"Shoujo Commando Izumi" drama: Episode five of fifteen recap

 

 Air Dates: November 5, 1987 to February 18, 1988. There were a total of fifteen episodes which aired but it had been scheduled to have twenty but was cancelled due to poor ratings. It aired on Fuji-TV at 7:30 pm on Thursdays, originally it was planned on being the fourth "Sukeban Deka" series though the story/plot was very different from those shows.

Average rating: 7.12%   Rating for this episode that aired on December 3, 1987: 6.0% .... Subs were done by Big Nova Subs who also have done a few other older series. An episode lasts for 25 1/2 minutes but the last two minutes are for the credits, think it was longish so fans could hear more of the theme song sung by A-Jari who were a true rock group and somewhat popular.

 After taking a needed break from Japanese dramas this show signals my return, thought I would start out with a simple show but upon further reflection much more will take place than I thought. After viewing so many hundreds of dramas from Japan and Korea over the last fifteen years I was so burnt out with them which is why the longish break was needed. Hope I can get back into the swing of things and have so many series to recap, had almost all of the dramas before the break began. Won't be in any kind of hurry to finish many such as this one which is over 37 years old so what's a few more weeks?!

 

 As mentioned in the beginning there's a total of fifteen episodes so will have five batches each containing three recaps which means there's two more after this one. Will leave this intro section here but will be making some changes to it along with many edits for the below character section, after two shows we haven't met everyone yet. That average rating of 7.12% doesn't seem too bad to me and what did they expect from a 7:30 pm show? Izumi also happens to be the first name of the main character and think it's just a coincidence, Izumi Igarashi was a somewhat popular actress and this was her first main role. At the time she had just turned nineteen in age, she was busy up until 2001 which was the year she got married and then retired, over 23 years later she never made a return to acting.

 That's Izumi on the left above, she was one tough chick(!) but also had a very soft side to her plus was quite attractive. On the right side is Keiko Yuasa, will give some bio info on all below and at first her main objective was to.... see Izumi killed!!!! That never happened and near the end of the second show a slight friendship began. Most of the action will take place at the Harumi Academy High School and the surrounding area, Harumi is a region of Tokyo. This series began in November 1987, in the show it's also that time frame and to be more exact it was November 5th which was the date Izumi returned to Harumi after three years.... where did she disappear to? There will be many students in each episode but only the top three listed below are key characters, many will be coming and going plus at 23 minutes a show you can only have so many main characters. Wrote most of this up after viewing the first two shows, know there will be a lot of editing to the info as we go along plus a few more characters may be added in.

**** Briefly here's the storyline in a few sentences, it will be explained better in the recaps. Three years ago(late 1984) the 'heroine' Izumi Gojo was a fifteen year old delinquent who got into many scraps but for the most part didn't commit any crimes. One evening she got into a fight with her rival Reiko and beat her badly but the girl was living when Izumi departed. Coming out of the shadows was a man who finished the job as he strangled Reiko to death, unknown to all watching the fight and then murder had been a fourteen year old girl named Saori Saegusa. She knew that Izumi hadn't killed Reiko and that the unknown man had done the cruel deed but shortly before Saori could go to the police another man stopped the young girl. This man was also unknown, like the killer this man was a henchman for the evil R Agency organization and threatened to kill Saori unless she told the police it was Izumi who had slain Reiko!

 Which Saori did so soon the police were after the young Izumi and cornered her on a pier. She held her own against a dozen officers but of course the numbers were too overwhelming for Izumi who jumped into the bay, the main detective Fujiwara presumed Izumi had drowned and it was case closed. **** Now it's three years later and Izumi has made her return to the Harumi area of Tokyo, where had she been for three years? When she jumped into the bay divers from R Agency rescued Izumi and for three years she was held captive by them. During that time Izumi was being trained to be the Ultimate Weapon for this evil organization, she had the code name of Prototype #1. In the first episode Izumi escaped from their compound, now her goal in life is to bring down R Agency who also secretly develop superweapons and to also find out why Saori fingered her for Reiko's murder. So that's most everything in a nutshell, more details and info are in the below character bios and of course in the recaps.

