700 Days of Battle: Us vs. the Police ぼくたちと駐在さんの７００日戦争 [movie]

No poodle hair!! Oh my gok, Ichihara!

Set in the late 70’s (glorious clothes I tell ya) this movie is quite simply about some bored teenagers reeking havoc on a policeman. It is very funny (Ichihara at his most juttery – which isn’t even a word. I love his stupid laugh.) it is also really sweet and totally worth watching.

In my total Ichihara-obsession week this was session number two I believe. Watching this alongside trying to finally finish Yankii Bokou which I started two years ago and for some reason never finished.

So Yes, I found this movie to add to my week of Ichihara which so far has included happy chainsaw, 700 days, yankii bokou, saru lock, and box – im so looking forward to hearing him Osaka-ben all over the place (did I just make that a verb?) but I have no subs, so I may not be able to understand it very well – but then I managed to follow Quick and I don’t speak much Korean at all so I’m sure I will be ok with a bit of Osaka-ben. Anyway, that has nothing to do with this movie, what the hell am I doing.

700 days has some of my favourite people

Ichihara  Hayato (yankii bokou, saru lock, rookies)

Sasaki  Kuranosuke (zettai kareshi, orthros, warareu koi)

Tomiura Satoshi (being insanely camp as usual tumbling, hana yori dango)

Waki Tomohiro (gok,cameo in everything else ever)

Kaku Kento (tumbling, samurai highschool)

(and even a short appearance from Takenaka Naoto)

It also stars

Aso Kumiko

Ishino Mako

Toyoya Ellie

Ishida Takuya

Kaji Masaki

And Koyanagi Yu

Bored teenagers prank their local policeman (Sasaki) and things escalate when Mamachari (Ichihara) realises the beautiful woman from the coffee shop is his wife, and then also when Inoue the Great (Kaku) falls for her sister. Running past the speed camera with a brass band trying to trigger the speedometer, planting pornographic manga around the police station, and stealing fireworks, all pretty petty stupid stuff but it makes for a funny movie. And I can’t help but mention Ichihara’s ridiculous laugh again for I love it so. Plus I hadn’t yet seen Tomiura Satoshi in drag and this needed to happen to make everything right with the world.

There isn’t much to say about a movie like this. It really relies mostly on the chemistry between Sasaki and Ichihara, their comic expressions and other inexplicable stuff. It is just a very silly but sweet film with lots of great comedy moments and odd quirky fun. And really terrible clothes.

it is kind of weird to see ichihara not sporting his usual permed boof of a hair adventure though. his hair was surprisingly normal...

Sasaki as always was wonderfully evil and brilliant, i do love it when he has such characters. i always feel a show will be worth watching if i see he is in it. On watching this a second time round with friends and seeing everyone else collapsing with laughter i am assured that it is not merely my bias towards the few actors in the movie i have a soft spot for.



i cant help loving ichihara - he looks like my dog. it makes me want to marry him and cook him cakes and stuff. that didnt sound so weird before i actually said that... 

ok it appears to be time for an almighty tonikaku... just watch the movie its funny. and have tomiura in drag to brighten your day:

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Q10 キュート [series]

Pafu!

 

It wasn’t a half length series but I still watched it in a day. I couldn’t leave it. I love Sato Takeru (Kamen Rider Den-o, Mr Brain, Princess Princess D, Bloody monday), I’ve accepted that, but I don’t think I fully realised just how different he is in everything. It had been a while since I had seen Kamen rider and watching a few episodes straight after Q10 just brought it home to me what a great actor he is.

I love his comedy eeeehhhhh??!!’s and his little slapstick sugokku shokku moments. And as much as he geniusly falls down and gets pummelled in Kamen rider, in Q10 his comedy is even funnier and a little bit more grown up. There is just something quietly intelligent about his approach to his roles I think, the more I watch him the more I see how great he is.

Gah, enough ureshii squeeing about Sato Takeru.

The female lead Kyuuto is played by Maeda Atsuko (AKB48) and I thought she was brilliant. I think I will even watch this drama again pretty soon. There was something I can’t really explain that I loved about it. I was not impressed with the new Hana Kimi, and couldnt even finish it. But her performance in this was perfect.

Fukai Heita (Sato) finds a robot and accidentally activates her requiring him to give her a name. Seeing the weird barcode/stamp thing on her foot he names her Kyuuto, and from that moment on all manner of difficulties arise as he has to be responsible for her at school and keep her out of trouble with her secret safe.

Heita has to work out whether it was really by chance he was the one to activate her or whether he is meant to be with her. Kyuuto is more and more sure that he is the only one she should be with and it may be more than a default program setting.

I should have learnt from Zettai Kareshi that programs about robots and cyborgs  don’t tend to end completely sweet fluffy fuwa fuwa, but it wasn’t as soul destroyingly sad as that one. Nor did it have a special that served no other purpose than to open up the wounds of the last episode and make you go through it all over again. What a depressing end to such a fun series. Q10 on the other hand seems to offer more acceptable reasons for the outcome and it is a very sweet concept - albeit a little potentially paradoxical.

