was beyond HOT stuff, I must admit.

The inevitable occurs toward the end, and it even made me cry, but the ENDING isn't a sad one, so don't despair!

Highly recommend this one if you haven't already watched Chonmage Purin!

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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.

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Tengoku no Daisuke e / 天国のダイスケへ

To Daisuke in Heaven ~ Hakone Ekiden ga Musunda Kizuna ~



2003 Japanese movie based on the real-life dilemma of a college student on a relay track team whose promising future is cut short by leukemia.

The movie, however, is based on the personal life of an arrogant reporter who covered his sports career and who ended up changing his outlook on life as a result of his having met the young boy with such spirit and drive.

Sato Daisuke (Oguri Shun) is the determined twenty-three year old on the track team who wants desperately to win a relay marathon their school hasn't participated in in over thirteen years.

Yohei Iida, (Fukuyama Masaharu), is the cynical and selfish reporter for a prominent newspaper read around the country, and because he refuses to accept the help of his co-workers, he ends up making a huge mistake that costs him is Political Reporter position at the paper, thus relegating him to the 'useless' and 'unworthy of being called news' sports department.

Iida's first assignment is at Takushoku University, where he is asked to cover the relay marathon race, and it isn't long after he first meets Daisuke that the stiff reporter begins to come undone.

He has a boat-load of life lessons to learn at his age, and it isn't, entirely ironic that a majority of those lessons are learned from a boy ten years his junior.

Stories like this make me wonder if it isn't, perhaps true that God actually selects certain people to a call to greatness through another, less fortunate soul.

I mean - why can't stuff like this happen to everyone who needs it?

Wouldn't that make this a better world in which to live?

Like, why only Iida and not someone else if he isn't the only pathetic soul wandering around at a total loss and clueless to the reality that is his actual existence?

Anyhow, this movie was heart-wrenching while not being overly dramatic about it, and it was an interesting story about interesting characters without it being in-your-face lecture series about the contrasts of right versus wrong.

I liked it, and I love Oguri Shun, too.

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Crows Zero / Kurozu zero

2007 Japanese movie that stars Shun Oguri as Takiya Genji - a guy who enrolls at Suzuran All-Boys High School with the sole intention of taking it over so as to accomplish the feat his Yakuza father could not back in his time.

Tamao Serizawa (Yamada Takayuki) is the current head or 'king' of the crows, but they have a mutual friend in Kenta Kiritani as Tokio Tatsukawa, an unseemingly straight-lace member of the scary gang of thugs who destroy their school while terrorizing everyone foolish enough to attend the beat-up, graffiti-laden, and burned-out shell of an 'academy'.

The director made attempts to show actual staff members at this hell-on-earth school, but that was only at the beginning - for the duration of the movie, it was thug - on - thug action that didn't stop until the very end, leaving me anxious to hit the shower so as to feel refreshed and clean once more.

It's a guy flick cram-packed with tough dudes wanting to beat the living shit out of each other until only one thug is left standing, and as a prissy girl, I don't get it.

HOWEVER ~ I will admit that a few of the scenes that showed how Genji goes about 'recruiting' were done rather elegantly while maintaining enough bad-ass to make me at least giggle, if not fawn.

It's also loosely based on yet, another manga series - which definitely helps to explain the far-fetched philosophy of the whole storyline.

Anyway - the gist of this, particular episode is about Genji's heartless attempt to become the king and form what is lovingly deemed the Genji Perfect Seiha Army whilst he proceeds to stomp all over reigning thug-master Serizawa's pride.

In the meantime, there is Tokio, who not only doesn't appear thug in the least but is also from a wealthy background and who has a medical condition which leads to his experiencing a cerebral aneurysm.

This situation, along with the kidnapping of Genji's nightclub singing girlfriend, leads to a furious rift between Genji and Serizawa, and soon the entire school and their in-house gangs begin to take sides, leading up to one, incredible battle that is meant to decide once and for all who will be the new leader of the academy.

This movie received so, much attention for so long, it forced me to give it a try even knowing what far-fetched brutality lay in store, and yet it managed to capture my interest, but not entirely for the same reason it captivated so, many others.

Ken (Kyosuke Yabe) was an annoying aside whose character made no sense to me whatsoever, and Takashi Makise (Tsutomu Takahashi) as the totally loyal, body-of-steel thug with the inability to keep steady was too creepy to be loved, much less rooted for.

and, What the hell was a guy like Tokio doing in a place like Suruzan, anyway??

To each his own, I guess.

