White Panic (Fu Rai/ 怖来 -2005)

Starring:
Shugo Oshinari - Ken Goubara
Ayaka Maeda - Yumi Umezawa
Kazuo Yashiro - Sayoon Kim
Fumiaki Mitsuyama - Boo Motokawa

Ken, Yumi, Kim, and Maekawa are locked up in a mysterious room. Despite the fact that their memories are unclear and they do not know each other, they start searching for the reason why they are here. But what is the room with white powder that they are facing… What is the point they have in common? What happens after the powder is gone?

Okay this movie was totally freaky. Off the chart, psychotic. I can't believe I watched it all the way through. In the end, the point was made.

We discover that "natural resources" are depleting....almost nonexistent. Why the four people are left in the room and why they are connected to this one discovery of "natural resources" is soon discovered at the end.

The movie is just a little over an hour long. So you don't end up with a lot of unnecessary parts to the movie. They get to the gist of the story quick and the end will leave you totally stunned. Okay, it did me. I sort of laughed even though it wasn't really funny. It was NOT a happy ending but the way it ended was well......nuclear. LOL!

Maou (魔王 -2008)

Starring:
Ohno Satoshi as Naruse Ryo/Mannaka Tomoo
Kouno Hiroki as young Tomoo (11 years ago)
Ikuta Toma as Serizawa Naoto
Kimura Haruki as young Naoto (11 years ago)
Kobayashi Ryoko as Sakita Shiori
Masuyama Kayano as young Shiori (11 years ago)
Tanaka Kei as Kasai Hitoshi
Uemura Yuto as young Hitoshi (11 years ago)
Oshinari Shugo as Soda Mitsuru
Honma Haruo as young Mitsuru (11 years ago)
Waki Tomohiro as Ishimoto Yosuke
Nakamura Ryunoshin (中村竜之慎) as young Yosuke (11 years ago)
Uehara Misa as Takatsuka Kaoru
Shinohara Mai as Nishina Eri
Shimizu Yutaka (清水優) as Yamano Makoto
Horimoto Takaya (堀本昴弥) as young Makoto
Iida Kisuke as Ishihara Kanrikan
Tonesaku Toshihide as Kurata Takashi
Kichise Michiko as Serizawa Mari
Gekidan Hitori as Serizawa Noriyoshi
Miyake Yuji (三宅裕司) as Nakanishi Hiromichi
Ishizaka Koji as Serizawa Eisaku
Takeuchi Toshi (竹内寿) as Mannaka Hideo
Guests
Ninomiya Kazunari as Kumada Masayoshi (ep1)
Asaka Mayumi as Mannaka Yoshimi (ep1,2,4)
Morishita Tetsuo as Kumada Takahiro (ep1,2)
Kitaro as Hayashi Kunio (ep1,2)
Okunuki Kaoru as Shintani Tae (ep2-)
Ono Momoka (大野百花) as Shintani Sora (ep2-)
Musaka Naomasa as Ikehata Takahiro (ep4-7)
Yuka as Naruse Makiko (ep4-7)
Tanino Ota (谷野欧太) as the real Naruse Ryo (ep5-)
Shimada Kyusaku as Osumi Kazuma (ep5-)

This drama is a remake of the popular suspense drama The Devil that was aired in Korea last year. Ohno Satoshi will be playing the role of a two-faced lawyer, one of which is a kind hearted soul and the other who is plotting revenge, using his brilliant mind, on the person who killed his relative. On the other hand, Ikuta Toma will play the double lead role of the man, who has become a detective due to his dark past, who is pursuing the mysterious series of murders and fighting against the devil (maou).

OMG! OMG! OMG! This drama rocked my world and then some.

This was the very first drama that I had to wait patiently for but it was so hard. I would check all drama websites for updates. I would scream and curse if it wasn't posted yet. *Nothing against the subbers. I swear!* I just loved this drama so much. I loved Arashi's opening theme. I loved the actors. I loved the script. I loved the whole damn thing from the bottom of my heart.

