"Sukeban Deka" season one drama, recap seven of 24 episodes

 

Air Dates: April 11 to October 31, 1985 Thursdays at 7:30 pm on Fuji-TV

Based upon the manga by Shinji Wada, there were some differences between the manga and this series such as two new characters but for the most part what took place in the manga was followed... Subs by Mashhamid though a few others have also subbed this series

Ratings: Average for all 24 episodes was 13.04%, the high was 17.0% while 9.6% was the lowest and that happened twice. This episode's rating was 10.7% which was a huge increase from the previous episode and this aired on June 6, 1985

 For my first two 'comeback dramas' after taking a four month break picked a pair of ancient ones, good timing for this series as it aired exactly forty years ago! No solid reasons for picking these but thought the pair, the other was "Shoujou Commando Izumi", would be easier to recap as they're both 25 minute shows and though I do enjoy 45+ minute episodes they can take a while to write up. Sure many of you readers may have a basic knowledge of these DEKA series which were very popular back in the 1980's as there two more seasons after this plus some movies. But there were also many films in this genre that were released from about 1970-74 though they weren't nearly as innocent as this show or movies but do recommend those 1970's films which are among my favorites.

 May do a bit of editing to these first few paragraphs though then again may delete them and throw in some other thoughts or info, we'll see how things work out. Did say I was hoping for a pair of easier dramas for my return to recapping but neither one will be as easy as expected. This one especially and have a strong feeling the Bio section will be needing a lot of editing as we go along plus I bet there are going to be many characters who come and go. Will admit I was really confused about many things after viewing the first show which was only so-so until the end and wondered did I make the right decision as this is a long series with 24 episodes. However the second show was so much better and didn't begin writing this up until viewing that one, that does happen often where the first show is working out the kinks. For the previous series did five batches of three recaps as it was a fifteen episode show which worked out well. So was going to continue that with this series and have eight batches of three recaps but now I'm not sure what to do, am leaning on going back to having two at a time and will decide that at the end of the next recap which is the post below this one.

 The heroine in this series was Yuki Saito who was eighteen when the show began in April 1985, she turned nineteen while it was airing. Wouldn't call Yuki a superstar but she's an actress most drama fans should know of as she's been so busy over the last forty years appearing in too many dramas, movies and stage plays to count! Yuki is also a singer who has about ten albums and 25 singles along with doing many other theme songs to dramas, she does the ending song to this show. Yuki is now 58 in age and she was an attractive woman back in her twenties and thirties, not saying she looks bad now but as mentioned is getting up there in age. Enough of an intro as there's always another mini section after the main character bios which are below and will be editing them quite often.

 Most of the action will be taking place at the Takanoha Academy high school but in episode one the setting was St. Annes school which did slightly confuse me. Episode two is when Saki enrolls at Takanoha Academy and we didn't meet most major characters until then or at least the main students. Most of these photos at the top are of Saki holding a Yo-Yo, it's no ordinary one! When it flips open it shows the Police Crest as Saki is an undercover detective and what power it has. The Yo-Yo can smash through steel and if a person gets hit with it they're down for the count, the steel string is very long and can also double as a pair of handcuffs.

 Yuki Saito as Saki Asamiya.... There is so much to say about Saki and not enough space! Saki's mother Natsu is currently on death row for killing her husband Toshiya, that happened when Saki was six in age which was eleven years ago. For the next nine years don't know yet what became of Saki but by the age of twelve she was a delinquent. She did enter high school but was expelled from Takanoha Academy at the age of fifteen and sent to Kanto Kita Juvenile Center but there was something about Saki or perhaps her circumstances which attracted the attention of the two men below this bio, Jin and Shirei. They're the top two executives of the very secret government department Dark Agency, they've recruited Saki to become an undercover detective as being a teen will allow to work much more efficiently at high schools. Of course Saki refused at first but the offer included an apartment, clothes and such plus a huge kicker. Which is that if Saki successfully completed a mission her mother Natsu's death penalty would be voided though would have to finish a prison sentence. To that offer Saki agreed but the Dark Agency did renege on their end of the deal and came up with an excuse for Saki to do another mission which she reluctantly said yes to so think that scenario of Dark Agency using Saki will continue on. Know more changes will be done to Saki's bio but that covers what we learned in the first two episodes. Saki's mother Natsu is in the bottom screenshot, don't think we'll be seeing her too often.

