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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... Kyoko Saito... 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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Sunday, October 9, 2016

Juice=Juice: "Budokan" drama episode six recap and "Black Butterfly" video


 Air Dates: February 6 to March 26, 2016 for eight episodes on Fuji-TV 
 Air Time: Saturdays at 11:40 pm, average rating was 2.73%



 In this drama Next You is a struggling Idol group which has had so-so success to date. They have a single which I presume is "Next Is You" and that song hit #15 on the charts though their managers are a bit disappointed with that showing. The group's goal is to one day headline a show at Budokan, they have a long way to go before that goal can be attained. There are five members in the group, in this drama none of them use their real names and here are the starlets, their second screenshot gives a little info about the character. The "Next Is You" song was their single current single when the show aired and you hear it twice an episode.

 Will use that above paragraph for all of the posts along with these pics for all of the main characters, for this second episode we didn't meet any new ones.

Akari Uemura as Aoi Dogakiuchi



 Yuka Miyazaki as Rurika Tsurui



Sayuki Takagi as Mayu Adachi



Tomoko Kanazawa as Hana Sakamoto



 Karin Miyamoto as Aiko Hidaka



 These are the other main characters who have appeared in both episodes.

Seiji Rokkaku as 'Professor' Hakase, a fan of the group who often posts about them on the internet and attends all of their shows, also this show's narrator.

Keisuke Koide as Jun Natsume, the group's producer and songwriter.

Houka Kinoshita as Yoichi Nomura
Yuta Takahata as Haruki Maeda.... both of them are the group's managers though Nomura is the senior and seems to know everything about the Idol industry.

Ryo Yoshizawa as Daichi Mizushima, Aiko's best friend who lives upstairs from her.








 It's been only six episodes but the time span on the show has really zoomed by as it's been almost a year. Show started out in January of 2015 and now it's Christmas time during this episode. That also means the members are all a year older so add a year onto what the above screenshots list as their ages. Aiko was the one with a b-day this episode, in real life her birthday falls on December 1st.
 The group released their 4th single "Adult Reasons" at the end of the last episode. Up until now no single had risen past #15 on the Oricon charts but this new single was a major success as it hit the third position on the charts. Seems like there's nothing that can stop the group from attaining their dream of performing at Budokan. There could be one way which is by a scandal and will tell you a bit about that though mostly in the next recap.
 As mentioned Aiko has just celebrated her b-day and she's turned 18. No real party was held for her as the members had other activities to attend to plus her father had to work late. For most of Aiko's life her best friend has been Daichi who lives in the upstairs apartment, he comes down to help her celebrate but things get a little out of hand.



 One thing an Idol, especially a young one, cannot have is a boyfriend and dating is a no-no. Aiko has done a fine job up until now hiding the fact she was close friends with Daichi but they're about to be exposed. Before that though things did get out of hand at Aiko's apartment. At first her and Daichi were just talking but before long they both experienced their first kiss.
 More besides kissing more may have happened as they've left it up to us to decide if anything happened after. Much later on Aiko was lying in her bed and said to herself "I'm finally an adult", wonder if she and Daichi did the deed that they've hinted at. Shortly after the pair are out on New Years Day and Aiko insists on holding Daichi's hand.
 Huge mistake as an Idol should never take a chance like that as unknown to her it was photographed by a classmate named Eri. She's very jealous of Aiko's relationship with Daichi as she really likes him but has no chance with Aiko around. Eri saw the pair holding hands and took a picture of it, that happened at the show's finale so we don't know what's going to happen next.




 Those final two scenes with Aiko and Daichi lasted about eleven minutes, really brought the show's pace to a standstill as the show is only 19 minutes long. We didn't see any member besides Aiko after the eight minute mark, because of that the show at best was only fair. That also meant very little happened, we did see the group singing the new single at their X-Mas show and they did annonuce that the group would be doing a Spring tour, besides those events we didn't see hardly enough of the other members.
 Least things are set up for the seventh episode as the 'holding hands' scandal will be the focus of the show, sure somehow the group will survive it. The group's dream is to play at Budokan so they better hurry as there's only two shows left. Want to finish this drama up soon so will be recapping the final two episodes tomorrow or the following day.
 Checked on YT and there's no video for "Adult Reasons" perhaps it was a song just. But as not much happened took so few screenshots, less than half of what I usually do so after that have the PV for the group's "Black Butterfly" single. The song is really so superb and this video is subbed too, the single came out in July of 2014 and reached #4 on the Oricon charts.






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