It was sooooo hard to hate Naruse (Ohno). You understood his dilemma, his pain, and his revenge. Ohno-kun was perfect for this role. He balanced the evil and angelic parts so well. His face was the perfect picture of self-righteousness and fallen angel. As the story went on, it got so hard to see the evil in him but only the spiral of the hurricane that had swept him out into the abyss of retribution.

I wasn't at all sure how well Toma-kun was going to pull off the character of Serizawa Naoto. All I can see is the dumb, goofy guy from Hana Kimi. Well, taking on the serious role of the rebellious but yet law abiding detective fit him perfectly as well. Every episode, I would silently weep for him and the travels he had to take to receive redemption. *sigh* It was like, how much more should he suffer after carrying the weight of guilt of his past sins? How much more did he have to suffer?

I will say that as I watched the ending...the last episode...I felt myself tense up. I wasn't sure how this would play out. I didn't want a crappy ending. But there was hope...this is a Japanese drama after all.

As it got closer and closer....my heart ached. Then I got angry. Then I cried some more. Then this "whoosh" of air was expelled from my chest as I realized I was holding back my breath and the pain of my tears. The ending became PERFECT. I won't say if it was a happy or sad ending but will say that I now have a runny nose and tear stained cheeks. Tears of joy? Or happiness? You decide.

Ohno Satoshi

Look at this pretty face.......*sigh* Can I keep him?

Hachi-One Diver (2008)

Starring:
Mizobata Junpei as Sugata Kentaro
Naka Riisa as Nakashizu Soyo / Ukeshi
Kohinata Fumiyo as Suzuki Hobbito
Yasuda Misako as Muguruma Rika
Date Mikio (伊達みきお) as Kakuta Goro
Tomizawa Takeshi (富澤たけし) as Hidaka Yasuo
Kinoshita Yukina as Tsukishima Misaki
Watanabe Tetsu as Tsukishima Fumio
Guests
Tsuruno Takeshi (つるの剛士) as Kazuya Yoshihide (ep1,9)
Kyo Nobuo as Mamushi (ep2)
David Ito as Katsura (ep2)
Osugi Ren as Jinno Shintaro (ep2-3,6)
Gekidan Hitori as Mojiyama (ep3-5)
Ikeda Tetsuhiro as Iruka Ichiro (ep3,6)
Kyomoto Masaki as Kirino (ep5-7)
Omasa Aya (大政絢) as Sugata Ayumi (ep6)
Hakamada Yoshihiko as Kasuga Kyosuke (ep8)
Oshinari Shugo as Kasuga Tomoya (ep8)
Fuku Matsumi (ふくまつみ) as Mikado (ep9)
Ishibashi Renji as Kirishima Seijuro (ep10)
Toda Naho as Kirishima Nagi (ep10)
Morimoto Leo as the TV drama director (ep11)

Sugata Kentaro used to be one of the most hopeful trainee to be a professional Shogi (Japanese chess) player, but fails at the final test. Now he has become a "Shinkenshi," a gambler who plays Shogi for money, and boasts his 182 wins in a row. But he is devastated when he is beaten completely by a young woman known as "Ukeshi" who takes any challenges and never loses. As Shogi means everything to him, he decides to train himself harder to become the strongest player. Based on a popular comic, this comedy drama is about a young man's exciting journey to reorganize his life through a series of tough challenges in Shogi guided by a mysterious girl. --Fuji Creative


I so totally fell in love with this comedy/drama! It was unique. Quite unique. The story had me at the very beginning to the point I couldn't move from the sofa. I watched it all today. It's only 11 episodes but they are only, roughly, 30 minutes long.

Shogi, the Japanese chess game, has me intrigued enough to give it a go. Problem is....where does one find it in the U.S.? I guess I could find an online beginners game, huh?

The story, even though it rests primarily on the game, is mainly about not giving up on your dreams. To just keep fighting on and not giving up because the road will keep going as long as you do.

I did a check up on Mizobata Junpei. He was in Hana Kimi??? I think I might have to hop through some episodes to see him. It seems once I find a "new" guy...he isn't new. LOL! I was really excited to see him and really believe that he will be in the "in" crowd.

