Juice=Juice: "Budokan" drama episode three recap

 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.

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.

 Don't think these are going to be really popular posts but seems most posts for Hello! Project groups/members are that way except for Maimi solo posts. Episode two ended off with the group's popularity on the rise but for the wrong reason the members of Next You thought as most of it was because of two swimsuit spreads they did but it's an unwritten rule that all Idols these days have to do those kinds of spreads.
 But it has helped them as they're performing at a much larger venue in Shibuya and the concert will be taking place on Valentine's Day.
 Unknown to the group there was someone out there who really despised them. Their managers were aware of it as a fax was sent to their office telling them to disband the group. That's out of the question so the show went on and in the beginning things worked out better than the members or their managers thought were possible. At the event you could purchase their current single, in it was a chance to meet with one of the members but it seemed only for about twenty seconds.

 At the show their singles sold out very rapidly along with all of their posters and t-shirts. After the fan meeting portion the show was a huge success, seems like this is the day that will put the group on their way to Budokan. However tragedy strikes right after the show and it happens to the oldest member Rurika. She went alone to the ladies room after the show, while she was cleaning up a security guard suddenly burst in. Rurika was perplexed on what was going on but before she could react the guard was about to pummel her into submission.
 Luckily for her she screamed and two other members along with the group's managers heard the scream and rushed in . The two managers were able to subdue the guard and he was eventually arrested, one of the reasons he gave for the attempted attack was that he couldn't afford their singles or concert tickets. Naturally the group was a bit paranoid and their activities were suspended for a few days but the attack also propelled them back into the spotlight.

 The incident wasn't 'milked' to an extreme but the group held a press conference to tell the public about the attack. They came off well and seems many sympathized with the group but there also many fans who thought everything was staged and the group would do anything to sell more singles or concert tickets. Those negative comments brought the members down a bit but all of the people around them said to ignore the comments, the ones doing them aren't their fans and for the most part things get back to normal in a hurry.
 But once again the gal's popularity has risen not by their songs but by something else. Though they obviously didn't like what had happened in a perverse way it's helped the group as they're now the #1 'Yafoo' searched term, yes they use names like that in the show. Forget the name but they also used a quirky name for Google too.

 An episode is 19:30 in length but the credits with the theme song playing at the end makes it only a tad over 18 minutes long. Hence these short recaps but after doing so many long ones these last two months deserve a bit of a break. Know these Hello! Project dramas aren't the world's greatest shows but for some reason I just enjoy them so much, probably more than I should.
 Been a shame there's never been a C-ute drama like this one but if you enjoy their tunes then know you'd really the songs of Juice=Juice. Yuka as Rurika just had her second photobook come out two weeks ago, have done two posts for her in the past and will try to do more solo ones for her. She's the oldest member as she's 22 but certainly looks much younger as her character in this show is 19. Few more screenshots for you fans and in the next post is the recap for the fourth episode.