 

Koji Naka as Kyoichiro Jin.... The top agent for Dark Agency and is Saki's 'handler'. Jin was a cool looking man and was very respected by his superior Shirei. Jin is very skilled at martial arts though we haven't seen him in a physical fight through eight episodes and drives a yellow Porsche 911.

 Hiroyuki Nagato as Kurayami Shirei.... Leader of Dark Agency and the person who recruited  Saki to be an undercover detective at high schools. To me it appears Shirei is the one toying with Saki and saying he'll void her mother's death sentence to keep her doing missions, think Jin does have a soft spot for Saki and doesn't like seeing her used. Shirei had been a judge at one time and was one of the six on the panel for Natsu's murder trial! Perhaps that's why he chose Saki to be a secret detective as he had been keeping tabs on her for about a decade and felt she was finally ready for action! Don't know if it will continue on for the whole series but when Shirei appears in screen we never see him clearly, he is an older man and maybe keeping his face obscured adds to the mystery.

 The remaining characters are all from Takanoha Academy which is a high school, in Tokyo? No characters appeared in the first episode so these bios will definitely need to be edited for future posts, the top characters are the students. Don't think any teachers will be key to the stories but will add a pair in plus the principal. Saki had attended this school when she was fifteen in age but had been expelled in her first year and sent to a detention center, she's now returned to the fury of many who remember her!

Chiaki Watanabe as Miyako Yumekoji.... She too is a delinquent girl but unlike Saki was never sent away to a detention center and is very intelligent though her ego is a bit too large. When Saki had been expelled Miyako took 'control' of the school or in other words has become the leader of the school's undesirables. Who are females and you never see girls have male underlings in these shows or films, of course those henchmen(women?) are Yes People who bully others. None of that group of Miyako's followers will have large roles but we will be seeing them often enough, the names of the main four girls are Tomiko, Hanako, Masayo and Tamami. That's them in the first screenshot below, Miyako is on the left and in the center of the second screenshot. Miyako is a very attractive teen and for now hates Saki with such a passion so a theme for the first half of the series will be of her trying to take Saki down. Of course Miyako doesn't know Saki is an undercover detective and had felt she returned to Takanoha Academy to take control of the female gangs which was not the case.

 Yasuyoshi Masuda as Sanpei Nowaki.... That's an odd name and don't recall ever seeing either of those before. Senpai wasn't at Takanoha Academy when Saki was enrolled there two years ago, when he first saw Saki in present times it was love at first sight for Senpai!!!! Who had no idea of Saki's past but was so enamored with her ultra coolness plus she was attractive. Unsure(doubt) if Saki will ever return Senpai's feelings of love but think he will become a trusted ally. By the third episode Sanpei has become friends with Saki, not best friends yet but he is her only one.

  

 Genji Kawai as Miyagawa.... Principal of Takanoha Academy and he probably won't be an important character but should be in most episodes, he's the older man sitting at the desk.

 Hiraizumi Sei as Numa Juzo.... PE teacher at the academy and also the home room teacher of Saki's. Juzo was strongly opposed to Saki being able to reenroll at the school but like all didn't know she was an undercover detective. He also works in  the guidance department and can be extremely strict though usually is fair to all except not at first towards Saki.

Previous recaps

 There will be some new storylines and characters added into the series as we go along so off course will add in any major characters and keep editing to the existing characters also.  Have said om other dramas how in a way it could be easier to wait until the entire series has been finished or pick a certain show to wait until, say the midway point. Then you could go into one post and click on the links for each episode as doing it that way makes it so much easier to read plus this is the only was you can read them in order quickly as searching could take a while.

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

Episode five .... Episode six

 You do see those characters at the end of most of these kinds of dramas, ones where the story is ongoing. Those Hiragana characters spell out Tsudzuku which means To be continued, of course it means the story and that car is Jin's yellow Porsche 911. For each recap will have a video for this series and hopefully there can be a new one for each post and there aren't as many as I thought. So it is getting tougher so may have to leave a video up for two recaps or perhaps have some of Yuki's J-Pop songs. She is featured in the below video which is a good one, have said what a powerful Yo-Yo Saki has and you can see her taking out many thugs in the video.... second post in a row with it. Below the video will be a screenshot of what the episode's title was, those you saw in the previous drama I reviewed and was having titles much more common in the 80's?

