„I want you to become a butterfly“ - A Paradise Kiss Review

Originalname:	パラダイス・キス | Paradaisu Kisu
Also known as:	-
Release Date:	4. June 2011
Director:	Takehiko Shinjo
Writer:	Ai Yazawa (Manga), Kenji Bando
Producer:	Takero Hisamatsu, Toshiaki Muramatsu, Takeshi Onoda, Hiroaki Kitano, Toshiya Nomura

Cast:

Keiko Kitagawa, Osamu Mukai, Yusuke Yamamoto, Shunji Igarashi, Kento Kaku, Aya Omasa

Plot

So we start with a... HOLY SHIT, IS THAT WARNER BROS.?!

Anyway, Yukari is a girl that tried to please her mother her whole life and doesn’t have any self-confidence. She has a love interest, Hiroyuki Takumori, played by Yusuke Yamamoto (He is our new sweetheart get used to him)

Well, destiny strikes as she’s being stalked by a punk called Arashi (No. Not the band.) She faints and wakes up in a room with Arashi, a cute girl, Miwako, and a transvestite, Isabella, who ask if she could be a model for their graduation fashion show. But she doesn’t have any interest since she has to study for the finals. When George, the designer, arrives, she takes her leave.

George shows up in her school the next morning and make her skip class because he wants her to get a new haircut as an “apology”.

Well, at least Hiroyuki likes the new haircut, as he states in the next morning, when Isabella appears and takes her away to take her measurements. Which are not needed because Yukari turns out to be his muse.

Yukari decides to move out because she can’t cope with her mother anymore and moves in with George.

He shows her his “special room” (Why are you laughing? It’s just a room with clothes he sewed himself...)

One day Yukari discovers that this project will be  their last as “Paradise Kiss” as George will go to Paris after that, and so the day of the fashion show arrives.

There are some problems and Yukari decides that she wants to give hundred percent for George on the catwalk which she does and ends up getting a lot applause for it. And George kisses her.

So he leaves for Paris without saying goodbye and some time after he sends a package with a key and an address.

She goes there and finds  all those clothes which were in his precious room and cries.

THE END. I would’ve loved to see the 3 years after, but o well... you shouldn’t force your luck! 

... Yeah okay, it isn’t finished! Well, Yukari is angry and wants to see him and in NY she finds out he has designed clothes for a musical and they end up meeting his apartment and kiss. SCREW THIS!

Conclusion

I love this movie (not like my sister). I think the ending was great and the whole plot was well paced. I mean everything went so smoothly. In other asian movies there were many dialogue scenes and things felt rushed. Not with this one. Okay, some things were cut out like the conflict with the mother. Demochild was really disappointed because in the Manga and the Anime this was very important. But for me, for the fact that it’s a movie, it wasn’t such a waste. And of course there is the thing with the ending. I liked it. I liked it a lot. I thought it was deserved. But Demochild hated it. For her the Anime Ending was the best. No pairing, just pure loneliness and an open ending. Yeah, it would be interesting but it’s such a shoujo/women movie. It’s a must to have a happy ending. Okay, it would be refreshing. But I have to say, that moment which Demochild chose for the ending (it’s the crying in the clothes room) would also have been a great ending.

I loved the cast, too. They played really good. But I was surprised the most about Shunji Igarashi, our Nyah-chan from Rookies. I didn't recognize him xD
Ah, and not to forget Aya Omasa, who play the main role in Perfect Girl Evolution. Here she played a bright, naive, with a high voiced girl.

And one thing, totally out off plot: What’s wrong with the kissing in this movie? After the runway she looks like she is being raped. And then The Aragorn Kiss at the end xD For all who know LOTR Trilogy. Watch the last movie again and focus on how Aragorn prepares to kiss Arwen. It’s really funny. And this last kiss in this movie reminded somehow of it. How George takes a deep breath and... yeah. You know what follows ^^

Finally, I would like to say one of our personal favourites and we totally recommend it. We even recommend to buy it. It’s really worth its money.

