Konnichiwa and Annyeong Haseyo minna-san

Konnichiwa and Annyeong Haseyo minna-san

Hope that's correct above but what I'm saying is welcome everyone. May 10, 2019 is the first day of this blog and many may know me from 'Nao Kanzaki and Friends'... aitoda.com. There I have such a mix of things and finally decided to branch out with just a blog devoted to Japanese and Korean dramas. Will also be having some film reviews but one thing you won't see are any J-Pop idols or gravure models except for their dramas, this blog is dedicated 100% to dramas and films.

Also actresses as will be having many, many posts for them. Such as them appearing at events, mag spreads, interview pics and whatever else. So you should be seeing a lot of my bigger long time faves such as Erika Toda, Park Min-Young, Lee Yeon-Hee, Tsubasa Honda and too many others to count.

News and upcoming projects

News and upcoming projects

Should have done this on my Aitoda blog which is to let viewers know what's going on. Seems like a good way to let everyone know if I'll be taking a break, what to look forward to and any other tidbits.

Updating update, May 19th:

Whew, have finally finished transferring over enough posts from the Aitoda blog. May be a few here and there in the future for some new that's being introduced but there shouldn't be too many. Have also included announcers for women that I'll be posting about as my top two current faves just happen to be in that profession.

The first five episodes of '3-Nen A Gumi' have now been posted. For series over five shows will be doing two batches of them as I figure ten posts are way too many to read through during one sitting so will have the second half of the drama coming up in 2-3 weeks, highly recommend the show.

June 4th.... Have written up the recaps for episodes 7 and 8 of the '3-Nen A Gumi' show and will have those long with episode eight by June 6th. Up next for Korean dramas is up in the air but leaning towards a pair of shorter series which will be either "Splish Splash Love" or "The Universe's Star".

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Sunday, January 12, 2020

Yuki Kashiwagi: "Tagarin" drama, episode's one to three recap


 Air Dates: April 13 to June 22, 2013 on Fuji-TV, eleven episodes that only ran for a total of 56 minutes. Link to the Rakuten site which has them on video though not subbed:

 Main Cast:

Yuki Kashiwagi as Ejima Chihiro.... new traffic cop at the North Kaizuka police department and has been assigned to investigate cases the chief doesn't want to make public

Yu Sawabe as Minoru Otagawa.... Detective and Ejima's bumbling immediate superior who works on the case with her. Keya fans should know him from co-hosting the 'Keyakitte' show

Kinako Kobayashi as Maki Kadomatsu... traffic cop who is Ejima's Senpai

Ikkei Watanabe as Hiromi Kuribayashi.... inept assistant professor

 Few others in the cast but very difficult to find out info as there's no Wiki page plus the Fuji site has been taken down.






 I enjoy Yuki dramas as I've watched three others she's had the lead role in plus of course a few other AKB series where she's had a large role. Was looking forward to this show and it was a decent watch but there was one major problem.... the episodes were only 4 1/2 minutes long!!!! The final show was close to thirteen minutes but overall the show just had a running time of 56 minutes and one episode of a Korean drama is even longer.
 But did find this to be a fun show and at least with the episodes being so short it means these recaps will also be. Have three episodes per recap which don't even total fourteen minutes but did take about forty screenshots for the trio so least there will be plenty of pics of Yuki. This series was a takeoff of the "Galileo" drama that aired in 2007, there was also a second season in 2103. There's just one case that will be the focus of this show which has a second title of 'Killing Curse'.

 Yuki is the main star and she plays the character of Ejima Chihiro who is a rookie traffic cop. We'll get to know her much better in a few minutes but first let's start off with an event that opened the show and will be the storyline for all eleven episodes. The location is Kaiei girls high school which is a very elite and strict institution. There we witnessed the seventeen year old student Mai Nakanishi alone in her room slightly after 10:00 pm about to watch a DVD with her headphones, there's a curfew at that time where students aren't allowed to use their computers.
 Mai takes out a video and in shades of 'Ringu' it's titled as a cursed DVD. We can't see what she watches but it terrified her to no end, Mai couldn't take watching it any more and struggled to her room's balcony. There the pain of what she viewed was too much for her and to relieve her pain Mai jumped off the balcony to her death. There was a security guard who witnessed the act and swore that the girl jumped of her own accord. Assigned to the case was detective Otagawa who figured it's an open and shut case of a suicide and was prepared to leave it as that. Didn't work out that way for Otagawa as the following morning he was confronted by a trio of female traffic cops.





 That's Otagawa in the bottom screenshot, the title of the show comes from that group of students giving him the nickname of 'Tagarin'. But before that scene he had been confronted by the female traffic cops who were led by the rookie Ejima. She had just met with the station's chief who wants her to lead secret investigations on crimes he doesn't want to be aired publicly. Her first case is the death of Mai Nakanishi and to Ejima it's not a true suicide but a death caused by watching a cursed video. Otagawa thinks she's full of it but Ejima's two mates believe her too and eventually enlist Otagawa to help them out on the case.
 First line of activity is to visit Kaiei high school to interview Mai's friends and to find out if it truly was a video that caused her to jump to her death. If not could there have been a murderer who remained hidden from the security guard? The trio searched Mai's room and were able to locate the 'cursed' video and Ejima volunteered to view it. Otagawa would hear nothing of it as being their leader it's up to him to view the video and later on he did tell the trio that he did watch it. But nothing has happened to him so the video must not be cursed but as all know it takes seven days for the curse to take effect.
 Otagawa wouldn't tell Ejima what was on the video and to solve the case she figured that her watching it would be very beneficial. Which is what she did though we didn't see too much of what she viewed but we do see more of it towards the end of the series. Not a gruesome video but we did see a person dressed in white who was covered a bit in blood, wasn't too horrifying but it did sent shivers through Ejima. Later on when she asked Otagawa about the video he confessed to not watching it!
 No wonder he was still alive as it had been over seven days since Otagawa said he viewed it. Ejima was a bit mad about his lie but is actually more scared for herself as does it mean she has less than a week to live? With that we've come to the end of the third episode, did stretch it out a bit as the entire length of them was just 13 1/2 minutes. It is an enjoyable show and have already watched every episode but do wish they were just a bit longer, next three posts are for episodes four to thirteen. Still found a way to take many screenshots which should help a bit in following the story but didn't leave any major details outs.

































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