  

 

 

 That girl right above is Naomi Zaizen, though not a superstar she was one of the more known actresses to guest star in this series, it was her first ever role! At the time Naomi was nineteen in age, she's now 59 and is still a busy actress with her next drama beginning in July and where else can you get that kind of info but here?!?! She had a large role in the "Perfect Blue" drama from 2012 which I did recap, that was a show I enjoyed so much and wish the posts for Miori Takimoto could have continued. For the second episode in a row the action took place outside of Takanoha Academy, as a matter of fact we didn't see any regular characters besides Saki and Jin so very little editing needed to be done to the above bio section. Saki's mission took place in another high school and so so far all of the stories have been interesting and different but doubt if I will recap the other two seasons but then again who knows? The main focus of this story was an Archery team, Naomi as Yumi is holding darts as besides firing arrows was also a whiz at Cricket(the dart game) and she did use those as weapons. However she's holding plastic darts and because of them being light you can't throw them too far but she seemed able to and now on to the recap.

 The show opened up with us viewing a man aiming an arrow at a moving car, we saw it from the shooter's end. The result of that shot is in the top screenshot as the arrow pierced a windshield so it must have been some sort of enhanced arrow, needless to say the driver was quite startled and so much he ended up driving off the road into a tree which ended his life. Of course we knew it was a murder but not the police who ruled it an accident and probably didn't think an arrow could have caused such damage. But besides us also in the know was the still very mysterious Dark Agency who are a secret government organization and when will we ever learn more about them? It's led by an older man named Shirei who we seldom see or at least 'live' for at his voice is heard every show via a cassette or VHS tape. The latter was how we heard him in this episode and delivering the VHS tape was Shirei's trusted assistant Jin, the Dark Agency's top spy and think is second in command. Of course the tape was for our heroine Saki, a former juvenile delinquent who is now an undercover detective(Deka) for Dark Agency. Being seventeen in age is such an advantage for Saki as she can get into places and meet others her age which older Dark Agency agents couldn't do. The man killed in the opening scene had been a teacher at Clover Girls Private Academy, his name was Ishihara and how does the Dark Agency learn that an incident such as this one could be a murder and may be the tip of the iceberg for more? The last few episodes it's been easier to get Saki to accept an assignment, Jin at first had used her mother's possible execution as blackmail but no longer and we seldom hear much of Saki's mother Natsu anymore.

 Also seldom seen once again were the students and staff from Saki's regular high school Takanoha Academy, as a matter of fact we didn't see any of those characters. The Dark Agency is so adept at quickly creating new identities and backgrounds, the next day Saki was to be a new student at Clover Academy and what a first day she had! What she witnessed is right above, a trio of girls were being roughed up by some teachers and the worst part is that their hair was being violently cut!!!! Once Saki saw that scene she knew jumping into action was the only alternative and had taken out her powerful Yo-Yo. But then she thought back to what her 'handler' Jin had said prior to attending the school which was to make sure she remained quiet and in the background until the culprit(s) was found, reluctantly a furious Saki watched the girls get tortured. Afterwards Saki did meet the trio and said she was interested in the Archery Club, she knew these girls had been members. But according to them there was no more Archery Club and what happened to them was a punishment for even being a member! The club advisor was a man named Monma who is in the third to last screenshot, he was apologizing for not being able to help the girls out. This Monma is also a regular teacher at Clover Academy, the man seemed to be a decent chap as he started the Archery Club to help some of the troubled delinquent girls at the high school and was very successful. Many of the girls didn't drop out and had changed their ways, especially the worst of the bunch who was Yumi Horie who is right below and wish she had shot that teacher!

 The top screenshots above are from a flashback scene of Yumi's, at the time she was talking with Saki who seems to be able to get close with someone at the snap of a finger. Monma was such an excellent archery instructor, so excellent that in the last regional tournament Yumi had finished in second place! She was so similar to Saki as both were such violent and seemingly unreformable delinquents but both have proved one can change if given a chance and guidance. However at Clover Academy so many teachers and students were jealous of the success the Archery Club was having and vowed to destroy it! Which they did for when Monma had traveled to a two day seminar the prior week the club's practice was disrupted by a group of teachers who told the girls to leave now as the Archery Club was going to be disbanded! To say Yumi was irate would be such an understatement, she really did have ideas about shooting that teacher above with an arrow who was Ishihara, the same man who was killed by an arrow in the opening scene! With Monma still away Yumi had been nabbed by the school's staff, had her hair shorn very short and expelled in a matter of hours! Yumi did confess to Saki she wanted to avenge what Ishihara and his cronies had done to her and the Archery Club. But she did hold back knowing that's what Monma would have wanted and Yumi did have such a crush on the man. Besides being an ace archer Yumi is also a whiz at darts and came close to hitting Saki a few times with them. Yumi's darts were plastic so I had wondered how much damage they could do but there was something enhanced with them which made the darts powerful as she could throw them twenty feet. 

