"Cinecon e Ikou!" drama: Episode ten of thirteen recap

 

 Air Dates: July 4th until September 26 on BS Matsutake Tokyo TV, Mondays at 10:30 pm

Also known as 'Let's go the Cinema Complex', subs are being done by GEO0975 at DA

Main Cast: Is there a location a drama hasn't been set in?! This one takes place at a Cinema Complex in the fictional city of Mirai. Looks to be a small complex but there are twelve theaters with the largest holding 510 movie fans. The cinema is part of the Tochiku Corporation which own many theaters in Japan. However the fans haven't flocking to this cinema which has some less than stellar employees, will some new blood shake up things? Will update the bios as we go along and an episode is 25 minutes in length.

Kii(e) Kitano as Kaori Nakatsuka... The 'new blood' at this cinema which is located in a remote region. Kaori has been transferred from the home office in Tokyo and though she knows so much about the business end of theaters she doesn't know what it takes to operate one. She's a very strict young woman who was sent to bring in more customers and straighten out this bunch of daffy employees.

Dai Watanabe as Kenta Mizusawa.... The manger of the cinema complex and he may be the only employee I wouldn't call daffy. Mizusawa has been the manager for some years and is a huge film buff but he's not running a tight enough ship at the complex and was shocked when Kaori was sent to help him.

Tateto Serizawa as Kanji Shibui.... The assistant manager and also the oldest by far at the cinema. His main duty is to run the projections for the films and have things changed over the years. Shibui is quite scared of woman and can't even look Kaori in the eyes.

Nana Akuzawa as Tomomi Marukawa.... Runs the ticket and info booth, like every other part time employee she's a bit lazy and really has no interest in movies.

Shingo Nakayama as Kohei Matsumaru.... Male employee who is the usher but helps out doing many other assorted jobs.... when he has time from not talking to the other employees!

Risako Miki as Shiina Takemura.... Head of the concession stand but like everyone else doesn't have to work hard due to the lack of customers.

Sara Saito as Akane Umemoto.... Cleaner at the cinema who is a horrible worker, she spends most of her day on the phone!

Asumi Kuon as Yume Hongo.... New woman introduced in the fifth episode who is a PT cleaner, replacing the above one? It appears so as Akane hasn't been seen since.

Previous recaps

Episode one .... Episode two .... Episode three .... Episode four

Episode five .... Episode six  .... Episode seven .... Episode eight

Mini preview of this tenth episode: Video

 

 After a one episode absence the pairing of Shibui and Matsumaru opened the show with a chat about movies and/or the cinema. Not as interesting as prior ones as the topic was whether they watched the credits at the end, that Matsumaru had asked Shibui. Who said he did which I expected but him being such a film buff thought he'd say it was to learn the names of the entire cast and who worked on the film. But it was mainly to see if there were any outtake scenes which sometimes run at the end, according to Shibui at times they're better than the scene in the movie and brought that up about one of Jackie Chan's films. Above you can see with good news is the CineMine manager Mizusawa, looks like there was no 'love hangover' for him carrying over from the previous episode. But one thing that did carry over was the potential doom for the cinema if they don't start attracting more movie goers.

 Mizusawa's good news for the staff was that the head office Tochiku had just called him, they're going to have their first movie screening since he became manager two yeas ago! However it was no huge blockbuster, that was easy to tell by the film's title "Monochrome Woman"! The staff had never heard of the movie, that included the film buff Shibui. Plus the staff were at a loss on who the lead actress was though this time Shibui did have some info. Her name is Fujiko Hagino who is an older actress, probably in her fifties is my guess when we ended up seeing her. She hails from Mirai where the CineMine is located and does own some film equipment company in the city but have the feeling she's not well known. Also according to Shibui, who has been at the cinema forever, there was another movie screening before Mizusawa became manager. That was a bust as the event hadn't sold out and guess what, Fujiko was the star of that film too!

 So because of that previous screening not selling out Fujiko, who may have been more popular then, pulled some strings and got the manager fired! That's not going to happen this time Mizusawa exclaimed and the staff are a bit gung-ho about this event even though it's just a B-movie. These last two episodes they've been taking much more pride in their work and for the fortunes of CineMine, if it goes under they're out of a job. The cinema is owned by a company named Tochiku located in Tokyo and there's a chain of about twenty cinemas. A pair from the sales department made the trip down to Mirai to make sure all was going well.... which it wasn't! Even though the staff is trying extra hard they're just not efficient workers, so many signs and other things promoting the movie had so many misspellings. But the worst news of it all was that with just a few days before the screening not one ticket had been sold! Is that because Fujiko isn't well known or that people just don't like her, whatever the case may be no tickets sold could be the final nail in the coffin for the CineMine!!!!

 Right above is one of the salesman talking to Kaori. In the last episode she met a director from Tochiku named Mizoguchi who is now head of the production department. He had remembered Kaori when she worked at the main office and said if the CineMine were ever to close down she could always come and work for him. So after that man said the above comment Kaori's head seemed to be in the clouds for the rest of the show and not sure why. Was she really worried about future of the cineplex, the staff who may lose their jobs or some other unknown tidbit we're not aware of? The woman in charge of the ticket booth is named Tomomi, she had a brilliant idea to sell tickets to the screening. Fujiko owns that company in Mirai, why not get all of the employees to snatch up the tickets? Which they did as she went to the office and in a matter of hours the event was sold out, sure the employees just purchased a ticket because their boss was the star of the film!

 Which was the case as none of the employees wanted to be singled out for not buying a ticket. But that presents an even bigger problem for less than two hours before the screening not one person has arrived for the event and it appears none will. Tomomi was really brokenhearted over that as she did work hard to make it a sell out, of all the employees she's the one whose attitude about the cinema has changed the most. In the second screenshot above is the star of the "Monochrome Woman" movie, Mirai's own Fujiko and when she arrived not one movie goer recognized her. By now there's only an hour to go until the screening, what can the staff do? Wheeling in a cart with cutout human figures was Kaori and it was thanks to what she heard Shibui mutter earlier in the day. Fujiko wears glasses rarely in public and especially not at events for she has a bad case of stage fright! So Kaori's scheme was to put these figures in the seats, without any glasses Fujiko won't be able to tell if they're real or not!

 Kaori had gotten the cutout figures from Fujiko's company which sells extras for movie set, when she explained the situation they were more than willing to help. Then the staff at CineMine made some recordings of an audience clapping and cheering, they even told the emcee of their scheme and that woman went along with the plan. So at the big screening Fujiko did doff her glasses and didn't notice one thing odd about the audience nor the taped applause, the screening appeared to be a huge success! That event ended this episode but things didn't change much during the course of this show. While they fooled Fujiko at the screening the staff have made no progress in attracting new customers, they better get a move on as there's only three episodes to go! So will be back in about three weeks with that final trio of episodes, this has been a solid drama to date but there's been nothing overly special about it. However the last three episodes have all been quite good and this series is getting better as we go on.