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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....Miyuki Watanabe.... 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!

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Thursday, November 12, 2015

Angel Heart drama: Episode four recap and screenshots


 Start Date: October 11, 2015... Sundays at 10:00 pm.... Episode four rating: 10.3%

Main Cast:

 Takaya Kamikawa as Ryo Saeba
Saki Aibu as Kaori Makimura
Ayaka Miyoshi as Glass Heart/Xiang Ying
Shohei Miura as Liu Xin-Hing
Brother Tom as Falcon
Reika Takashima as Saeko Nogami
Soji Izumi as Karito
Mickey Curtis as Doctor Doku

Guest Stars
Riho Takada as Ayana
Jun Toba as Takahata

 Going to try to make this a short recap, mainly because there's about seven other posts I'd like to do tonight or at least start but have only have a little over two hours to do all of them. I will finish watching the drama but undecided if there's going to be a recap for all the episodes, will be doing one for episode five but if it's a disappointing show then may abort the reviews for this series.
 And this episode was another disappointing one, the drama started out so well but has faded so quickly. I thought this was supposed to be an action packed, intense drama somewhat along the lines of the Korean series "City Hunter", both these dramas are based upon the same manga. The action and intensity is non existent in this show, it's kind of become a heart warming show which is okay but this show was supposed to be anything but that.




 Ryo has returned finally as the 'City Hunter', his first case back is a disappointing one for him as it doesn't involve the underworld. The City Hunter's is considered to be a Street Sweeper where he rids away the bad guys who have hurt or threatened innocent people. That's what Ryo had done in the past but his first case back just involves finding a person. Not just any person to Takahata who hired Ryo for the task but someone very special to him who he has never met. Fifteen years prior Takahata had a heart transplant, he doesn't know who the person was but he has a feeling he's met a relative of the donor. This is where Ryo comes in as he needs to find out everything he can about that relative.
 Not much of a job, think any of us could have found out enough info on that person whose name is Ayana and who works in a hostess club. Ayana's sister was the person who donated her heart to Takahata but just like in the previous episode it seems that the heart still carries memories and feelings from it's previous owner.
 Don't know if that can happen in real life but Glass Heart also has the same issues with Kaori's heart. Ayana has no idea who Takahata is as the family of a donor is not allowed to know the identity of who got the heart but one day Takahata passed by Ayana and his heart went into overdrive. Somehow the heart knew that it was her sister and Takahata started to follow her and meet her at her hostess club.




 Takahata is a rich man as he owns a very successful IT company, he doesn't mind getting ripped off at the somewhat seedy club. But he keeps following Ayana around, so much to the point she thinks he's a stalker, plus she can't understand why Takahata knows so much about her. Through Ryo's help everything gets explained to Ayana, though she wasn't supposed to know the identity of the person who received her sister's heart the whole truth came out.
 Think the main reason Takahata wanted her to know the secret is that he doesn't have long to live, don't think the heart is the problem but his time on earth is dwindling down. Takahata couldn't exactly say what the sister wanted him to but the heart wanted to let Ayane know it wasn't her fault the her sister had died. Ayane's sister had fallen over a cliff, Ayane tried to save her but couldn't and had felt responsible for her death for the next 15 years.
 At the end Ayane has gotten over those guilty feelings and may have even started to like Takahata who had done nothing but help her out. However it was tool late as Takahata did hold on for a few days but eventually passed away, thus ends this episode.




 If you read the above you may see that it wasn't a bad story but it's not supposed to be that kind of drama, what happened to all the action that were in the first two episodes? Ryo and Glass Heart are also supposed to be doing battle with the evil organization Legion, they've tried to kill her a few times but we saw their two key members for about a minute in this show, why aren't they concentrating on that story line?
 Just don't understand why this drama has switched like it has, it's just gotten to be so boring and uninteresting. Like I mentioned will watch this series to it's conclusion but if the episodes don't start improving may not be posting about this drama after the next episode, really don't like reviewing series that aren't so good. First two episodes would get a grade of 8+/10 from me, these last two would give it about a five which is actually a bit generous.
 Also had a feeling it was going to happen but after Saki's character Kaori gets killed off in the first episode thought we might not see enough of her and that's happened. We did see quite a bit of her in the second episode through many flashbacks, this show she may have been on the screen for two minutes. Best part of this episode was Riho Takada who did a guest appearance as Ayane. Have seen her in a few other things and she's quite attractive, she's just 21 so let's hope we see more of her in the future.
 Episode five aired Sunday so will try to be back over the weekend to recap that show, let's keep our fingers crossed that there's a big improvement.


























1 comment:

  1. I'm 5 years late to comment because I only watched the Angel Heart live action drama recently. Honestly, even in the manga, Angel Heart is a different direction than City Hunter. Some people say this is how you watch City Hunter anime, with a big box of popcorn. Because of all the action and comedy. How to Watch Angel Heart: Get a big box of tissue. Because there's a lot of crying. If you think Angel Heart the tv drama lacked a lot of action, then you'd be even more disappointed in the Second Season of the Angel Heart manga that ran from 2010 to 2017. Right off the bat, from Chapter 1 and 2 (I haven't finished reading all), there is hardly any action except fighting a few thugs. The whole point of Angel Heart was more focused on themes of family, father-daughter / parents relationships, past regrets, family ties & family love. Chapter 1 and 2 and 3 combined was almost 600 pages of stories that was page and page of just talking, emotions, feelings. Very little to do with the underworld at all. Even when Chameleon the evil assassin who could change his/her looks, height, weight, body and even voice to match whoever he/she is impersonating wasn't even really trying to kill Ryo in Chapter 3, but was merely trying to help the deceased Kaori fulfill some of her wishes that couldn't be fulfilled 5 years after her death.

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