Who else have we got in this series? Ah yes, Kaku Kento (tumbling, samurai high school, young blackjack) I don’t get to see his face crop up enough. I’m beginning to really rate him, I hope he does more stuff soon, I would love to see him in a lead role – he is so diverse.



And also there is Renbutsu Misako from Zenkai girl – thankfully playing someone who is really likable this time. She plays a girl with red hair, in a rock band, who tries to keep out of school life as much as possible. She becomes friends with Heita’s friend in hospital, Kubo Takehiko (Ikematsu Sosuke) who is a really great character – he pulls the best face when he suddenly realises he has a crush on her after she falls flat on the floor. Their story arc is really sweet.

The little side story between Takahata Mitsuki and Kawai (Takahata Mitsuki) is lovely but unnecessarily unfortunate after how cute it all is, but there is a lot of fate destiny type stuff in this drama so I guess the reasons are in the intentions of conveying that.

There are other familiar faces in the school faculty but as I can’t get on the internet right now I’m not going to do a full cast list.

There is a crazed otaku who is after Kyuuto, a mysterious girl who seems to know too much about Kyuuto and Heita, a great bit of him having to pose like a pop star (ahaha the music video made me laugh so much), Kyuuto saying ‘pafu’ all the time – which got cuter and cuter the more she did it, the whole class screaming an SOS in the school yard for some reason that I didn’t quite understand other than the metaphor that was intended to help the classmate who couldn’t ask for help, and I don’t know what the damn rubix cubes were about.

Ah but the pafu thing was so cute.

promo poster:

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young black jack ヤング ブラック・ジャック[movie]

all I was waiting for was his hair to go white. Through the whole film. I think I deafened my neighbours when it finally did.

 

Right, so I’ve come to like this guy Okada Masaki was in Half Way, among many many other things, and saw on some random thing he was only in the movie version of Blackjack [insert wide eyes and exclamation marks here] that anime fecking rocked.

At some point I will finish the manga but lack of space and money has meant reading it online and reading manga onscreen is a little bit of a chore for me and my light sensitivity – when the brightness on my laptop screen is turned right down as it usually is I can’t really see f*ck all.

This movie is the back story [yay] that explains what happens to that rogue doctor and why he became a secret genius with a two tone hair do. I was like *he shouldve had white hair in this movie damn it, he would’ve looked so good* then KYAA mother f*cking KYAA it is white later on in the film. Woo. I had to fan girl at my friend who didn’t really get why I was so exited [being a boy and all] but he was the only one I knew who had seen blackjack so methinks I should’ve made some more people watch that with me in order to rejoice in this cheesy ass awesome movie. Jeez girl put in some commas.

Naka Riisa is also in this, and we all know how much I adore that girl. So I was happy all round. I like this as a standalone movie, but as a back story it works well – they could soooo do a series with this cast. Aish seriously the white hair works. It really does.

Anyway, for those of you who haven’t a clue what the f*ck I’m talking about as you haven’t seen the anime or read the manga or heard anything about this badger-esque bouffant before, oshieteiruyo.

 

Basically this guy Hazama Tokio had some big ass accident in the past when he was a little chibi chiro, and he and his mum got a little bit blown up all to pieces. The wacking great scar he has is from the skin graft he needed when half his face decided it wanted to go separate ways. His mother lay comatose as a doctor saved the young boy with said grafty skinnage and through his desire to save his mother he vows to become Mr genius badger doctor man.

 

Flash forward to the main time in our story and we find Naka Riisa’s character Yuna, who is training to be a nurse, and this soon to be badger-esque apparent doctor saving some collapsed dude in the street. It soon becomes clear that he is a medical genius but not actually a licensed doctor. He has a secret surgery complete with makeshift operating theatre in some back alley somewhere and all the unsavoury customers that would bring. The two become entangled when Yuna realises a doctor she knows is actually the one who saved Hazama as a boy, and when Yuna’s sister falls desperately ill it is clear that Hazama may be the only one who can help her.

Helping him out is his friend from the medical school played by Kaku Kento (Q10, Tumbling, Samurai High School, Gokusen, Paradise Kiss) I cant help but give a little ureshii squee for him now too.

There is a brilliant homage to the manga which I wont spoil as it is right at the end so I would be totally spilling all the details to explain – but it is a lovely little wink at the original story mentioning Hazama’s little girl – who I love in the anime. Such a cute little munchkin.