 Izumi Igarashi as Izumi Gojo.... The main 'heroine' who is eighteen in age, she had been missing for three years and was presumed to be deceased. There will be a couple of main focuses of this series, where and why did Izumi disappear for three years, why/how has she returned and also a main part of the story will be of Izumi seeking revenge for what had been done to her those three years! Did talk about that just above and Izumi does have the nickname of Ice Doll as she appears to be a cold person but really wasn't. Izumi grew up alone as her parents died when she was ten in age but never moved into an orphanage and had lived on her own. One positive about Izumi being held prisoner is that she became such a ruthless fighter at the R Agency 'prison/training facility', now she'll use those skills they taught her to bring them down! Seeing as how I wrote this up after viewing just two shows sure more will be added in. It's now two episodes later, not much has changed save for the fact that Izumi has enrolled at Harumi Academy but will she be staying there?

 Yumi Tsuchida as Keiko Yuasa.... President of Harumi Academy's student council, she too is a tough young woman though not in Izumi's class. For two shows Keiko couldn't strand the sight of Izumi and wanted to see her dead(!) but once the truth came out about Izumi being framed for Reiko's murder Keiko did begin to warm up to her, this will be another character where much more info will be added in. Yumi in real life is like the below character who had a very short show biz career as she retired at the age of twenty or two years after this show ended. In this series Keiko does have many cohorts who she bosses around but none seem to mind, the only two with any kind of screen time are named Mako and Shoko. Did learn in episode four the student council is called SSG but don't know yet what those initials stand for but there's little doubt there could be something sinister about the group.

 

 Masami Katsuragawa as Saori Saegusa.... As far as I can tell this is her only acting role and has no Ja.wiki page so who is she? Don't know but even though we didn't see Saori until halfway through the second episode she is an important character and was the reason the police were hot on Izumi's tail three years ago! That's because in November 1984 Saori had secretly witnessed the brutal fight between Izumi and her bitter rival Reiko so knew Izumi wasn't the killer. However the R Agency forced Saori to tell the police Izumi was the killer and in episode two Saori finally was able to tell the true story to all, including the police. Saori has recently transferred to Harumi Academy from Tsukiura high school which was an elite school and mainly it was to get closer to Izumi whom she has a crush on! In the fourth show Saori got a part time job at Ken's Burger in Saki poolhall/diner, think it's because Izumi often goes there!

Takeyuki Yue as Ken Kuwabara.... Runs the pool hall/diner Burger in Saki, Ken is just eighteen in age but doesn't appear to be a student. As of now don't know who owns the pool hall which happens to be the hangout for many Harumi Academy high school students, especially Keiko and her cohorts. To me Ken seems like a decent young man and someone you can rely on.

 Takeo Chii as Eiji Fujiwara.... Detective at the Harumi precinct in Tokyo, he mainly works in the Juvenile Division. Fujiwara was supposed top have a female partner named Moe Muto but haven't seen her through four shows. He was the main detective for Reiko's murder and had tried arresting Izumi but to no avail as she jumped into the Harumi bay. So Fujiwara naturally thought Izumi was dead and was shocked by her return, he was doubly shocked when he found out that Izumi was innocent after hearing Saori's tale. So over time he does become Izumi's ally and Fujiwara wondered if R Agency has a mole at his precinct for the file on Izumi had gone missing....

Takeo is an actor I know so well and he's one of my faves from the 1970's and 80's. Did recap his "Strada 5" drama last year but sadly. it was just so-so however not to be missed are the two 'Stray Cat Rock' films, all five in that series need to be viewed!!!! He was in many other films and dramas worth seeing, sadly he died in 2012 at the age of seventy.

 Hiroyuki Watanabe as Rinichiro Ishizu.... The most known of the cast, Hiroyuki was a very busy actor up until 2022 when he passed away and was just 66 in age. In this series he's the president of Ishizu Industries which appears to be a legit company, what isn't legit is the organization he's a top exec at. Which is a very underground team called R Agency which develops superweapons(!) and were responsible for Izumi's three year disappearance. They were the group who saved her from the police in November 1984 but did some cruel things to her such as trying to make Izumi into their.... Ultimate Weapon! Not much is known so far about Ishizu and R Agency but know they will be very important to the story so will edit this section plus may add in another character if needed. Did learn in the fourth episode R Agency has been recruiting teens from all over Japan and have been training them to also be ruthless but according to Ishizu none is as skilled as Izumi is and most shows will deal with trying to recapture her.

 

Previous recaps

 Do recommend reading a few of these and actually all as they are easy to breeze through plus it will help you follow the storylines so much better. In a way you could wait until I have finished recapping the entire series, go to the final post and start reading from the first link!

Episode one .... Episode two .... Episode three

 

For each recap will also try to have a different video, there aren't too many but there could be enough for most posts. The one for today has nothing to do with this show and is from March 1988 which features my new dream girl(!) Izumi Igarashi performing her new single "Honestly".  I think it's a decent tune though no classic, I actually prefer J-Pop tunes from the 1970's though mid 90's over the current ones from the last 10-15 years. The first screenshot below shows the air date and title of the episode, will have a new one for each recap.

