Air Dates: October 21 to December 16, 2012 on NHK, Sundays at 10:00 pm
Main Cast:
Yuikia Motokariya as Rakuko Kaise
Kamejiro Ichikawa as Hiroaki Shoji
Kohei Otomo as Kotaro Sugawara
Megumi as Aki Kubota
Shunji Igarashi as Kouki Akaboshi
Waka Inoue as Shiori Nkado
Yukijiro Hotaru as The Judge
As you can see this drama aired two years ago but is just being subbed, there's a total of 9 episodes and so far seven of them have been subbed. Had wanted to watch it when it first aired as it looked interesting plus I really like Yuika and it's hard to find dramas that she's in, this was easy to find but at the time there were no subs so skipped it. Like when these kind of dramas get subbed, the lesser hits or cult series always seem to be a better watch but usually they don't get subbed, glad this one did. Just viewed the first two episodes and will be doing recaps two shows at time so a little below this post is one for the second episode. So far it's been okay, not a must watch yet but think it'll be a series which gets better as it goes along. There's also a season two which started in August and will be wrapping up it's run sometime this month.
Yuika plays Rakuko which is a very rare name, who is an aspiring lawyer who has just graduated from law school, her age hasn't been mentioned but she's probably around 26 or so. Rakuko had a very difficult upbringing, her mother had left the family leaving her father to raise her and her brother. Rakuko had enough of the poor lifestyle and upon graduating from high school decided to become a lawyer but that takes a lot of years at college and money. Money was one thing Raukuko didn't have and to pay for her way through law school she had taken a job at a cabaret club where she was rather successful.
For the most part that's Rakuko's background, when the drama starts she has quit the cabaret club and is looking for a position in a law firm. However in this day and age it's harder to get jobs in the law field due to some changes in the laws, the main reason Rakuko had decided to become a lawyer was because of the huge salary plus when she started school it had been easier to get a high paying position in the law field. Times changed though and Rakuko was really struggling, living in a boarding house and unable to find a job even with her law degree.
One day she lucked out as one of her regular customers at the cabaret club also owned a small law office and she talked him into giving her a position at the firm. It was a very small firm and Rakuko has started out working for a very low wage but she's determined to move up quickly in the ranks and figures once she gets her foot in the door and shows everyone in the law field how talented she is it's just a matte rof time before she obtains a high paying position.
Starting to run a little longer than expected so I'll just explain briefly what happened in the first episode. The new law firm which Rakuko is working at is very small and takes whatever kind of cases they can get, in this respect it kind of reminded me of the "Isharyo Bengoshi" drama which aired this Summer, a group of talented lawyers who have a hard time getting cases or ones that pay well. Against the wishes of her new coworkers the boss Sugawara has given Rakuko the firm's latest case which is as a court appointed attorney for an assault case. This is the clients third charge which usually means automatic prison time but Rakuko has said that she'll be able to get the man off with no jail time and just probation.
Though this is her client's third assault charge he doesn't appear to be a bad guy and there was a good reason he got into a fight and beat someone up. Seems as when the suspect was eating a dinner at a ramen shop an unruly customer kept touching a waitress inappropriately and to protect her he ended up assaulting the other guy. Rakuko wanted to call in the waitress as a witness but she couldn't talk her into taking the witness stand, now her only other line of defense was to have her client's wife come as a character witness.
It seemed having the wife as a character witness was going to work as the judge was thinking about suspending the sentence and just putting the suspect on probation. However right at the end of testimony the wife stated though her husband was a good man she didn't want him back and even if he wasn't sent to prison she was going to file for divorce. Needless to say the whole case blew up in Rakuko's face and her client was sent to jail but here was another reason for the wife's sudden change of heart. Only Rakuko picked up on it but the wife had suddenly become sick after her testimony and that was because the wife was pregnant, she would rather bring up the child alone instead of having a criminal help her raise the child.
Though she failed at winning the case and preventing her client from going to jail she did impress her boss Sugawara who was in court to observe the case. But was Rakuko's skill in the courtroom enough for him to hire her on as a full time lawyer, that we don't at the conclusion of this episode but the answer to that may be coming up in the next show.
An okay start to this series, really went in blind about what it was about which sometimes helps. Figured it must have been an okay drama s the ratings were just so-so yet it's come back for a second season. Did skim through one review on this show, the review didn't go into many details about this series but did say it gets better as it goes along. Second episode is a tad better than this one and think shows like this take a while to develop, do plan on watching the whole series and will be reviewing all the episodes. Next post is chuck full of Yuika screenshots from this episode, she really is an underrated fine looking woman, you should check out her two photobooks which are posted here. Also after the next post is a recap of the second episode.
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