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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... Miku Tanaka... 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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Friday, April 25, 2025

"Sukeban Deka" season one drama, recap eight of 24 episodes

 


Air Dates: April 11 to October 31, 1985 Thursdays at 7:30 pm on Fuji-TV
Based upon the manga by Shinji Wada, there were some differences between the manga and this series such as two new characters but for the most part what took place in the manga was followed... Subs by Mashhamid though a few others have also subbed this series

Ratings: Average for all 24 episodes was 13.04%, the high was 17.0% while 9.6% was the lowest and that happened twice. This episode's rating was 13.1% which was a huge increase from the previous episode and this aired on June 13, 1985


 For my first two 'comeback dramas' after taking a four month break picked a pair of ancient ones, good timing for this series as it aired exactly forty years ago! No solid reasons for picking these but thought the pair, the other was "Shoujou Commando Izumi", would be easier to recap as they're both 25 minute shows and though I do enjoy 45+ minute episodes they can take a while to write up. Sure many of you readers may have a basic knowledge of these DEKA series which were very popular back in the 1980's as there two more seasons after this plus some movies. But there were also many films in this genre that were released from about 1970-74 though they weren't nearly as innocent as this show or movies but do recommend those 1970's films which are among my favorites.


 May do a bit of editing to these first few paragraphs though then again may delete them and throw in some other thoughts or info, we'll see how things work out. Did say I was hoping for a pair of easier dramas for my return to recapping but neither one will be as easy as expected. This one especially and have a strong feeling the Bio section will be needing a lot of editing as we go along plus I bet there are going to be many characters who come and go. Will admit I was really confused about many things after viewing the first show which was only so-so until the end and wondered did I make the right decision as this is a long series with 24 episodes. However the second show was so much better and didn't begin writing this up until viewing that one, that does happen often where the first show is working out the kinks. For the previous series did five batches of three recaps as it was a fifteen episode show which worked out well. So was going to continue that with this series and have eight batches of three recaps but now I'm not sure what to do, am leaning on going back to having two at a time and will decide that at the end of the next recap which is the post below this one.


 The heroine in this series was Yuki Saito who was eighteen when the show began in April 1985, she turned nineteen while it was airing. Wouldn't call Yuki a superstar but she's an actress most drama fans should know of as she's been so busy over the last forty years appearing in too many dramas, movies and stage plays to count! Yuki is also a singer who has about ten albums and 25 singles along with doing many other theme songs to dramas, she does the ending song to this show. Yuki is now 58 in age and she was an attractive woman back in her twenties and thirties, not saying she looks bad now but as mentioned is getting up there in age. Enough of an intro as there's always another mini section after the main character bios which are below and will be editing them quite often.

 Most of the action will be taking place at the Takanoha Academy high school but in episode one the setting was St. Annes school which did slightly confuse me. Episode two is when Saki enrolls at Takanoha Academy and we didn't meet most major characters until then or at least the main students. Most of these photos at the top are of Saki holding a Yo-Yo, it's no ordinary one! When it flips open it shows the Police Crest as Saki is an undercover detective and what power it has. The Yo-Yo can smash through steel and if a person gets hit with it they're down for the count, the steel string is very long and can also double as a pair of handcuffs.


 Yuki Saito as Saki Asamiya.... There is so much to say about Saki and not enough space! Saki's mother Natsu is currently on death row for killing her husband Toshiya, that happened when Saki was six in age which was eleven years ago. For the next nine years don't know yet what became of Saki but by the age of twelve she was a delinquent. She did enter high school but was expelled from Takanoha Academy at the age of fifteen and sent to Kanto Kita Juvenile Center but there was something about Saki or perhaps her circumstances which attracted the attention of the two men below this bio, Jin and Shirei. They're the top two executives of the very secret government department Dark Agency, they've recruited Saki to become an undercover detective as being a teen will allow to work much more efficiently at high schools. Of course Saki refused at first but the offer included an apartment, clothes and such plus a huge kicker. Which is that if Saki successfully completed a mission her mother Natsu's death penalty would be voided though would have to finish a prison sentence. To that offer Saki agreed but the Dark Agency did renege on their end of the deal and came up with an excuse for Saki to do another mission which she reluctantly said yes to so think that scenario of Dark Agency using Saki will continue on. Know more changes will be done to Saki's bio but that covers what we learned in the first two episodes. Saki's mother Natsu is in the bottom screenshot, don't think we'll be seeing her too often.



 

Koji Naka as Kyoichiro Jin.... The top agent for Dark Agency and is Saki's 'handler'. Jin was a cool looking man and was very respected by his superior Shirei. Jin is very skilled at martial arts though we haven't seen him in a physical fight through eight episodes and drives a yellow Porsche 911.



