Yuika Motokariya: Soko wo Nantoka drama episode 4 recap and screenshots

Air Dates: October 21 to December 16, 2012 on NHK, Sundays at 10:00 pm

Main Cast:

Yuikia Motokariya as Rakuko Kaise

Kamejiro Ichikawa as Hiroaki Shoji

Kohei Otomo as Kotaro Sugawara

Megumi as Aki Kubota

Shunji Igarashi as Kouki Akaboshi

Waka Inoue as Shiori Nkado

Yukijiro Hotaru as The Judge 

  Will make this a quickie and even more shorter than normal, watched this episode a few weeks ago and was hoping the remaining shows would be subbed so I could do a whole batch of recaps but sadly no more subs have been done. Also have noticed other blogs and their reviews on dramas, almost all are so much shorter than the ones here and hardly any break the reviews down by episodes like I do, does take quite a bit of time so perhaps I should make these shorter too but keep saying that and never ends up happening.

 After a so-so third episode there was a bit of a rebound with this show as our poverty stricken rookie lawyer Rakuko has been assigned another case but this one is a much more important one as there was a potential big payday for the firm which could keep them solvent for many more months.
 Didn't start out as a potential big case as Rukuko was assigned to defend an ex-employee of a toy company who had returned to his former work site and had caused some trouble and the company wanted to press charges against him. The employee's name was Tsuchiya and the reason he had caused a ruckus was that he was accusing his old company of stealing a toy design of his which had become extremely popular and had made them millions while he was left out in the cold with nothing. Tsuchiya was a person who is referred to as a NEET one and had rarely left his room after he got fired from his job, He was a rather difficult person to be with and he didn't want Rakuko defending him at all but through her hard work and willingness to adapt to his life style a bit he finally relented and had Rakuko defend him in a case against the toy company to get them to pay him a huge settlement amount for stealing his toy design.

 To make a long story short it wasn't an easy case for Rakuko as Tsuchiya had designed the toy almost 6 years ago and there was no way they could prove that the design was his. Rakuko never gives up though, every attempt she tried failed in finding some old proof that he was the designer of the popular toy until one day she sort of lucked out. She found an old photo from a young relative of Tsuchiya's which was dated and in the pic was a design of the toy but in the settlement hearing the company still flatly refused to pay a settlement and said the evidence was doctored.
 The real luck out part for Rakuko came in the hearing when an employee of the company finally fessed up and said he had stolen the design from Tsuchiya's computer after he was fired. And that kind of ended the show but unfortunately for the law firm there was no big payday however there was enough to sustain them for another month or so. Still have no clue what's going to happen with Rakuko, she's still living in a boarding house and is still quite poor yet always has a very nice suit to wear and never goes hungry or without any needs, think the story would be better if they showed her struggling a bit more as she's supposed to be so poor.

 Still unsure whether to wait for the last few episodes to be subbed before I continue on with this series or to just watch what's available, sometimes waiting too long means I put a show on the back burner and it never gets finished. Oh well, if you see another recap in the next week or so you'll know what the decision was, I really would like to watch the whole series subbed, hasn't been a terrific watch up until now but there's something about the drama which makes you want to keep watching it, perhaps Yuika is the main reason and speaking of her check out the next post for a huge amount of screenshots from this episode.

Yuika Motokariya: Soko wo Nantoka drama episode 3 recap and screenhsots

Air Dates: October 21 to December 16, 2012 on NHK, Sundays at 10:00 pm

Main Cast:

Yuikia Motokariya as Rakuko Kaise

Kamejiro Ichikawa as Hiroaki Shoji

Kohei Otomo as Kotaro Sugawara

Megumi as Aki Kubota

Shunji Igarashi as Kouki Akaboshi

Waka Inoue as Shiori Nkado

Yukijiro Hotaru as The Judge 

 This drama did start to get a bit better but unfortunately not until the next episode, I'm going to try to make this recap brief as it really has been the worst of the four shows I've watched, all the others have been good so guess a batting average of .750 so far is okay, least Yuika is looking terrific.
 Rakuko though a lawyer is still a poverty case living in a boarding house, she's poor but doesn't seem to be lacking in things such as nice clothes or food. One other the other boarders is an immigrant from the Philippines named Angelica who is a nurse. She had moved to Japan as a young child with her parents who have been deported but Angelica thinks of Japan as her home, she only speaks Japanese and has zero ties with the Philippines except for the fact that her parents live there.