„You’re cute! – No, you are!“ A Princess Princess D Review

Originalname:	プリンセス・プリンセスD | Purinsesu purinsesu D
Also known as:	-
Release Date:	28. June – 13. September 2006
Director:
Writer:	Mikiyo Tsuda (Manga)
Cast:	Kenta Kamakari, Rei Fujita, Takeru Sato, Osamu Adachi, Takumi Saito, Yuichi Nakamura

Plot

In an all boys school the three boys Yutaka Mikoto, Shihoudani Yuujirou and Kouno Tooru are chosen to be princesses. They have to dress like girls and cheer on the clubs.

But one day the new student Hanazono Otoya arrives and he wants to ruin this tradition. He wants to destroy the princess system and he wants to be the new schools president.

First, he forms a new princess group called the “Dark Princesses” with the help of Minamoto Kurou and Mori Ranta. Slowly they push the Princesses away and overtake the students.

Then he builds a new students council. The present student’s president Arisada Shuuya accepts this declaration of war but anything he tries it gets worse.

One night, Mikoto gets locked up in the basement with Otoya and they start to talk. At the end Mikoto thinks that he isn’t a bad guy. Afterwards rumours come out that Mikoto dropped to be a princess and after his friends wanted to know if it’s true (he said it’s not but he didn’t want take place against Otoya again) he gets thrown out. Now Mikoto, who always hated to be a princess, is free. But he can’t enjoy his freedom. He misses his friends.

So, the election days come with every day nearer and for the help to win Arisada flies a spy in this school to find a weakness of the “Dark Princesses”. Kujouin Haruka makes his researches and helps Arisada but when it comes to the election day he is on the same side as Otoya.

When Arisada was moving out of his council room Otoya comes in and asks him how he feels and if he can understand him now. (TWIST ALARM!!) It comes out they are siblings. (WHAT?!) When Otoya was nine Arisada left him in the wilderness and since then Otoya wanted to take revenge.

So, Otoya is now president and there are new rules: No princesses and no former school council – traitors will be punished. Yuujirou, Tooru and Sakamoto (class’ head and good friend of them) are hiding in the school’s basement (another room I think). Once Yuujirou and Tooru sneek out and on the roof they hear that Mikoto refuses to be on Otoya’s side. He understood what it means to be a princess and finally he can put his man’s pride aside and embraces his role as a princess. They rescue him and after apologizing they make out a plan how they take the school over again.

The next day the “Dark Princesses” make a live stage and then Yuujirou, Tooru and Mikoto will attack. Don’t panic, they just sing. The “Dark Princesses” want to save the situation but the lost Arisada and his team are back and Otoya has to admit his defeat.

At the end we find out that this was Haruka’s plan from the beginning. It’s a happy end after all. The school is back to the normal system and the siblings, yeah, I think they can talk to each other again in a normal way.

Conclusion

Yeah... the drama was really fun to watch. But if I’m honest it’s not really good. The characters are lame. They aren’t well –thought-out. It’s like they writers picked those characters from the beginning of the Manga story (yeah, it was a Manga story) and didn’t develop them. The actors tried their best to give the characters a little spirit but it doesn’t help.

Another thing that bothers me was the fact that the princesses weren’t the main character if you look closely. I mean the whole war was between Arisada and Otaya. Okay, you can say the princesses were like the soldiers or something like that. But they didn’t really do something. They looked only cute in their dresses and they argued with each other.  But at the end they become more important.

And there is also a point that caught my eye. What was the budget of this thing? Only in the last episode, there were a lot of students. During the drama we only see three regular students. Not more. And sometimes the lighting was just weird. To be honest it looks like someone did this movie in his first year of film school.

The only good thing in this drama were the jokes and the running gags which personified the character like Mikoto is running away or Yuujiro wrestles with Mikoto and wins (the “Give up?- No! [a little bit later] Rooope!!” –scene).

So, if you want to see guys dressed in Lolita-clothes, that’s the right thing for you. But don’t go in with any expectations.

"I am their homeroom teacher" - A Gokusen I Review

Originalname:	ごくせん　（第１期） | Gokusen
Also known as:	-
Release Date:	2. April - 3. July 2002
Director:	Toya Sato, Taro Otani
Writer:	Michiru Egashira, Rie Yokota, Kozueko Morimoto (manga)
Cast:	Yukie Nakama, Yuma Ishigaki, Jun Matsumoto, Hiroki Narimiya, Shun Oguri, Tomohiro Waki

Plot

Kumiko Yamaguchi is the grand- daughter of the Oedo Clan’s boss, a yakuza family. She becomes the new homeroom teacher (get used to this expression, you hear it a lot during this drama) of the class 3-D, also known as the delinquent class in which Sawada the leader is.