Mizobata Junpei

Yamada Taro Monogatari (山田太郎ものがたり -2007)

Starring:
Ninomiya Kazunari as Yamada Taro
Sakurai Sho as Mimura Takuya
Kikuchi Momoko as Yamada Ayako
Matsuoka Mitsuru as Yamada Kazuo
Oshinari Shugo as Sugiura Keichi
Fukiishi Kazue as Torii Kyoko
Otsuka Chihiro as Nakai Masami
Shibata Rie as Ikegami Maria
Musaka Naomasa as Ikegami Ryunosuke
Tabe Mikako as Ikegami Takako
Utsui Ken as Ichinomiya
Yoshizawa Hisashi as Ehara Makoto
Fukui Hiroaki as Osaki Shinosuke
Yamada Shintaro as Ando Masaki
Kojima Haruna as Usui Kotone
Takahashi Ryosuke as Okubo Shin
Ogata Sayaka as Kashiwagi Honoka
Yarita Akihiro (鎗田晟裕) as Yamada Jiro
Shimizu Naoya (清水尚弥) as Yamada Saburo
Muranaka Haruna (村中暖奈) as Yamada Yoshiko
Yoshida Riko as Yamada Itsuko
Shibuya Takeru as Yamada Mutsumi
Ayata Toshiki (綾田俊樹) as Isogai Shitsuji
Maro Akaji as Mimura Hijirichi
Nishida Naomi as Mimura Tsuyuko
Mizukawa Asami as Kotani
Yoshiyuki Kazuko as Ume
Ohno Satoshi (ep10)
Nekoze Tsubaki as House maid
Hankai Kazuaki (ep10)

Yamada Taro, a freshman on a scholarship at Ichinomiya Private Senior High School, is high-achieving, strikingly handsome, and truly athletic and seems perfect. But he is actually extremely poor. The story humorously portrays Taro, who tackles problems that occur because of his poverty, and his six younger brothers and sisters. --TBS

This was a cute drama. The first few episodes got me hooked. I loved the way it was set up to teach values that money isn't everything. Yeah, it's nice to have but it doesn't bring you all the happiness in the world.

Family. Yeah, that is where it is at.

But this was all fantasy. I can't think of any instance in real life that we would just give up a perfectly good mansion given freely. I understood the anxiety that Taro faced but I had gotten the impression that the smiles on the kids' faces was all that mattered.

I couldn't understand why his mother didn't work. Weak, they said. Whatever. She could work from home. Leaving all the hard work for Taro, a boy of 17-18, to deal with parental issues was unfair. That really bothered me. While the father traveled around the world, the mother didn't work, and Taro going to school, working, and maintaining the family. Something was wrong in this story.

I know they tried to make the family values, pride and morals come to life....and they did a good job of it.....but it was just hard to see any type of real issue.

Okay, I cried at the end. The kids were sooooo sweet and innocent and they tried to help out their big brother. I, for one, finally saw something that showed a human side in this family. The parents couldn't face up to it but the young kids saw the need to be equal in the household. Go Kids!!

I know I sound uncertain of this show. It had it's definite good points and bad points but I faced this show as a fantasy rather than reality and liked what I saw.

Oh, and did they beef up Ninomiya-kun later on because in the drama he seemed sort of dorkish but this same year he made Tokyo Tower with Jun-kun and he was looking rather hot! What gives?

And might I say that Sakurai Sho I think is my favorite Arashi member. He was just too cool for school.....hehe!

Sakurai Sho

Ummm? Hello baby!!!!

All About Lily Chou-Chou (Riri Shushu no subete, リリイ・シュシュのすべて-2001)

Starring:
Hayato Ichihara - Yûichi Hasumi
Shugo Oshinari - Shusuke Hoshino
Ayumi Ito - Yôko Kuno
Takao Osawa - Tabito Takao
Miwako Ichikawa - Shimabukuro
Izumi Inamori - Izumi Hoshino
Yu Aoi - Shiori Tsuda
Kazusa Matsuda - Sumika Kanzaki
Ryo Katsuji - Terawaki Shioske
Takako Baba - School girl
Yuki Ito - Kamino
Tomohiro Kaku - Yuichi's friend
Hideyuki Kasahara - Kyota Shimizu
Yoji Tanaka - Teacher

