Summer 2009 J-Dee (my watchlist)

Takuya Kimura & Haruka Ayase-Mr. Brain

A story of Tsukumo, a night club host who almost lost his life due to a fatal accident that caused damage to frontal part of his brain. In spite of this disability, other parts of Tsukumo’s brain have become more active than before. Parting with his job as a host, he decides going studying brain knowledge and comes to write a research paper at  a special police research academy – so called IPS. Assisted by an assistant named Yuri Kazune (cast: Himono onna..well you know who)  Tsukomo gets involved in many crime cases being faced by the police, which most of the times relate to murder cases.

A quite a nice piece of Takuya. I have watched so far until episode seventh.  Nevertheless, each episode is special not only because of the mystery and horrorfic crime plot (seems like watching a detective movie) but also because different famous Japanese stars took a part as a guest role in the story. Not forget mentioning those actrees and actors that I think you are also familiar with such as Ryoko Hirosue (even only appearing for 5 minutes in the first episode), Koyuki (who played in Last Samurai  with Tom Cruise), Kazuya Kamenashi, and Nakama Yukie (who played in the Rings as Sadako, and in some popular dorama such as  Gokusen and Tricks).

Hideaki Takizawa & Ryou Nishikido-Othros no Inu

Even I have never read the manga, when reading the story I directly made a guess that this J-dee comes from a manga story. It’s been a long time since the last time I watched Hideaki Takizawa played in a dorama. In my memory, Hideaki always had his hair coloured in blond. So, I was a bit surprised when seeing him in his original hair color (read: black hair) in this dorama. In contrast, I still remember watching Ryou-kun in Ryusei no Kizuna a couple months ago. Anyway, it is worth to watch them play in the same series.

I won’t tell the story though since, it is a bit predictable in many ways especially if you are a fan of shounen manga.

Masaki Okada – Otomen

Nah…this is what I call a coincidence. If above dorama was from shounen manga, this one is from shoujo manga. Masaki Okada name may not be so familiar to everyone, but if you ever watched Hana Kimi tachie, you will know him as Sekime-(the guy whose name was always forgotten LOL). I just watched episode one unsubbed and currently hoping this will be another entertaining comedy dorama.

The story is about Asuka Masamune a high school boy who is idolized by every girl because of his look and the fact that he is the strongest kendo player at the school’s doujo. However, nobody knows that their idol is actually hiding his true-self who is very skillful in sewing and cooking. Asuka has been hiding this for all times as he had made a promise to his mother in her dying bed that he would not follow his father’s way of life who wanted to be a woman (at least that was what I understood from the conversation). Until one day Asuka meets a girl named Ryo Miyakozuka and he falls for her because of her brave and cheerful personalities. Because of this, Asuka becomes very afraid if Ryo exposes his true-self.

That’s all for now…see you in the next post.

Osashiburi desu…(it’s been a long time)

I have been away for quite long time, haven’t I? Some asked if I have stopped watching dorama all this time. Well the answer is yes and no. After the last post, I went back to my home country for one month. Then when came back here, I was all the time busy with work and working at my social life. Pfff…to be honest, I can be very introvert sometimes :~! and at some points I prefer having myself lead a life like a hikkikomori. Well if you are not familiar with hikkikomori, try googling it. Any other suggestion? I would suggest you to watch an anime called NHK ni youkoso that tells a story of a hikkikomori.

Ok..enough of my excuses though. So during month March until end of May, I have  actually finished some and am currently watching some J-dee’s.  Pls find them below 🙂

Kurosagi-a black swlinder

This is a dorama from year 2006. Actually I had downloaded one episode before I went back to Indonesia but then got no time to watch it until last month.  This is a story of  a man named Kurosaki whose father was swindled for a big sum of money and ended up killing his own family. Kurosaki apparently managed to save himself from that incident but since then his life is always haunted by the death scene of his family. Living with goal in mind to avange his family and believing the fact that police can do nothing to help people who got swindled, he works as a black swlinder (kurosagi–kuro: black, sagi: swlinder), a kind of swlinder who doest not cheat commoners but instead he swindles other swindles and gives the money back to the victims.

Obviously Kurosaki’s actions cause different reactions from public. Some consider what he does is a heroic deeds while other like police officers and Tsurara-a law major student who rents an appartment from Kurosaki, think swindling (whatever the form is) is still a criminal action that can’t be tolerated. Such a simple story line but it’s interesting enough to see various methods used by a swindler (and of course not forgetting to see Yama-P’s act in many kinds of roles :D).

Cast: Yamashita Tomohisa, Horita Maki, and Yamazaki Tsutomu

Dragon Zakura

I was looking at Jdorama.com top 50 dramas voted web-page when came across a title that I have never seen before. Yep another drama from year 2005 which made according to a famous manga with same title. Shortly, this dorama tells a story of Sakuragi Kenji a lawyer and ex-gangster..ups I mean ex-racer 🙂 who swears to admit 5 students from Ryuuzan high school to Todai in the coming year. Is there anything special from this main storyline??

Let me continue. Ryuuzan high school is known in the neighborhood as a low level high school that has an average score of 36 in the national test. Based on a survey, every year only 3 of the students are willing to go to university and the other just drop-out or directly working after graduating. On the other hand, for those who don’t know “Todai” uni, Todai is an abbreviation of Tokyo Daigaku a.k.a. Tokyo University, the most prestigious university in Japan, and it often ranks as the highest in Asia (wikipedia). Interesting?

I personally think, more than the story itself, the dorama talks a lot about the techniques of doing Todai’s entrance exam. Sakuragi is confidence that anyone can enter Todai. Even stupid students but if they know study techniques, they can.

(A bit of my confession: this post has been in my draft folder for about a month…)