After an incident in which the school money disappears, the school head teacher accuses Kumai, one out of her class, that he stole the money. She believes him, when he says he didn’t do it and to prove his innocence she searches for the money. Kumai who feels guilty conscience tells her the truth. The head teacher dropped the money and he took it, but it got taken away from him.

She beats the criminals up and gives back the money. The head teacher apologizes to Kumai and Kumiko makes the promise that everybody of her class will graduate.

Minami starts dating a girl who is already dating someone else and gets beaten up for it. Sawada recognizes the girl and wants Minami to stop dating her but Minami hits Sawada which causes Sawada t have to write an apology letter otherwise he’ll be expelled. The girl breaks up with Minami and that leads to Minami getting called out by her boyfriend. When his classmates said that they didn’t want to help him Kumiko gets really disappointed and decides to take things in her own hands. Arriving at the battle field she sees that only Sawada appeared to help his friend. She finally steps in and saves her students. When the fight is over Kumai, Uchiyama and Noda arrive fully armored. Sawada has written his apology letter and won’t get expelled.

A thief scares the neighbourhood and everyone believes it’s Uchiyama. Kumiko, Sawada and the others want to prove Uchiyama’s innocence so they set a trap for the thief. The trap doesn’t work (mainly because Kumiko looks like a prostitute) but they catch the thief anyway. The students get rewarded from the police and everything seems fine. But Uchiyama beats a guy up (the pride of the school). So he’ll be expelled and searches for a job. Kumiko and the others find out that he hit him because he hit the puppy (awww, how cute, a puppy) and she tries to convince him to apologize. So he does. Anyway, Uchiyama doesn’t get expelled because Kumiko threatened that guy with prison because apparently you get one year when you hit a puppy.

One of the teachers, Miss Fujiyama, has started a part-time job as a hostess to earn more money. However, when she throws Noda’s gift in the garbage he sends a picture of her working as a hostess to the head teacher and Miss Fujiyama gets suspended. But she can return if all of the 3-D score above 30 points which after a lot of tutoring everyone manages. (Yeah, well, at first it seems as if Kumai didn’t get the 30 points but that’s a mistake...).

Kumiko manages to lose her mobile and Sawada finds it and brings it back to her house. So he discovers that she is in fact the granddaughter of a yakuza family. Her grandfather asks him to keep quiet about this.

Kumai gets to fall in love but she already has a boyfriend. In the mean time there is a gang of high school students terrorising the neighbourhood. When the boyfriend gets beaten up Kumai tries to protect the girl and get hit badly. But gladly Kumiko steps in and has a word with them. So they get to know the difference between fighting and violence. And Sawada tells Kumiko that he’s totally into her... I mean that he knows she’s the yakuza familys granddaughter, but he might as well could have!!

Sawadas sister comes to his school because she wanted to talk with him and we find out that he lives alone because he has problems with his parents.

His sister can’t take the pressure of her father any longer and decides to go to a gambling club, of which Sawada rescues her from and gets caught in the process.

The head teacher expels him but the police already know he’s innocent. But since he’s a minor a parent has to go and get him. So Kumiko and the whole class beg Sawadas father and he does go and get him. And Sawada even cries a little (Holy sh--, the robot cries!!)

Shirokin’s volley team gets into the nationals. But an expelled student wants so sabotage it. It’s Kurosaki, an old friend of Sawada and Uchiyama. Their worried and ask Kumiko for help which she does. She tells the PE teacher he should apologize to Kurosaki since he didn’t even try to keep him in. So he does, but gets beaten up for it. Sawada and Uchiyama try to stop him but don’t succeed. Kumiko arrives, kicks ass and lectures him and he tells Sawada that if he’d had Kumiko as a teacher he probably wouldn’t have had to quit.

The next day Kumai bumps into a shop lifter but the shoplifter accuses the gang because the game which was stolen was in Uchiyama’s hands. She believes when they say they didn’t do anything. Thanks to Shinohara (the police man she has a secret crush on) the real criminal comes out. It was a student from a rich high school.