All About Lily Chou-Chou follows two childhood friends, Shusuke Hoshino and Yuichi Hasumi, from the end of their junior high school run until the beginning of high school. The film has a discontinuous storyline, starting midway through the story, just after high school begins, then flashes back to junior high and summer vacation, and then skips back to the present.
In junior high, Hoshino was the best student in school, but was picked on by his classmates. He was skilled at kendo, and had a good-looking young mom. Yuichi, on the other hand, was a quieter boy who fell in love with the music of the odd musician Lily Chou-Chou. During a group trip to Okinawa, Hoshino had a traumatic near-death experience and his personality changed from good-natured to dangerous and manipulative. In high school, he takes his place as class bully and shows his newfound power by ruining the lives of his classmates. An alternative voice, that of the character Shiori Tsuda, attributes Hoshino's personality change to divorce and family ruin; this matches several scenes connecting the decline of Yuichi - who has had to change his name - to divorce.

Yuichi, the confused and shy former friend of Hoshino, finds himself sucked into his now-tormentor's gang. He is ridiculed and coerced into doing Hoshino's dirty work, and finds solace only in the ethereal music Lily Chou-Chou makes. Things become far worse for everyone when Yuichi is assigned to supervising Shiori Tsuda, whom Hoshino has blackmailed into enjo kōsai, and another girl is raped by Hoshino's lackeys after unwittingly offending the school's girl gang. The whole quagmire comes to a head when Yuichi heads to Tokyo to see a Lily Chou-Chou concert, and encounters the last person he thought would be there.

The story of Hoshino and Yuichi is paralleled by messages posted to a Lily Chou-Chou Internet message board. It is left up to the viewer to figure out which characters in the story are posting under what names.

Hmm? How do I describe this movie? Let's see. This movie was an artistic film. Very moving and visually stimulating. The cinematography was eye catching with the soulfull music that added depth to one perception of pain and suffering.

This movie in no way was what I thought it would turn out. No heroine, no hero. Antagonists galore. This movie didn't bring joy. It didn't bring tears. This movie in a way was like that of Hoshino nearly drowning. You feel yourself being sucked in the undertow and you can't seem to find a way to swim to shore. This is how I felt. The movie in everyway, to me, felt like this.

I didn't feel connected to Yuichi but to Hoshino. At first, at the beginning, you despise him for being the bully but in the end, well.......I felt saddened for him and by him. I felt his despair and for some reason just wanted to wrap my arms around him and say "It's okay."

There will be some who hate this movie and some who'll relate immediately to it. I don't know why but I felt both.

Oshinari Shugo

Love Complex Live (Love Com (ラブ★コン)- 2006)

Starring:
Ema Fujisawa ... Risa Koizumi
Teppei Koike ... Atsushi Otani
Shosuke Tanihara ... Kunimi "Mr. MIghty" Maitake
Nami Tamaki ... Nobuko Ishihara
Risa Kudo ... Chiharu Tanaka
Yusuke Yamazaki ... Heikichi Nakao
Hiro Mizushima ... Ryoji Suzuki
Shizuyo Yamazaki
Ryota Yamazato
Masanori Hata
Shûgo Oshinari
Eiji Wentz

Based on the bestselling manga (graphic novel) by Aya Nakahara, LOVE*COM THE MOVIE (short for Lovely Complex) centers on two high school students. Risa Koizumi is the tallest girl in class, and the last thing she wants is the humiliation of standing next to Atsushi Ôtani, the shortest guy. But fate and the whole school have other ideas, and the two find themselves cast as the unwilling stars of a bizarre romantic comedy duo. As their friendship blossoms, so do Risa's feelings toward Ôtani. LOVE*COM examines the often-complicated feelings and comedic moments of the experience of dating people of different heights. A girl, because of his short stature, previously rejected Ôtani and he thinks he looks peculiar with a taller girlfriend. Risa has the opposite problem, already tall and never finding a guy who is taller. These height complexes, and the romance that eventually ensues in spite of them, develop the Lovely Complex that this film is ultimately about.