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Ningen no Shoumei / 人間の証明

Proof of the Man



2004 summer mystery from Japan that stars Yutaka Takenouchi as a grizzled detective assigned to a murder case that leads him against his will through the harrowing steps of his past.

The only thing about this awesome story that confused as much as it made me laugh was the fact that they chose to use a Japanese actor as the murder victim - thus imposing 'black face' on the viewer - a shocking and overt concept to an American.

They also didn't try hard enough to hide Japan in their Mississippi scenes, either, which always makes me giggle.

Who knew there were lush, verdant mountains in the south, or that we share our roads with commuter trains that don't, even exist!

Worse, though, is their constant use of unprofessional and therefore ridiculous, foreign 'actors' to portray the white guy.

Again, it's always funny to hear them accentuate the wrong word, speak out of turn, and/or employ the wrong facial expression - further signifying their lack of talent while, in this case, using the wrong accent for the locale.

Same, too, for the Japanese actor covered in unconvincing make-up and forced to portray a half-breed who grew up in Mississippi while somehow acquiring a Japanese accent despite his having grown up in America with a black American father.

Na ni??

This story was rife with stereotypical hatred, and quite possibly written by a man who grew up in the era of American soldiers inundating naval bases scattered throughout that part of the world who behaved less than dignified, thus ruining a shared image for the rest of us, who knows.

~HOWEVER ~

He did, also, try to convey the fact that crime, ignorance, and racism exist on both sides of the Pacific, so kudos for that much honesty at least.


Anyway, y'all already know how much I love Yutaka, and he didn't fail to impress me this time around, either.

The man is phenomenal as an actor, amazing in the eye-candy department, and a treat for the ears because of his sexy, deep voice, too.

He morphs with such ease that it's hard for an outsider like me to gauge his true personality, and sadly, because of his age, there's little about him in the fan-rave-gaga category of websites to be able to learn much about the guy.

He's close to me in age, which makes him all the more appealing, and in Proof ... he made me wish I could give him a big hug, he was that pathetic a character, but with good and valid reason.


There were stories within the story, so for ten episodes I sat glued to my chair and awaited the next turn of events with excitement, as I'm sure you will too if you give this one a chance to impress you as much as it did me.

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Hero

2007 Japanese movie that stars Kimura Takuya as a slovenly bengoshi with true justice as his only motive for handling a case.

He's really handsome in a ruggedly macho kind of way, and I like it.

He's not typical of the average, Japanese mega-star, yet he's definitely a mega-star in his own right.

He possesses the prerequisite good looks with a touch of grass-eater thrown in the mix, and yet he couldn't be considered stylish-hair, make-up wearing, girly-girl, is there a chance he might be gay? looking by any means.

Hero also starred ABE HIROSHI as another, obstinate attorney in the firm, and at the beginning of this exceptional movie, there is a scene where he and the rest of the crew file into an elevator.

He stands head & shoulders above them all, and I couldn't help but laugh, wanting to rewind again and again even though I couldn't.

Everyone at aznv.tv asked about or expressed an interest in a second season, but I haven't found anything in that regard.

Here is what the synopsis had to say ...

"Based on a well-known TV series, "Hero" Kuryu (Takuya Kimura) is finally back in the Tokyo Prosecutor's Office "Josai" Branch and reunited with old familiar colleagues and handling a variety of petty theft and injury cases."

This makes it sound like it was originally aired as a half-hour television spot that ended up as a movie ... which is what I just watched ... having never seen nor found anywhere the 'original' television version.

AND ... it sounds like the cast of the movie were in said or implied television series.

Confused, as usual.

Anyway, Hero revolves around a single case of political greed that lands a street punk in jail as a case of mistaken identity (or is it a frame up?)

An innocent man is killed, a supposedly innocent youth is accused of the crime, and it is up to Kimura's character to uncover the truth regardless of the mammoth implications involved should he decide to go up against the powers that be both in and outside the legal arena.

The incident takes him to Korea, where I breathlessly awaited the arrival of promised hunk, Lee Byung hun as another no-nonsense law man who actually arrives at the very end of their stay in Korea, and is on-screen for approximately ten seconds.

ya pa de

However ~ it's what occurs in Korea that had everyone who watched this great movie wondering about a sequel, because the guy they chased down at the start dropped a flash drive inside Kimura's assistant's bag, and then nothing about it was ever mentioned again.

He did it in order to keep it out of the hands of the Korean authorities, but what does it contain, and ...

I like funny mixed in with serious, and Hero had me laughing as much as I was riveted with anticipation of the eventual outcome.

***UPDATE: I found the 2001 television series! (hurray for me!) ^.^'
will watch with interest and blog when I'm through. ***

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