Meanwhile Tetsu tries to convince Kumiko to be the Oeda Clan’s head in 4^th generation. But she refuses. After a talk with Kumiko’s grandfather about god-given jobs he realizes that the teacher job is the god-given job for Kumiko is.

But soon Kumiko gets stalked by a reporter. The boys ran into a criminal and handed him over to the police. He was a searched murderer. The boys get honoured and they should speak on a press conference with Kumiko. Because of that Kumiko gets interesting for the press and one reporter wants to make a 24h close up.

Anyway, In the meantime, Kumai’s father dies and Kumai falls in depression. He runs away. Kumiko suddenly finds him while he was beaten up and rescues him. She brings him back.

The reporter publishes the story - a story about a violent yakuza teacher who beats her students. Kumiko is forced to resign and for the sake of her students she does. When Sawada and the others find out what she did they decide to resign as well. But Kumiko comes, kicks ass and saves the day... sorry she just asks the teacher to take good care of the students.

After the touching speech the head teacher decides that they need Kumiko in this school and rips it apart. That means Kumiko can stay at this school and they all celebrate with the can kicking game, where we learn that Sawada has three other love rivals.

Conclusion

I love the nostalgia! But seriously I couldn’t remember most of it. I don’t know why I just couldn’t. I’m almost certain that I did see it. But when I watched the first season I always thought “What? Did this really happen? Did I really see this a few years ago?” Sometimes I just couldn’t remember. If I honest, the whole drama I nearly forgot. So I forgot that Eiichi Wentz appears in the drama. You know, the American guy. Especially him you shouldn’t forget because he looks non-japanese. But yeah... I forgot him... I’m really asking myself if I watched the drama then. But this has also its good side. I mean so I could dive into it again and so I could cry like a waterfall at the end.

So, what else can I say? I like the drama. It’s about friendship, school and learning something for life. It has a lot of charm and a lot of funny scenes (especially this one where Uchi, Kuma and Noda run fully armoured towards Sawada and Minami). But it has also cute scenes like the episode with Yuta, the little boy of the nurse (all he wanted was to see his mommy *sob sob sob*).

The actors were okay but Jun Matsumoto was a little stiff as Sawada. But it was his third drama and it’s Jun Matsumoto for god’s sake!

Shun Oguri was good at least what we saw of him, he wasn’t in the drama too much. That’s a pity. But Jun makes up for it ;)

Yukie Nakama is great as Kumiko Yamaguchi. You just love to see her in that role.

The only thing I can complain about is the song. It gets so annoying and it never leaves your head. (“I saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay,feeeeeeeeeeeeel your breeeeeeeeeeeeze. Anytime, anywhere, in your heaaaaaart!” You know what I mean?)

All in all it's a must see drama if you are a fan of Asian Drama or MatsuJun or Shun Oguri or of course Yukie Nakama. It's like I said: It's fun, it's crazy. You'll enjoy it.

"It's lame - but it's everything for me!" - A Tumbling Review

Originalname:	タンブリング
Also known as:	-
Release Date:	17. April - 26. June 2010
Director:	Ayato Matsuda, Kenjiro Kuranuki
Writer:	Michiru Egashira, Yukako Shimizu, Akira Watanabe
Cast:	Yusuke Yamamoto, Koji Seto, Shohei Miura, Shunsuke Daito, Takahiro Nishijima, Satoshi Tomiura, Tomo Yanagishita, Kento Kaku, Soran Tamoto

Plot

Wataru, a delinquent student, has to search for a club activity because of his bad grades. He falls in love quickly with his new classmate. She is in the girls rhythmic gymnastics club. When he finds out that she adores a boy from the male rhythmic gymnastics club, he decides he wants to join them. After lots of quitting, joining and getting accepted by the club members, they finally enter a tournament together and lose. Yuuta, the captain, thinks it’s his fault and finds himself not good enough to do rhythmic gymnastics, even though it was his dream since childhood.

While Wataru was trying to convince Yuuta to be their captain again, Ryousuke, his friend from delinquent days, feels lonelier and gets involved with very bad company. After getting Nippori to lose his part time job Ryousuke finally wants to get out, but they won’t let him. