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

Rookies

Starring:
Sato Ryuta as Kawato Koichi
Ichihara Hayato as Aniya Keiichi
Koide Keisuke as Mikoshiba Toru
Shirota Yu as Shinjo Kei
Nakao Akiyoshi as Sekikawa Shuta
Takaoka Sousuke as Wakana Tomochika
Kiritani Kenta as Hiratsuka Taira
Sato Takeru as Okada Yuya
Igarashi Shunji as Yufune Tetsuro
Kawamura Yosuke as Hiyama Kiyooki
Onoue Hiroyuki as Imaoka Shinobu

The story centers on Kōichi Kawatō, a high school (a former deliquent himself) teacher who attempts to raise his baseball team of delinquents out of suspension and into Japan's Kōshien national championship. Having been labeled a vicious teacher after a misunderstanding and accident happened at a prior school, can Koichi pull himself and his students out of societies trash can and into the limelight?

Just like a lot of the young people these days, these students do not have much hope for the future and many do not even know what they want to do. However, Koichi Kawato (Ryuta Sato) is a teacher who is willing to prove that the world is full of hope and that they shouldn’t mock those who do have a dream.

The story takes place at a high school where the baseball team has just been told to suspend their activities because of an incident that occurred during a game. The students are betrayed by their teacher and are forced to take responsibility for the incident. This is when they meet Koichi Kawato, a teacher who believes in having dreams and who would do anything for his students, even if it means risking his job. Through their emotional and heart-to-heart confrontations with this teacher, the students realize that they haven’t and that they do not want to give up their dream.

This show, I've only seen 2 episodes so far, reminds me of GTO and Gokusen all mixed up in one. Throw in some H2...and *poof*...there ya go. I will say the "hottie" factor pulled me to this show. And I am so far impressed...a little. I guess there can only be so much school drama/comedy one can stand.

To reinforce the importance of student/teacher relationships is vital to any society (American or Japanese). If only students and teachers could sit down and watch some of these shows back-to-back to understand the difference between right and wrong in middle- and high-school society. Our kids would have a better learning environment and our teachers would be rewarded.

To reiterate, this show is really good and if you are big fans of any of these cuties, you won't be disappointed...so far.

How in the heck am I to post all the hottie pics? They are all so darn cute.

Sato Ryuta


The Boys

Check It Out, Yo!

It's a movie. It's Japanese. And I was pleasantly surprised that it was totally better than what I thought it was. LOL! The movie poster had me thinking this would be a totally stupid movie but gave it a shot. And yet again....NEVER JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER!



Starring:
Ichihara Hayato ... Toru Isaka
Emoto Tasuku ... Akira Motobe
Hiraoka Yûta ... Tetsuo Tamashiro
Inoue Mao ... Yui Haebaru

This is a story about four high school kids who want to make a hip-hop band. Along the way, they go through a lot misery, self-doubt, self-awareness, and eventually happiness.

Toru has a crush on Nagisa, who is the girlfriend of a rival band. Akira and Tetsuo are Toru's friends who make up their band, 098. Yui is friends with all the boys but is in love with Toru and Akira loves Yui. (There really isn't a love traingle, per se. You'll see.)

Both visually and aurally satisfying, Check It Out, Yo! is a light, "feel-good" sort of movie. It's colorful, inventive, and energizing, and while it may not change your life, it certainly delivers plenty of belly laughs and a slew of intensely likeable performances.

So Check It Out, Yo!

Ichihara Hayato


Hiraoka Yûta