   

 Was going to talk about Izumi Iragashi a bit more in this post but so much did happen so let me put those photos and info on ice for another post or two. When I began that longish break at the end of October from viewing Japanese/Korean dramas did keep watching movies but not as many as I used to and won't review any of them. What I mainly watched were some American shows and up until then had really only seen much of one series which was the "X-Files", it's first five seasons which I did enjoy. Can't say the same for other shows which I seldom watched and thought most were so horrid, especially sitcoms, and glad I was different in viewing so many Asian dramas. But began to take some gambles on a few older shows and did do a post about that a few months back but never had a part two, three, etc. for them which I had planned on doing. So that will hopefully happen soon enough and will say I have lucked out with some of my blind stabs as I have been buying the complete DVD sets, at times they are expensive but for what you get it turns out to be a fairly god deal. So soon will come back and give my thoughts on a few series which is getting close to ten of them. My top two are both long shows, sure most have heard of "Supernatural" and I'm currently in the middle of the seventh season. An odd choice of mine was a series I knew so little about which was "Gunsmoke" that ran from 1955-75 for 635 episodes! That is one large boxset which has 143 discs(!), it's my biggest DVD purchase ever and a few nights ago began on the fifth season. These days a TV show's season usually has 22 episodes, back in the 1950's and 60's a season would often have 39 shows such as "Gunsmoke" does which means it was almost twice as long.

 Quite a bit did happen in this show which may have been the best one to date. Am realizing why this was no award winning show but then again a third of the way through this series it's been so much fun and rather interesting too, the mysteries about the storylines keep piling up. But a few questions finally did get answered in this show and mainly about R Agency who is the evil organization that kidnapped Izumi and had trained her for three years to become their Ultimate Weapon. And such an unbeatable fighter she did become though her training wasn't quite complete when she escaped with many weapons from the R Agency compound in the first episode. A word/term that has been mentioned a few times in the first four shows was Biofeedback and I wasn't sure what it meant exactly. That was somewhat explained in this show and it's the program that Izumi and many other high school students from around Japan have been taking at the R Agency compound.

 So let's get to what took place in this fifth show, this is the second of two parts and hope you read the above post. But briefly Izumi had been growing more frustrated and angry about what the R Agency had done to her over the last three years, much she has forgotten but her memories are slowly returning. Izumi did recall where the R Agency HQ was located which is north of Tokyo, she went there on a vow to avenge what they had done to her. Tagging along was Izumi's new acquaintance Keiko who is the student council president at Harumi Academy and also the leader of a secret group called SSG. Keiko wanted info from Izumi about a boy named Shunji Kamiya who disappeared from school six months ago and Keiko felt sure Izumi knew about his fate though she denied it. The last recap ended off with Izumi and Keiko jumping off a waterfall to escape from a small team of R Agency soldiers and Izumi felt going in the water would prevent them being tracked by the group's radar.

 In the middle screenshot above is Saori and Ken who somehow were able to follow the pair to this unnamed peninsula. The two only had a minute of screen time as this story was much more important, another main character who we didn't see much of was the Harumi PD detective Fujiwara. The above is what took place in the first third of the show, Izumi and Keiko first holed up in an empty cabin after floating downstream. This is when I learned that the location wasn't an island but a peninsula as Izumi told Keiko she could walk back into the city but sure it was quite a hike. A few times Izumi did try to send Keiko away for this mission is one that neither probably wouldn't come out alive from though of course they would as it's only the fifth show! Keiko did leave for a brief spell but returned, by this time Izumi was staying in a tent but the R Agency found it and tore it to shreds with bullets but luckily Izumi wasn't inside. She did get into a brief scrap with some soldiers but once again they were easily defeated and could that have been on purpose? For in the second screenshot above the top exec. at R Agency Ishizu was telling his aide about Izumi and the Biofeedback program, she's the best fighter they've ever trained and Ishizu wanted to see what her top fighting level could be. **** Just discovered in this episode that Ishizu has been the pool master who has visited Ken's Burger in Saki pool hall/diner to keep tabs on Izumi, he does look like an everyday guy and is quite skilled at pool.