 Angelica has a visa to live and work in Japan, as long as she continues her job as a nurse there would never be a problem with her staying. However a huge problem came up which is that Angelica is pregnant and won't be able to work for a while. The father is a well off businessman who she met at a club however he's nowhere to be found, if she can't get him to marry her she is going to be deported, The father, whose name is Inamoto, besides being AWOL is also a married man to a respected woman, though Inamoto is a successful businessman it's due to his wife as her father owns the company he works for.
 This is where Rakuko comes in, she's willing to help Angelica out as she doesn't want to see her deported. Rakuko confronts the wife a few times who refuses to tell her the whereabouts of her husband, she also denies strongly that Angelica's baby could possibly be her husbands. Would have been simple if they took blood tests but this was never brought up for some reason, also Inamoto was nowhere to be found.
 Said this recap would be brief and will make it so. There is a final confrontation with Rakuko, Angelica, Inamoto's wife and her lawyer. The wife still refuses to acknowledge that her husband could be the father of the baby, she really was a cold hearted woman and it wouldn't have bothered her in the least to see Angelica deported. This confrontation was not going well for Rakuko until suddenly Angelica went into labor and she was rushed to the hospital... in a taxi(!), no clue why a ambulance wasn't called. Angelica had her baby and of all surprising developments shortly after the birth Inamoto showed up at the hospital. However he was no longer called Inamoto, he switched back to his real name which was Oyamada, he had changed it when he got married. Now he was leaving his wife to be with Angelica and it looks the couple will be living happily ever after even though he now has no job as the only reason he had one was due to his wife.

 Guess that sums it well enough, it wasn't a bad episode but it ended up being quite boring, not enough 'legal action' in this show/ Rakuko really had no impact as a lawyer in this show, case never went to court and everything fell into place once the father showed up so she really didn't need to do hardly any legal work. Hopefully this will be the only dud in the series, have watched the next episode and that one was just so much better, if you skipped this one you wouldn't be missing anything.
\ Said I was going to post two episodes at a time but going to change that and just do one at a time. Like I mentioned have watched the next episode but there isn't enough time to write it up today so will be doing one recap at a time, probably makes no difference whether one or two are done at once. Also the subs for the last two episodes haven't been completed yet so need to slow down a tad on this drama's recaps as I'd rather have all the episodes subbed before I watch too many more shows, hate having to wait for them as too often I end up skipping the last show or two then. Will have the 4th episode recap done shortly, after that there's just five more shows to go and as usual the following post as a huge amount of Yukia screenshots from the episode.

Yukia Motokariya: Soko wo Nantoka drama episode 1 recap and screenhsots

Air Dates: October 21 to December 16, 2012 on NHK, Sundays at 10:00 pm

Main Cast:

Yuikia Motokariya as Rakuko Kaise

Kamejiro Ichikawa as Hiroaki Shoji

Kohei Otomo as Kotaro Sugawara

Megumi as Aki Kubota

Shunji Igarashi as Kouki Akaboshi

Waka Inoue as Shiori Nkado

Yukijiro Hotaru as The Judge 

 As you can see this drama aired two years ago but is just being subbed, there's a total of 9 episodes and so far seven of them have been subbed. Had wanted to watch it when it first aired as it looked interesting plus I really like Yuika and it's hard to find dramas that she's in, this was easy to find but at the time there were no subs so skipped it. Like when these kind of dramas get subbed, the lesser hits or cult series always seem to be a better watch but usually they don't get subbed, glad this one did. Just viewed the first two episodes and will be doing recaps two shows at time so a little below this post is one for the second episode. So far it's been okay, not a must watch yet but think it'll be a series which gets better as it goes along. There's also a season two which started in August and will be wrapping up it's run sometime this month.

