Air Dates: January 14th to February 4, 2017- Saturdays at 10:00 pm on WOWOW
Director: Kiyoshi Sasabe Subs: subie06 Based on the novel by Maha Harada
Main Cast:
Manami Higa as Kotoha Ninomiya
Kyoko Hasegawa as Kumi Kuon
Dai Watanabe as Atsushi Imagawa
Mokomichi Hayami as Nikkaashi Wada
Renji Ishibashi as Jiro Oyamada
Kaoru Yachigusa as Kikuyo Ninomiya
Eiichiro Funakoshi as Atsuro Imagawa
Megumi Abe as Eri Imagawa
Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope this is as short as the above post. Would recommend reading that first as I'm not going to talk too much about what happened in those first two shows. Atsushi has finally relented and will run to represent the 4th district, his famous father had also represented that district. His opponent Kurokawa will be tough one to beat, he's been around a while and has the support of the Prime Minister while Atsushi has never held a political position.
Kotoha has been assigned to be Atsushi's aide and speechwriter, two rookies trying to topple a seemingly unbeatable opponent. Both make mistakes but so far none have been major, that is until a very seedy reporter happens upon the scene. The reporter works for the tabloid mag Shukan who try to expose scandals and bring anybody they can down. The reporter takes a pic of Kotoha and Atsushi together, it's an innocent one but it gets run in the tabloid which causes a minor ruckus.
Can't recall the reporter's name but he does pop up on a few more occasions, it wasn't revealed but he may have been working behind the scenes for Atsushi's opponent Kurokawa. Kotoha tried to resign from her position, luckily for Atsushi it didn't happen as her boss/teacher Kumi was able to convince her to remain. Politics is a dirty business she told her, if you're not willing to fight hard you have zero chance of winning. Once again a speech inspired Kotoha to go into hyper drive.
Japanese politics are run a bit different than in America, a candidate can campaign but can't give any details such as what he's running for or any kind of campaign talk. That is until twelve days(?) before an election so Kotoha and Atsushi go around town just to get his face and name known. It works and it's finally the time where a candidate can actually campaign in the regular way we know of. Atsushi attends a rally and gives a rousing speech, he's converted quite a few voters to his side. Unfortunately for him Kurokawa has the Prime Minster attend his rally which most think will certify his victory.
The speech Kotoha wrote was superb, wasn't her fault nor Atsishi's that the rally didn't help out like they thought it would because of the Prime Minister attending. That Shukan reporter made another appearance and tried to bully Eri who is Atsushis' pregnant wife. To the rescue came Wada, he's the rival of Kotoha's but is a upstanding young man who prefers a fair fight, he manages to whisk that reporter away.
The rally may not have gone exactly as it was planned for Atsushi but Eri is still going to have a mini celebration back at their apartment. However when he and Kotoha show up Eri is no where to be found until the pair hear a noise. Rushing to the scene they find Eri lying on the bathroom floor in pain, looks like being pregnant, the pressures of her husband campaigning and the Shukan reporter have done a number on her body.
She's taken quickly to a nearby hospital but to no avail as the baby had to be aborted, now Atsushi is having second thoughts again about running for office. At the hospital that seedy Shukan reporter was once again on the scene and was going to run the story of Eri losing her baby in the next issue. Before that could happen Kotoha was able to convince Atsishi to remain in the race, watching an older video of his father speaking to the Diet also was a major factor in him remaining as a candidate.
Also before the article about Eri losing her baby could be published Atsushi gave a speech where he told the public what had happened to her. The speech, with Kotoha's help, was so rousing it's made the race much closer but there were only a few days before the election. We're now in the final episode as these events speed by at a rapid pace, the episode started with Eri losing her baby.
Kurikawa isn't worried about losing the race but he's overheard in a conversation by Wada. That conversation was about some payoffs that would make him win the election and also what he would do for these contributors when he won.
Wada also transferred much data about Kurokawa to his flash drive and had enough info to bring him down. He decided not to do this and gave the data back to Kurokawa telling him all he knew about his shady dealings but told him he would keep it private for now. Events are still zipping by, it's July 16th which is the date of the election. Atsushi worked hard campaigning but it didn't appear as though he could topple Kuokawa though the race was projected to be somewhat close.
As you can see a major upset happened as Atsushi was able to squeeze out a victory and is now the representative for the Kanagawa district. However Kurokawa didn't learn his lesson, he's expected to be chosen as an auxiliary rep for his party and gloats to Wada about it. Now that the election was over what is to become of Kumi? Bring her up as she had been asked to return to America to help out a candidate running for president, her English must be good but it was barely passable in the show.
Kotoha found about the offer but Kumi ended up turning it down, she really gave no reason for it except for perhaps not wanting to leave Japan again. It's the end of events for the present but not for the series as in the last five minutes time travels three years into the future. It's now 2020 and we're at the wedding of Kotoha who is getting married to.... Wada! Though they were enemies during the election they did have a fondness for each other and you could see the pair possibly getting hitched.
At the reception once again there was to be a speech given and it was Kumi who gave the rousing oration. She had returned from America for the wedding, she didn't work on the previous American presidential election but is working on the current one in 2020. At the reception we saw Atsushi and Eri, they were finally able to have a child. That speech from Kumi brought us to to the end of the show and the series.
The shows ran for about fifty minutes, being only four episodes there was no time for filler but then again things moved too quickly like in this last show. Seemed as though in a blink of an eye it was the eve of the election and then the wedding, thought the series wrapped up way too quickly and it may have helped if there was one more episode.
But besides that ending it did end up being an enjoyable and interesting watch, really turned out to be much better than I expected. Will give it a grade of 8.5/10, may have earned closer to a 9 if it wasn't for the speedy ending. The drama is easy to get and the team that created the subs did a solid job with them, the team's name is in the credits at the top,
Unsure what's up next, aren't too many Winter dramas that appeal to me. There is one but the subs are going slow on it so unsure whether I'll be able to view it. Next could then be the AKB series "Tofu Pro Wrestling", not really a fan of the group's music these days though their dramas are usually an okay watch. Most of the key elements of the storylines were brought up in these two shorter than usual recaps, have plenty of screenshots here that should help you follow the story a bit better.
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