Air Dates: September 27, 2010 to April 2, 2011 on NHK Monday through Saturday at 8:15 am
There was a total of 151 episodes and rating was 17.2%
Main Cast for the first 4 weeks:
Miori Takimoto as Akari Murakami, heroine of the drama
Junko Fuji as Hatsune Tanaka, Akari's grandmother
Kenichi Endo as Jyou Murakami, Akari's father and owner of a small metal shop
Narumi Yasuda as Machiko Murakami, Akari's mother
Kaname Endo as Kinya Murakami, Akari's older brother
Naoyuki Morita as Teppei Murakami, Akari's younger brother
Aki Asakura as Kana Shinomiya, Akari's best friend
Shingo Yanagisawa as Kyuta Shinomiya
Toshinori Omi as Ryuen Yokuyama
Rie Tomosaka as Fuyumi Nishio
Haruka Kinami as Chiharu Tanaka, Akari's deceased mother
Update: Looks like this drama will never get finished now that D-addicts is now kind of shut down so there have been no new subs since last Summer plus there's no where to get the raw episodes.
Need to get started on recapping this drama as I finished the first 4 weeks a few months ago and had been waiting for more of the weeks to get subbed. Weeks 5 and 6 are now done but not going to be looking at them yet, right now in this post and the others right after this one will be just looking at the first 4 weeks. Haven't thought yet how I'm going to be doing the posts, the ideas are coming to me as I'm writing this as there are an awful lot of episodes to talk about, at six a week will be looking at 24 of them now. Have no clue what happens in this drama after these 4 weeks nor how it ends so in a way that's a good thing as it may help keep the recaps a bit shorter, episodes are only 15 minutes each so doing 4 weeks at a time is like doing a review of 8 regular drama episodes which are usually around 45 minutes if that makes sense, now on to looking at the first week. If some of the recaps seem short it's because quite often not a lot happens in some of the episodes, at 15 minutes each that's an easy thing to happen.
Miori plays the lead role of Akari, a 17 year old high school senior who lives in Onomochi. Akari is a very talented trumpet player who many think will pursue it in college and make a career out of it. Akari though is quite undecided what she wants to do in the future and has decided to quit the trumpet after the school band's final concert. One day going back home from school she notices an older woman standing at the end of a pier who suddenly tosses a trumpet into the water. Upon seeing that Akari dives in the water after it and manages to save it before it sinks to the bottom, now she needed to find out why the old woman tossed it into the water.
Akari invites the old lady to her house, I'll call the old lady for now either 'beccha' which is the nickname that Akari gave her right after they first met or Tanaka. Akari's household consists of her father, mother, an older and younger brother, the father owns a small metal shop where he makes parts for the shipbuilding industry which is very big in Onomichi. Akari had no idea who the old lady was, her real name was Hatsune Tanaka but quickly Akari's parents realized who she was. Unknown by Akari until then was the fact that she was adopted, also the beccha hadn't realized that Akari was her granddaughter. Seems that 18 years prior Tanaka's daughter had run away from home and unknown to her she was pregnant. Shortly after giving birth to Akari the daughter who was named Chiharu passed away, she was good friends with the Murakami family who adopted her and kept it a secret from her all those years.
Her parents hadn't planned on keeping it a secret but just didn't know how to tell her what had happened, even Akari's younger brother didn't know about the adoption. Akari for a while was quite down in the dumps and really didn't know how to handle it but she came around back to normal quite quickly and realized that though they didn't give birth to her her parents were her real ones, the Murakamis were a very tight knit family.
Shortly after learning the real news of her past Akari turned 18 and soon after that graduated from high school. Much to the dismay of her family she has decided not to attend college and instead enter the workforce. However in Onomichi there weren't a lot of job prospects for her so she has decided to move to Osaka to get a job, that's also where her grandmother Tanaka lives. Akari travels to Osaka for some job interviews and eventually finds a solid job there working in an office. Akari then returns back home to tell the family of her great news but it wasn't great news for her father, though a bit of a tough character he had a very soft side and didn't want Akari to leave home, it took much persuading from his wife to eventually allow Akari to move to Onomich to start her new life. Onomichi is located in Hiroshima prefecture which is somewhat close to Osaka but way to far to commute on a daily basis.
At the ending of week one Akari takes a one day trip to Osaka to visit her grandmother Tanaka to return the trombone. Tanaka was not too happy to see her and quickly sent her away, one event that happened was that Akari was drafted for a one time deal to play the trumpet with a small band in Osaka, we didn't know it at the time but she met some people then who will be playing a major role in her life in the upcoming weeks. We still don't know the exact reason(s) why Tanaka dislikes her granddaughter so much but we'll learn more about that in the upcoming weeks, am trying not to incorporate any of the following weeks into the recaps.
** Hope that all made sense and wasn't disjointed, the other recaps I wrote up in one sitting but did this one on three separate occasions, may have lost my train of thought.
For the most part think that concludes week one of this drama, also think I covered all the key points of what happened, haven't given away any spoilers on what's going to happen in the next few weeks. Had no plans how I was going to be posting this drama until I started writing this up, will do a recap of the first 4 weeks now and when weeks 5-8 have been subbed will be back to look at those. So after this post are the next 3 weeks of this drama, will keep the format the same as this post with a recap and another post of screenshots from that week. Have taken a huge amount of screenshots so need another post for them which is the next one, Miori looks so terrific in this drama which is now 4 years old but if you compare her current pics to these you can see how she's blossomed into an ever more terrific looking woman, perfect may be a more apt description.
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