 Hiroyuki Nagato as Kurayami Shirei.... Leader of Dark Agency and the person who recruited  Saki to be an undercover detective at high schools. To me it appears Shirei is the one toying with Saki and saying he'll void her mother's death sentence to keep her doing missions, think Jin does have a soft spot for Saki and doesn't like seeing her used. Shirei had been a judge at one time and was one of the six on the panel for Natsu's murder trial! Perhaps that's why he chose Saki to be a secret detective as he had been keeping tabs on her for about a decade and felt she was finally ready for action! Don't know if it will continue on for the whole series but when Shirei appears in screen we never see him clearly, he is an older man and maybe keeping his face obscured adds to the mystery.


 The remaining characters are all from Takanoha Academy which is a high school, in Tokyo? No characters appeared in the first episode so these bios will definitely need to be edited for future posts, the top characters are the students. Don't think any teachers will be key to the stories but will add one in plus the principal. Saki had attended this school when she was fifteen in age but had been expelled in her first year and sent to a detention center, she's now returned to the fury of many who remember her!

Chiaki Watanabe as Miyako Yumekoji.... She too is a delinquent girl but unlike Saki was never sent away to a detention center and is very intelligent though her ego is a bit too large. When Saki had been expelled Miyako took 'control' of the school or in other words has become the leader of the school's undesirables. Who are females and you never see girls have male underlings in these shows or films, of course those henchmen(women?) are Yes People who bully others. None of that group of Miyako's followers will have large roles but we will be seeing them often enough, the names of the main four girls are Tomiko, Hanako, Masayo and Tamami. That's them in the first screenshot below, Miyako is on the left and in the center of the second screenshot. Miyako is a very attractive teen and for now hates Saki with such a passion so a theme for the first half of the series will be of her trying to take Saki down. Of course Miyako doesn't know Saki is an undercover detective and had felt she returned to Takanoha Academy to take control of the female gangs which was not the case.



 Yasuyoshi Masuda as Sanpei Nowaki.... That's an odd name and don't recall ever seeing either of those before. Senpai wasn't at Takanoha Academy when Saki was enrolled there two years ago, when he first saw Saki in present times it was love at first sight for Senpai!!!! Who had no idea of Saki's past but was so enamored with her ultra coolness plus she was attractive. Unsure(doubt) if Saki will ever return Senpai's feelings of love but think he will become a trusted ally. By the third episode Sanpei has become friends with Saki, not best friends yet but he is her only one.


  
 Genji Kawai as Miyagawa.... Principal of Takanoha Academy and he probably won't be an important character but should be in most episodes, he's the older man sitting at the desk.


 Hiraizumi Sei as Numa Juzo.... PE teacher at the academy and also the home room teacher of Saki's. Juzo was strongly opposed to Saki being able to reenroll at the school but like all didn't know she was an undercover detective. He also works in  the guidance department and can be extremely strict though usually is fair to all except not at first towards Saki.



Previous recaps

 There will be some new storylines and characters added into the series as we go along so off course will add in any major characters and keep editing to the existing characters also.  Have said om other dramas how in a way it could be easier to wait until the entire series has been finished or pick a certain show to wait until, say the midway point. Then you could go into one post and click on the links for each episode as doing it that way makes it so much easier to read plus this is the only was you can read them in order quickly as searching could take a while.




 You do see those characters at the end of most of these kinds of dramas, ones where the story is ongoing. Those Hiragana characters spell out Tsudzuku which means To be continued, of course it means the story and that car is Jin's yellow Porsche 911. For each recap will have a video for this series and hopefully there can be a new one for each post and there aren't as many as I thought. So it is getting tougher so may have to leave a video up for two recaps or perhaps have some of Yuki's J-Pop songs. Today's video is another one that features short scenes from the show but what attracted me to this video was the song. It is such a upbeat rockin' tune which I had never heard, it's sung by Yuki Igarashi who isn't the sister of Izumi!!!! Below the video will be a screenshot of what the episode's title was, those you saw in the previous drama I reviewed and was having titles much more common in the 80's?
   
 

 



 Another solid episode though didn't think it was up to the level of the previous seven. It did open with a swimsuit competition and don't those women above look just too thin???? There's nothing wrong with being thin but the ones in this show definitely needed to visit an all you can eat buffet more often and in the past there have been two actresses I stopped doing posts for because they had become way too thin and to me that was kind of a turn off. My cache of dramas to view has really increased the last two months, have so many need flash drives to store them on. Many are Korean dramas which over the last decade have been better than the shows from Japan. The main reason for not recapping more of them is because they're so long, usually a series up until two years ago would consist of 16-20 one hour episodes.