 Yuika plays Rakuko which is a very rare name, who is an aspiring lawyer who has just graduated from law school, her age hasn't been mentioned but she's probably around 26 or so. Rakuko had a very difficult upbringing, her mother had left the family leaving her father to raise her and her brother. Rakuko had enough of the poor lifestyle and upon graduating from high school decided to become a lawyer but that takes a lot of years at college and money. Money was one thing Raukuko didn't have and to pay for her way through law school she had taken a job at a cabaret club where she was rather successful.
 For the most part that's Rakuko's background, when the drama starts she has quit the cabaret club and is looking for a position in a law firm. However in this day and age it's harder to get jobs in the law field due to some changes in the laws, the main reason Rakuko had decided to become a lawyer was because of the huge salary plus when she started school it had been easier to get a high paying position in the law field. Times changed though and Rakuko was really struggling, living in a boarding house and unable to find a job even with her law degree.
 One day she lucked out as one of her regular customers at the cabaret club also owned a small law office and she talked him into giving her a position at the firm. It was a very small firm and Rakuko has started out working for a very low wage but she's determined to move up quickly in the ranks and figures once she gets her foot in the door and shows everyone in the law field how talented she is it's just a matte rof time before she obtains a high paying position.

 Starting to run a little longer than expected so I'll just explain briefly what happened in the first episode. The new law firm which Rakuko is working at is very small and takes whatever kind of cases they can get, in this respect it kind of reminded me of the "Isharyo Bengoshi" drama which aired this Summer, a group of talented lawyers who have a hard time getting cases or ones that pay well. Against the wishes of her new coworkers the boss Sugawara has given  Rakuko the firm's latest case which is as a court appointed attorney for an assault case. This is the clients third charge which usually means automatic prison time but Rakuko has said that she'll be able to get the man off with no jail time and just probation.
 Though this is her client's third assault charge he doesn't appear to be a bad guy and there was a good reason he got into a fight and beat someone up. Seems as when the suspect was eating a dinner at a ramen shop an unruly customer kept touching a waitress inappropriately and to protect her he ended up assaulting the other guy. Rakuko wanted to call in the waitress as a witness but she couldn't talk her into taking the witness stand, now her only other line of defense was to have her client's wife come as a character witness.
 It seemed having the wife as a character witness was going to work as the judge was thinking about suspending the sentence and just putting the suspect on probation. However right at the end of testimony the wife stated though her husband was a good man she didn't want him back and even if he wasn't sent to prison she was going to file for divorce. Needless to say the whole case blew up in Rakuko's face and her client was sent to jail but here was another reason for the wife's sudden change of heart. Only Rakuko picked up on it but the wife had suddenly become sick after her testimony and that was because the wife was pregnant, she would rather bring up the child alone instead of having a criminal help her raise the child.
 Though she failed at winning the case and preventing her client from going to jail she did impress her boss Sugawara who was in court to observe the case. But was Rakuko's skill in the courtroom enough for him to hire her on as a full time lawyer, that we don't at the conclusion of this episode but the answer to that may be coming up in the next show.

 An okay start to this series, really went in blind about what it was about which sometimes helps. Figured it must have been an okay drama s the ratings were just so-so yet it's come back for a second season. Did skim through one review on this show, the review didn't go into many details about this series but did say it gets better as it goes along. Second episode is a tad better than this one and think shows like this take a while to develop, do plan on watching the whole series and will be reviewing all the episodes. Next post is chuck full of Yuika screenshots from this episode, she really is an underrated fine looking woman, you should check out her two photobooks which are posted here. Also after the next post is a recap of the second episode.

Yuika Motokariya: Soko wo Nantoka drama episode 1 screenshots

Only a few screenshots of her but Rina Uchiyama was a guest star in this episode, we really need her in a new drama with a big role as she's a really good actress, all her dramas haven't been all that great but she always does a solid job. Yuika is also someone who does a solid job but doesn't appear in enough dramas and films, least ones that have been subbed or somewhat easy to find.