 It wasn't a long duel and it was too hard to take screenshots because of how fast the objects moved but Yumi and Saki had squared off against each other, darts versus a Yo-Yo and it ended up being a draw! Seeing what kind of person Saki was softened up Yumi a bit and quickly the pair became close as Yumi had explained to her much of what I've said so far. You can see that under her left eye Yumi also has a scar, that was courtesy of the now dead Ishihara when he was cutting Yumi's hair and claimed that his hand had slipped.... she would have a motive for his death! That teacher wasn't alone in wanting the Archery Club disbanded, most of Clover Academy didn't care for the girls in the group so would anyone else be targeted by this still unknown arrow shooter? Yes, for that night a teacher named Nakamura had been shot at with an arrow while he was riding home from school on his bike. The shooter didn't aim for Nakamura but his bike's front wheel which caused it to jam, the teacher fell off hard but don't think to his death. Witnessing this shooting had been Yumi and we knew she wasn't involved in this or the first shooting of a teacher. However Yumi knew who did shoot the arrows and wanted to protect that person, she went up to Nakamura and dropped the medal she had won at that Archery tournament. This way Yumi would be the one (falsely) accused of the crime and the true culprit would be able to flee so we had a fairly good idea who Yumi was protecting. Yumi was now a wanted criminal and when Saki met up with Jin he told her good job for proving who the shooter was which is right above. But Saki did scream that Yumi was innocent and hadn't been the shooter in either incident and she too knew by now who Yumi was protecting but had no proof.

 

 

 Final segment and have been perfect at keeping them at three for the last two dramas I've recapped. What took place is in the above screenshots and first five below. With Yumi being expelled from Clover Academy it wasn't hard to locate her as all other girls her age would have been in school and the police now had Yumi in their sights as a chase began on some backstreets of Tokyo. But coming to Yumi's rescue was the motorcycle rider above who naturally was Saki and I really liked the way she looks in that red jumpsuit. Saki confronted Yumi with what she knew as the facts of her protecting someone were so obvious and why would she leave such a medal at a crime scene? Of course Yumi denied everything and fled the scene though this case was far from over. Back at Clover Academy the teacher and Archery Club advisor Monma was being canned by the principal Minato, if anyone deserved to be axed it was the principal and his rough bunch of cronies. An episode being just a little over 23 minutes in length means the time is winding down, after two attacks on teachers from Clover Academy a third took place that evening. Though it wasn't a secret to us viewers or Saki right above is the man who killed Ishihara and badly injured the other teacher Nakamura, of course the assailant is Monma. The potential third victim was another teacher who was named Saito, he was riding his bike home after school. Waiting in the dark was Monma but didn't aim his bow and arrow at the man. Instead he aimed above where a huge supply of lead pipes had been tied together, them landing on Saito would have meant an instant death!

 There were two others on the scene, one was Saki who deflected most of the pipes with her powerful Yo-Yo and what an unbeatable object that is. Saito was struck by a few pipes but wasn't badly injured. Also at this unknown location was Yumi and you can see above she had her darts, though they're very dangerous they were no match for Saki's Yo-Yo and you can see below that she was out for the count. Yumi had been trying to protect her 'crush' Monma and Yumi did have romantic feelings for her somewhat savior though sure they weren't returned. So Monma was trapped like a rat, he did try to fire an arrow at Saki but to no avail, besides being a master at using her powerful Yo-Yo Saki is also a decent fighter considering her smallish size and took down the man rather easily. My favorite part of every show takes place in the final minute, after Saki has arrested the culprit(s) she gives them such a tongue lashing and Saki is wise for her age. Another quick finale and wish they were longer but the last series I recapped was the same way and maybe most of these shorter episodes do have finales such as this show and hadn't noticed until now. Have watched the eighth episode already and that's the next post, do leave out some details about what happens but never anything major in the hope you may be inspired to check this or other dramas out. There's never enough comments for recaps so it'd be nice to hear from you readers, maybe I made a mistake or want to give thanks for recommending you a terrific show or perhaps you have a show to recommend to me.