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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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Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Nogizaka Cinemas: 'Story of 46', episode nine recap starring Shiori Kubo


 Fuji-TV/FOD homepage link for the show:  https://www.fujitv.co.jp/nogizakacinemas/

This drama began on January 21st and ended on March 30th, it had ten episodes featuring one Nogi member who are in the above pic and here's the list of who was in each show plus it's rating:

 Episode one- Asuka      7.5/10
 Episode two- Manatsu  7.1/10 
 Episode three- Sayuri   8.0/10
 Episode four- Mizuki    6.5/10
 Episode five- Hinako     7.4/10
 Episode six- Miona        7.7/10
 Episode seven- Yuki      8.5/10
 Episode eight- Erika     7.0/10
 Episode nine- Shiori      7.0/10
 Episode ten- Mai

 The series aired on Tuesday nights until the end of March. Will give a big thanks to Beam Subs who did the subs for the show, first five episodes were done quickly but then there was a huge gap of two months due to no translators. However the final five shows were completed in about a week and the subs for every episode were solid.
 Have been doing one post at a time but will end off with the final two today. At first wasn't going to recap this episode but decided why not as it did look promising going in. Didn't turn out that way though and it wasn't because of Shiori who really was a non-presence in this show and because of that will try to keep this post very brief(didn't work). One main problem in this series has been how short the episodes are at 21-23 minutes, really would have helped being ten minutes longer to explain things better plus the stories felt a bit rushed. One other thing is that the roles of a few members weren't that large or key to the story, Shiori said very few lines in this show and actually the rest of the cast carried the story, she played an Android in this show named Messiah.




Episode title.... Vulnerability


 That line above where Shiori says 'The air is clear and pleasant' is really the only thing she says during the episode, from this show have no clue whether she's a good actress or not. The year is 2026 and Japan had been suffering a mild recession since the 2020 Olympics ended but of course we all know it won't be held this year. So the Japanese government has created the world's most efficient android named Messiah or Mei for short. It was originally intended for the elderly population but it soon became a fixture in many households, mainly for single mothers raising children.
 Though the children seemed to enjoy having Messiah around the same can't be said for adults after a while. Messiah is a perfect creation and others who are around her for a long time feel a bit inferior to the android who does a better job raising children than their mothers do. Her perfectness has also affected the elderly people she cared for and seems most are females. She has no clue about what she's doing(or does she?) but the actions of Messiah are having a negative affect on her owners as a few of them have lost their minds because of their inferiority to the perfect android.






 Messiah has no idea what her actions are doing to people and though in a way she's innocent from any charges a pair of detectives were assigned to find out what Messiah was doing to people. Forgot to mention that all androids look exactly the same and also that they have even worked in hospitals helping the staff out. Above in the bottom screenshot is the young detective Juuji who is working on the case with his older partner Toka. The older man has his head on straight and advised Juuji not to get to close to the Messiah they're investigating or any others lest he falls under their 'spell'.
 But that advice wan't taken seriously by Juuji who did fall under the spell of Messiah along with several thousands of others. Above is him at a 'ritual' led by Messiah and where Juuji got a special tattoo of her. The pair of detectives had also brought in an unnamed woman, she's in two screenshots above and had tried/wanted to kill Messiah for getting too close to her children, an elderly woman also had wanted to slay Messiah. That first woman's life with Messiah watching her children is one reason I wish this show was a bit longer as not enough things were explained such as did she really try to kill Messiah plus whatever happened to the woman?





 In a way Messiah kind of reminded me of Tomie and how she could put men under her spell, that's one of my fave movie series and do recommend those films and mangas. Juuji realized he's fallen under the spell of Messiah and there's really nothing he could do to prevent it. Instead of questioning her about the families she had been working with Juuji 'kidnapped' Messiah and brought her to a garbage site which has more than just regular garbage. During the drive there Juuji had contacted his partner Tako who tried in vain to help his young friend out and to return with the android.
 The older man's advice was put so perfectly but to no avail as Juuji was too far under the spell of Messiah to help. But Juuji did retain some normalcy if that's what you want to call it as his plan at the garbage pit was to take his own life! Which is what he did but not before injuring Messiah and putting her with other androids of her to be recycled or destroyed. His partner Tako listened to the entire event but was helpless to help Juuji out as this too short of a show came to it's conclusion.




 Hope I was able to get all of the details correct but unsure if that happened. That's because not enough things were explained well enough and you had to deduce for yourself what may have happened or what character's thoughts were, this could have been a much better episode had it lasted ten or more minutes. Plus what was the sense of having a Nogi member in the show where they did so little, in all honesty they could have taken any female off the street to do Shiori's role. The final recap for this ten episode series is next and it did turn out to be a better show.



















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