 More on that program shortly and Keiko did return to Izumi instead of going back to Tokyo for a very important reason. Which was because she still wanted answers about Shunji Kamiya who was so respected at Harumi Academy and had disappeared six months ago. Hearing his name once again opened Izumi's memories even more which wasn't supposed to happen and she then showed the R Agency registration tags for herself and.... Shunji! For when he was taken hostage six months ago Shunji was put into the cell next to Izumi's, he was there for about two months and even though they spoke at times Izumi never saw his face. Every student hostage has to go through some brutal experiments at the R Agency lab and very few have survived, the organization only wants the creme of the crop. On the day of Shunji's experiments he had given Izumi his tags and said to never forget him, that was the last time Izumi talked with Shunji so odds are close to 100% that he died during the lab testing. Izumi also had testing done to her and she was one of the few who survived which is the main reason the exec. Ishizu wants her back as Izumi truly is their Ultimate Weapon. 

 There is no filler in this series as an episode is just a little over 23 minutes in length, besides wanting her own revenge for what R Agency did to her for three years Izumi also wants to help out Keiko and avenge Shunji's death/murder. You can see that small metal saw in the second screenshot above, Izumi is a master at using it as she's defeated all of the R Agency soldiers with the weapon but still can't understand why their soldiers aren't better? Then again the exec Ishizu above has been ordering his troops to only fight at half power, in the third screenshot he's finally given the order to go all out to see what level Izumi's powers are now at!!!! This is when the many of the details were revealed to us about the Biofeedback program, Izumi also explained much of it to Keiko. The R Agency Biofeedback program isn't one that is extremely advanced such as the victim(?) having organs switched or many electronics inserted into their body. As Izumi explained it think of an average person whose mental capacity and physical strength equals 100%. What the Biofeedback program does it to increase that level by 10-20 times but very few human bodies can withstand or survive operating at such a high level, Izumi is a rarity.

 An operation plus experiments are done by R Agency surgeons, very few come out alive such as Shunji didn't. And the test subjects that do make it through the surgery done to their BRAIN don't survive long as human bodies aren't equipped to take such punishment. However Izumi is the one who has survived the longest and isn't showing any signs of after effects. Ishizu wants to know why as it would help in future operations and he also wants to see what level the Biofeedback level of Izumi can reach. There is more about the procedure but this is no medical class. Above you can see the R Agency compound and how could a facility that large be undetected when it's so close to Tokyo? Izumi may be an Ultimate Weapon but if the R Agency goes all out then there is no way she could survive fighting against over a hundred soldiers and she knew that. But besides seeking revenge Izumi also wanted to free any new captives brought to the HQ but when she and Keiko went to the compound it was empty and not a soul was around? Obviously this was a trap and shortly after Izumi had shown Keiko the cell she escaped from. But at that instant a small group of R Agency soldiers cornered the duo and the leader Yoshioka took Keiko as a hostage. He briefly explained to Izumi his mission was to see what level she could reach with her Biofeedback, if she refuses then say sayonara to Keiko! Though being held at gunpoint Keiko was able to spell a word out in English, that is the bottom screenshot above and as you can see the word was Survival.

 Sometimes you will see text at the top of a screenshot. Those words are lyrics of a song being heard at the time, it's so easy to tell that a song is from the 80's and while often cheesy they work well in dramas. Keiko wrote the word Survival for Izumi had it written on her backpack and in a way it was her motto as she was the only survivor of the R Agency experiments and training. There was no way Izumi would have allowed anything to happen to her newish friend Keiko and was able to take out the slightly inept R Agency soldiers, why don't they have an elite fighting force? Izumi was also able to disarm Yoshioka who had that gun pinned against Keiko's head, when there's a fighting scene the film slows down to about half speed which does make it easier to view. Have also noticed that Izumi does most of her own stunts so is more than just a stunning woman!!!! During those scraps Izumi didn't use her full power so as the R Agency computer says above her top Biofeedback measure could not be determined and for now it appears Ishizu will back off a bit and observe how well Izumi interacts with others.

 So mission accomplished for Izumi at the R Agency compound though I would think it'll be business as usual for them shortly as far as kidnapping and training students goes. Even Izumi hasn't found out what the intentions of the Biofeedback program are, of course to create a group of unbeatable soldiers but who were they going to attack, the Japanese government seems like the obvious target. So that ends this recap, as you can see above Izumi and Keiko were returning to the Harumi area of Tokyo via boat and Keiko was trying to urge her new friend from not dropping out of school. Izumi was thinking the above comment when the show ended, she did win this battle against R Agency but still hasn't completed her mission to take back her past. The next post has the recap for the sixth show and haven't viewed it yet. It could be tough to top this episode which to me was the best to date.