Air Dates: April 18th to May 16, 2015 on Fuji-TV at 11:40 Saturday nights
Main Cast:
Mayu Matsuoka as Ryoko Nishizawa
Ayami Nakajo as Azusa Ogiwara
Seika Taketomi as Saya Yamamoto
Kurumi Shimizu as Miyuri Eto
Aoi Morikawa as Chisato Okumura
Ryo Narita as Haruto Muraoka
Jin Shirasu as Yuki Hirose
Reika Kirishima as Mizuki Ogiwara
As you can see this drama actually aired last Spring, the first episode was subbed but that had been the only one done. Now someone has finished this series off and looking for a drama that was a bit different picked this one and there were a few reasons for choosing this one. One is that it starred Mayu, she really is one of the better young actresses and I really should be doing more posts for her, as a matter of fact may have found the female to complete that list of my fave females from #11-20.
Another reason is that the series was only five episodes and to top it off each episode was only 19+ minutes as I really like short dramas like this. One minus to that though as it's hard to get into too much detail or character backgrounds because of the length but it also has no time for filler then. So these recaps will naturally be a bit on the short side seeing as how they're only 19 minutes long, may not bore you too much then which is a big plus.
If you've seen the "Piece" drama from 2012 then you may like this show as it's kind of similar to it though not nearly as good, "Piece" is one the better dramas from the last five years. Mayu plays Ryoko who is a senior at high school whose one time best friend Azusa has disappeared. Azusa was one of the smartest students at school but yet didn't apply to move up to the advanced class which was a mystery to everyone.
You're going to see that 'april_15' on many screenshots as it's Ryoko keeping a diary on her cellphone. The story opens up on April 20th, each episode is for that day which means the next one will be for the 21st and like that up until April 24th. The students who were close to Azusa are being interviewed by some of the school's admin staff along with Azusa's mother as they're trying to find out what happened to her. No one really knows what could have happened, a kidnapping or was she murdered or could she have possibly just run off?
The date of her disappearing was April 6th, a few students had seen her on the school roof that day, shortly after that is when she disappeared. Though Azusa was a pretty and popular student seems even her best friends didn't know her that well as they had put their heads together trying to solve the mystery. Even though she was smart a rumor was floating around that she had been caught stealing the answers for the Winter session finals and the school had hushed it up.
Azusa also had been dating Haruto who was quite good at badminton finishing third at the prefecture's tournament. Don't know what prefecture it was as they never did say where this show was set though it wasn't in a large city. Haruto was a popular guy with the ladies as Miyuri had asked him out the previous December and they went out very briefly. Miyuri had been confronted by Azusa for stealing her man but actually she didn't seem too upset about it, she mentioned she'll get her due one of these days though if not by her then by someone else.
Ryoko was filming those interrogations done by the staff, you'll see many screenshots of them like the ones right above. She was doing that as she didn't quite trust the staff and had wanted to make sure no lying or hush hushing would occur. It does seem like a brief recap but remember an episode is only 19 minutes long so for the most part that's all that happened in this first show. Mainly we learn a bit about what the others felt about Azusa and a bit about each of their backgrounds with her. At a total of 95 minutes for the whole drama it's almost like it was a movie that was chopped into 19 minute segments.
Didn't leave much out or at least any major points from this episode but if there were then the screenshots should help you follow the story also. Though these are short recaps am trying to write all five of them up in one sitting so none of them are going to come close to being a tome. Mainly watched it because of Mayu who is superb throughout the series but all of the others in the main cast also do a solid job, so far so good and you can check out the second episode in the next post.
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