This was a really cute movie more so for the younger generation (10-18 year old girls primarily). It was a little too corny for my taste but funny enough to make you smile and put you in a happy mood. I was really shocked to see Mizushima Hiro in this one. We usually see him in more serious roles and not so wishy-washy, off beat comedy. This time he was just a side character rather than anything else. Okay, he was our perverted, bloody-nose guy. LOL!

If you want a fun comedy this would be it. Just don't look for anything meaningful or serious. This was just for fun and not really what an average adult would be looking forward too.

Let your younger sister or daughter watch this one. I just don't see very many guys going on a hunt for this movie.

Koike Teppei


Mizushima Hiro

Akihabara@DEEP Movie (アキハバラ@DEEP-2006)

Starring:
Hiroki Narimiya - Page
Yu Yamada - Akira
Shugo Oshinari - Box
YosiYosi Arakawa - Taiko
Haruma Miura - Izumu

Set in Tokyo's otaku mecca Akihabara, "Akihabara@DEEP" tells the story of five otaku who drop out of society and end up founding their own successful IT venture called Crook. But Nakagomi, president of an influential electronics company called Digital Capital, will do anything to get his hands on Crook.



This movie was a dud. There was nothing that Hiroki- and Haruma-kun could do to save this movie. I was bored to tears. It took more than halfway for the movie to get decently interesting and then it ended. I really wanted to beat my head up against the wall. I should have just quit the movie and found something else. But I so desperately wanted to see this movie improve...........

I wasted two perfectly good hours to only see no more than 30 minutes of Haruma-kun. Ugh! I will say that Hiroki-kun was definitely the star of this show.

So.........I'll just post pics of the cuties. Something more interesting to look at than that boring movie.

Miura Haruma

He's half my age. It's sooooo NOT fair! *sobs uncontrollably*

Narimiya Hiroki

Sorry I went a little nuts on Hiroki-kun! God, he's gorgeous!

Oshinari Shugo

Aoi Haru (Blue Spring)

Kujo~"Aren't there some flowers that aren't meant to bloom?"
Sensei~"I'd like to believe all flowers were, eventually."

Things aren't looking so great at Asahi High. This all-boys school has a high drop-out rate and the boys are intellectually challenged since most skip school. Many are on drugs, they smoke, and in gangs. Sounds like any American inner-city high school right?

The new leader of the senior class is Kujo (Matsuda Ryuhei) whose general apathy is punctuated by moments of violence and physical prowess by those who challenge his control. All he had to do was play a "clapping" game on the roof that required him to hold on to the roof rails while standing on the outside. If you mess up, you fall to your death. Aoki (Arai Hirofumi) has been his best friend since elementary school and is considered his "gopher" in the gang, which Aoki doesn't like. Yukio (Takaoka Sousuke) learns to play the guitar but ponders killing and eventually does by killing Ota (Yamazaki Yuta) in a bathroom stall. Kimura (Oshibe Yusuke) was a pitcher on the baseball team but has been having a losing streak. Feeling down on his luck, he decides to quit school and join the yakuza (mob) his brother is affiliated with. Yoshimura (Oshinari Shugo) wants to join Kujo's gang but lacks the know-how to do so. His only option is to be their look-out and scout while they do nefarious deeds. The Ghost (Eita) is a sickly kid who sleeps through class, runs off during lunch, and takes care of the sakura trees that surround the school yard. (I've no clue really why this character was in the movie...seriously! Maybe so we could look at a sweet, cute Eita as a kid. *smiles*) All the while, Kujo considers quitting school.

Kujo~"Aren't there some flowers that aren't meant to bloom?"
Sensei~"I'd like to believe all flowers were, eventually."



All I can say is..is that this was a freakin' AWESOME movie. I'll admit that this movie isn't for most. The teen angst was amazing! Totally amazing. Sugoi! Sugoi! Sugoi!

Matsuda Ryuhei



And for those of you who didn't know...he's the older brother of Matsuda Shota of LIAR GAME! OMG! I didn't review Liar Game. Or I thought I did and it didn't save. What the.....?????