 

It is a gravy little film that I thought was pretty damn cheesy – and rightly so. I think if they did make a series they could afford to pile in the weirdo comedy like in the anime, but for this movie it is pretty serious due to covering all the story of his growing up and then the later sad situations ending in his badger hair and his determination to remain a dodgy underground unlicensed doctor. There wasn’t really much room for silliness. But worth it all the same. More blackjack please. We like it.

tumbling タンブリング [series]

its basically gokusen with leotards.
im sure it was terrible but i was too distracted by nisshi and fuchi to care...

original tumblers:

yuta - seto koji (atashinchi no danshi, rinne no ame, koizora)

mizusawa - yanagishita tomo (takumi-kun, akai ito)

kaneko - tamoto soran (furuhata chugakusei)

hino - nishijima takahiro (ghost friends, delicious gakuin, ai no mukidashi)

tsuchiya - tomiura satoshi (hana yori dango, taiyo to umi no kyoshitsu)

yankee tumblers:

wataru - yamamoto yusuke (antashinchi no danshi, hana kimi, rinne no ame,)

ryosuke - miura shohei (gokusen, giragira, school, koizora)

nippori - kaku kento (samurai high school, taiyo to umi no kyoshitsu)

kiyama - daito shunsuke (hana kimi, nobuta o produce, rescue, shibatora,

               futatsu no spica) [i call him fuchi so dont get confused]

others:

natsuko (wataru's mum) - otsuka nene (tokyo dogs, saigo no yakusoku)

kashiwagi sensei - akira (hana yori dango, yamagata scream)

mari-chan - okamoto azusa (moyashimon)

akabane (wide jaw skunk hair boy) - isaka tatsuya (water boys)

tashiri shigeo - sato jiro (gokusen 3, densha otoko)

ezaki sensei - kuninaka ryoko (hotaru no hikari)

the main cast is quite large so i thought id get that out the way in one go.

also, i want to point out that this is a totally biassed pointless review. most of my shots seemed to be of nisshi so i had to go and do them again. bear with me and my minor obsession and i will try and explain as much as i can around my fan girl moments.

right, its bad. its really cheesey. its like a gokusen wannabe with jumping and leotards. it completely won me over though.

i couldnt take yamamoto seriously at all doing his joey from friends acting. the way he threw is bag down all the time became funnier and funnier to me the more he did it with those permenantly flared nostrils. and sato koji didnt stop crying throughout the whole program. literally a few minutes break then he was off again. every damn episode.

tomiura satoshi's soft high voice commically lept out against the yankii's grrrrrring, shouting, and yakuza wanna be talk. but i do think he's great. dont get me wrong.

yanagishita plays another flakey gay which made me sigh: ah bless you useless takumi-kun. it was hysterically bad but he does it so well.

daito looked so stunning i squealed fuchi! everytime he came on screen.

seriously, bruises and a split lip really suit some people so much that its

almost a shame when they havent been fighting.

i was just screaming team moody ass hino! through the whole thing even though i had to wait untill the end episode 7

before nisshi cracked a smile! its just cruel.   ひどいよ!

and when nishijima smiles its like the sun coming up, he cant do them small, its like his whole being is made of smile. the contrast was hysterical. (it wasnt meant to be).

absolutely adorable. big squee for nisshi right? yeah you know it.

ah i should probably tell you what its about.

it centers around a gymnastics club basically. a load of yankii sh*t heads (who are really nice guys at heart as they always are) join in and it begins to save the angry nutters one by one in gokusen abandoned warehouse stylee.

wide jaw skunk hair boy ^ wants to f*ck everything up so he does and all the guys change into better people through their own trials and their friend's dilemas.

it has some bizzare camera angles, lots of sitting on the beach at sunset, and, of course, those token abandoned warehouses have perfectly placed steel poles to beat the sh*t out of school boys with as is the way of things.

but seriously people - you get to watch nisshi prancing about on a gym mat -

do you really care what its about?

ah and also fuchi's character goes 'nanas and beats up people quite a lot with scarey eyes and major serious face - which is awesome - and slightly more believable than yamamoto   :p

it was funny that lovely miura shohei basically played the same character that he played in gokusen. but with some leaping about in shiny pink clothes.

it was very funny. sometimes because it was meant to be (baka sato jiro) sometimes because i was just plain laughing at it . (the wataru and ryosuke making friends flash back. god that was bad)

i think it would have made an amazing stage show though. i'd truly love to see it onstage. it is perfect for it i think. im useless. i havnt said anything about it really have i?

its about kids finding somewhere they belong, finding their morals, understanding true friendship... yeah its basically gokusen without yankumi plus jumping with shiny clothes.

one of the things i did notice is how good their bad tumbling was. these guys are all pretty accomplished in leaping about like pros, so doing bad falls and not landing flips properly is quite a skill.

the good tumbling was stunning aswell. from all the teams you see thoughout. i would have like to see more dancing and stuff - thats kinda of why i think it would have made a good stage show. less d*cking about on the beach more shiny clothed jumping beans.

truth be told, i only watched it to see nisshi doing acrobatics and fuchi beating people up, i wasnt expecting award winning tv. so i quite happily squeed (not a real verb) all the way through.

its completely predictable, lame and cheesey. but you will have fun watching it. i did.

massive nisshi smiles all round.

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