Welcome to my humble site....

Hajimemashite minna san....welcome to my site on my fave Japanese Pop Culture likes such as dramas, movies, magazine scans, promo events etc. Mainly concentrate on my faves...Risa Watanabe... Kyoko Saito... Yui Kobayashi....Nana Owada.... Nene Shida.... if you're a fan at all of any of them then you've come to the right place(!) but many others are featured here besides them. Do mainly quick reviews on things I've watched, try to make the reviews brief, quick to read through with not too many spoilers, just whether they're good or bad and why I thought so plus whether you may find them enjoyable. Many, many screenshots are included from everything I've watched plus any video trailers if they're available. Hope you find something that interests you, don't hesitate to comment, arigato gozaimasu!

Search This Blog

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Miori Takimoto: Tsuma, wa Kunoichi episode 1 screenshots and recap


 Tsuma, wa Kunoichi is Miori's latest drama that started on April 5th, it translates roughly over to My Wife is a Ninja which is what Miori is. Four episodes have aired, have just watched the first 2 which I'll be reviewing back to back, subs for episode 3 just came out today but think I'll be doing posts on this series two episodes at a time, though it's a 42 minute show it's rather slow paced with not too, too much happening which seems to be a trend as of late for dramas.

 Miori's character is named Orie who works for the Shogunate Kawamura, this drama takes place in the latter days of the Edo era before it's renamed Tokyo so would say it takes place in the early 1860's. Orie is sent on a secret mission to Hirado, for undercover purposes she marries a skilled yet socially inept astronomer called Futaboshi but after one month when her mission is complete she suddenly disappears back to Edo. Futaboshi is a quite upset as even though they had got married quickly he really did fall in love with her and as we learn she fell in love with him too. He has no clue what happened to her but figures Edo would be a good starting point and travels there to find her. There Futaboshi meets Hirado's former lord Matsuura and his old best friend Senemon who helps him to get settled in Edo. Meanwhile Orie is back living at the headquarters of Kawamura with her mother and preparing for another secret assignment which doesn't start until the next episode. As this episode ends by chance Orie happens to come across her husband Futaboshi, luckily for her he didn't notice her and looks like this may be a recurring theme for at least the first few episodes.

 In the 42 minute episode that's really the gist of what happened, much introducing of the characters and really very little else, didn't make it a bad or boring episode, though it may take a while to get to the main story lines least the show moved along fairly well. Only complaint really about the first episode was that Miori wasn't in it too much, she will be after this show but much of this episode focused on her husband who is hard to explain yet, more about him in the next post that covers episode two, check out these screenshots here of Miori from this show, not enough of them as she wasn't in it as nearly as her fans would have liked her to be, episode 2 her role luckily greatly increases.

Main Cast:

Miori Takimoto as Orie 
Somegoro Ichikawa as Hikoma Futaboshi, Orie's husband
Min Tanaka as Seizan Matsuura, the former Hirado lord
Mayumi Wakamura as Masae, Orie's mother
Soko Wada as Shinichiro Kawamura, Orie's superior
Keisuke Horibe as Senemon















Miori Takimoto: Tsuma, wa Kunoichi episode 2 screenshots and recap


 First two episodes may have been better by being put together as a mini movie because the second episode continued along the theme of the first as far as letting us know the characters a bit more and setting things up for future episodes. Orie(Miori) this time was given an assignment to protect an important woman but came up with a plan to avoid doing that job as she probably would come into contact with her husband Futaboshi. Her plan was eating poisonous mushrooms, she had just enough to disable her for a while so another ninja would take her place and it worked but the question that lingers is will it come back to haunt her? Meanwhile her husband Futaboshi has settled in quite nicely in Edo, most of his neighbors really like him and he ends up getting a job as a teacher in an elementary school. Futaboshi is still on the lookout for Orie but has no idea where to even start looking, little does he know she's been keeping a watch on him. It's a good thing for him that she was as towards the end of this episode he was attacked by some men of the Shogunates but he stated they acted on their own. It was Orie who came to his rescue, she is one skilled ninja and was able to take out the small group of men, she was disguised in her uniform the whole time so Futaboshi had no idea it was his wife, she disappeared right after her victory. And so ended episode two of this drama, yeah it's a bit slow going and is taking too long to get to the main plot but both episodes have been solid watches, mthe 42 minutes flew by and maybe it's been slow going as in order to set everything up for the rest of the series, really hope that's the case. so far would recommend it, to end off here's some screenshots of one fine looking ninja, that being Miori.




















Maki Horikita: April magazine scans #4

 Couple posts ago was mentioning how I'd thought there would be more mag scans of Maki's seeing as how her new movie Kencho Omotenashi Ka was coming out in May but seeing as how this is the 4th post of mag spreads I've done of Maki's this month guess there have been quite a few. First one up is really one terrific spread of Maki, this is from the May 8th issue Weekly Shonen, she's done so many spreads for them over the years, all rate an A++++.









 June issue of TV Navi.


 Rest of these also feature Maki's co-star in her new movie which is Ryo, these pics here are from the June issue of Myojo.



 June issue of Non-no.



 And lastly from Pia's Spring Movie Special.




Emi Takei: Otenki Oneesan episode 3 screenshots and recap

 Enjoying this drama of Emi's so much more than Tokyo Zenryoku Shoujo which despite some good acting performances the story itself was so weak and uninteresting. This time around Haurko(Emi) doesn't solve a murder but a series of arsons which was hard to solve as the fires started with no one around.
 Yui Ichikawa, you can check out her screenshots in the next post, guest stars as Sanae who had just broken up with her boyfriend, soon after that is when the fires had started and he was the main suspect as he was in the vicinity of when the first one was lit. After that two more fires broke out on Sanae's balcony but there was no one around when they started leaving the police department baffled as they wanted to pin the crimes on her ex-boyfriend. But like the first two episodes this is where Haruko comes in to ingeniously figure out how the fires were started, once again giving us some lessons on meteorology. Turns out it wasn't Sanae's old boyfriend who had started as he was stabbed and luckily was saved by the police but gave a clue on where to find Sanae to save her. To make if brief it turned out to be a female co-worker's of Sanae's who seemed to have a strange fascination with her and was prepared to die with her but thanks to Haruko and her two cohorts Detective Aoki and Coroner Mikumo they arrived in the nick of time to save Sanae. Haruko had deduced that the fires were not set by a person but by the sun going through objects such as glass containers and such, they had been placed on purpose in certain positions to take full effect of the sun thus starting the fires. To be honest didn't think fires could start that easily but it worked in this show which ended up being another enjoyable and interesting episode, to date though I'm only currently watching 4 new dramas it's been my fave of this season, looks like it has a good enough storyline to maintain this success throughout it's entire run. As usual ending off with many screenshots from the show, check out the next post for many of Yui from this episode.