 But these days most series only have 12-14 episodes though many are now 65+ minutes in length. So the plan is to start recapping some of the dramas that have recently finished so if I'm away for a day or two in the future odds are high I've ben working on those posts and am looking forward to those. What I'm really looking forward to is the third season of "Taxi Driver" which is supposed to air in the Autumn. The star of that ultra terrific, action packed series is Lee Je-Hoon and just got his latest drama "The Art of Negotiation" and perhaps that will be the next show to recap. Though would also like to tackle "The Judge From Hell" series from last Autumn and don't think I will ever complete my entire current cache of shows. Still have a few weeks to decide on what is up next and let's finally get to this recap which did begin off with the swimsuit competition, above in red is a regular cast member Miyako Yumekoji who we hadn't seen much of the last two shows nor most of the other cast from Takanoha Academy.










 So did say once again outside of Saki and Jin we didn't see any of the regular cast. Save for the girl in the top screenshot who is Miyako Yumekoji and also with the small mirror in the bottom one. She did have about four minutes of screentime which may have been the most she's had to date, thought she would be an important piece of the main story but that wasn't to be. Miyako has always considered herself to be the Queen of the Takanoha Academy high school, as a matter of fact she also considers herself to be the most attractive female in Japan though to me she's not even close. This show opened up with a swimsuit pageant which was put on by the City Gals organization which has been in business for two years and is run by a young man of about 22 in age named Shinichiro Yamaguchi. He's also a third year student at Teito University and is an executive on the school's Idol Research Club. What a name that is(!) and the Idol part is what you may be thinking as Yamaguchi and his fellow club members go out scouting for attractive high school girls which is probably why Miyako was invited to partake in the pageant. The main thing the club does is to act as 'managers' for these scouted girls and line them up with jobs such as modeling and to appear in commercials. Yamaguchi comes from a wealthy family so doesn't need the money though this is a lucrative business, he has taken advantage of a few of these gullible youngsters so he's not exactly an upstanding man though he isn't a creep either or perhaps it's better to say not as bad as others.

 In that second screenshot you can see Miyako, also two others in the swimsuit pageant and aren't they ultra thin? Which may have been a positive as in a shocker winning this contest was Miyako though the judges were yawning a bit at her and all of the other entrants figures/personality. Just before the ultra swelled-head Miyako was crowned the swimsuit Queen the lights went out in the auditorium for about twenty seconds, then they flipped right back on. Shortly after Miyako was bestowed her award all eyes turned to the judges table which seated four, three men and a woman. You can see that slumped over woman above, her name was Etsuko Kawabe who had won the contest last year and to the shock of all..... was DEAD! How in the world could that have happened and foul play was immediately suspected, of course something had to happen when the lights went out for twenty seconds. That something was Etsuko's drink being laced with poison(cyanide), that was according to her autopsy and naturally Yamaguchi wanted to keep things hush-hush which proved to be impossible as he had to attend a press conference. Yamaguchi's City Gals organization had been planning on making their first film and Etsuko was to be the star and more on that coming up. At this point we were about seven minutes in and finally Saki made her first appearance which was late for her. Her Dark Agency handler Jin had arrived at her apartment with a VHS tape from the Dark Agency leader Shirei, naturally her mission will be to uncover the truth behind Etsuko's murder. The Dark Agency can quickly create identities for Saki and also a new background, they did that for this new assignment and she'll be going undercover at the City Gals offices where she's just enrolled in their newest modeling program!!!!









 
 We did see more of Miyako than any other episode but by the ten minute mark she was gone! First off the City Gals founder/manager Yamaguchi told Miyako her less than desirable cohorts were not welcome at their offices and in a way this was a legit business. Miyako was fine with that but not of her not receiving more attention, she thinks she's a stunning woman though to me she isn't and didn't stand out when among the other models at City Gals. So when Miyako wasn't getting the attention she thought was deserved she stormed away not to be seen again in this episode which was fine by me! The attention of Yamaguchi's had been towards two females, one was the newbie Saki who really isn't a beauty though there is that something about her which does attract men.... and women! There's no screenshots of the other female Yamaguchi was paying attention to above but there will be plenty below, her name is Mika Nakahara who has been a member/student at City Gals for a few months. She's been zooming up on their ladder and her popularity has been rapidly increasing, so much that Yamaguchi is thinking about having Mika take the place of Etsuko in that upcoming movie. Mika is okay looking though not ultra special but then again the models for City Girls and Yamaguchi's college Idol Research Club are girls 17-20 in age. When I was that age they would have been quite attractive to me but these days think gals 25+ in age are much more attractive .

 So while Saki did get off on the right foot at City Gals the main reason for her being there was to solve the case of Etsuko's murder. First off was checking out the stage where the murder took place and Saki did try an experiment. At the swimsuit pageant the lights at gone off for 15-20 seconds, during that brief period poison had been dumped into Etsuko's drink. When Saki turned off the lights she realized there was no way a person could have turned them off, rushed to where Etsuko was sitting, dumped in the poison and then dash back to turn the lights back on in less than twenty seconds. So of course to Saki two people were in on the crime but who, she correctly deduced the very suspicious Yamaguchi but what female could have been his partner and would a wanna-be model commit murder just to get more modeling opportunities? Yamaguchi had caught Saki snooping around with the lights but she gave a lame excuse and dashed off. But a few seconds after someone threw a knife at Saki but it wasn't to hit her but to leave her a warning and that screenshot is right above. The threat was not to get close to Yamaguchi so it wasn't him that threw it, odds were high it was one of the City Gals models and seeing as how Mika was the only one we knew up to now odds point to her being the thrower. Shortly after Saki returned to her apartment and it made me wonder why the staff at Takanoha Academy has been allowing Saki to take such extended holidays? Waiting at Saki's place was her Dark Agency handler Jin with some unexpected news.... the murdered Etsuko had been pregnant!!!! Plus Jin had discovered that Etsuko too had received a threatening letter like the one Saki just received, Jin may not get a huge amount of screentime but the clues and info he comes up with for Saki is so invaluable.










 Final segment, what took place is in the above batch of screenshots and the first six below. Usually can zip through recaps but every now and again there is a post that takes me so long, this is one of those as I've taken two long breaks already. Yamaguchi was a hard man to figure out, at times he's taken advantage of some younger women and does operate the City Girls place but seemed a bit refined, smart and at times could be a decent man. He quickly got close to Saki and never pressured her into doing anything she didn't want to do, the pair went on a day outing which began with them flying in Yamaguchi's Cessna and ended up at a restaurant he owned. But there he did show some of his darker side as Yamaguchi did fire his long time manager for something very minor and his anger did make him a bit more suspicious in the eyes of Saki. All of this is right above and Saki had enough of Yamaguchi's 'elite ways' and stormed out of the restaurant, her next encounter with him will also prove to the final time Saki sees him. We finally got to see more of Mika Nakahara, she's in a few screenshots above but considering the important role she played in the story wasn't on the screen for too long. You will see Mika with some wrapping on her right hand, that was courtesy of attacking Saki the night before! That incident was over within ten seconds so couldn't take any screenshots but we viewers know you don't mess around with the Dark Agency undercover detective Saki who quickly thwarted Mika's attack while injuring that right hand and the girl had been wearing a mask at the time of the attack. It's nice having shows that are 23 1/2 minutes in length so you can zip right through them though the negative is that sometimes it would help if a show was a bit longer as endings are on occasion rushed and we're already down to the final scene.

 Which took place the next day at Yamaguchi's City Gals office, meeting him there was Mika and the pair have had a secret affair going on. With Etsuko killed Mika desperately wanted the starring role in Yamaguchi's film and during this get together he did agree with that request but did say Mika needed more training as they had a run through of the script. Which would end with the heroine dying and before the pair reached the end of the script Yamaguchi said for them to take a break and began to mix Mika a drink. A very strong one as with his back turned Yamaguchi slipped in some cyanide and the final scene of the movie with the star dying would also happen in real life!!!! Well, it would have but just as Mika picked up her poisoned drink a Yo-Yo smashed it, not just any ordinary one but Saki's very powerful one! She let Mika know that her first sip would also have been her last and that Yamaguchi had been using her all along. Those facts loosened up Mika's tongue as she confessed to turning out the lights at the swimsuit competition to allow Yamaguchi to slip the cyanide into Etsuko's drink. There was less than two minutes to go by now, of course Yamaguchi wouldn't go down without a fight as he began to swing a sword at Saki! Even swords are no match for that unbeatable Yo-Yo as Saki wrapped it around the sword and yanked it away, she did give Yamaguchi a few fierce jabs to his head which made the killer whimper and meekly surrender. The best part of a show is at the finale when Saki gives the culprit(s) a severe berating, that happened in this show and as you can see Saki gave the police a gift as she tied Yamaguchi to the door of his building which looked cooler than it does in the screenshot. That wraps up this recap and think I was a day late with today's pair. Was doing two every four days but may wait a week before the next two recaps, have written up 23 of these in five weeks and though they're not too long still need mini breaks now and again so I don't get tired of them. Plus I don't want to get tired of this series, the story in this episode was okay but perhaps the weakest since the first show.





















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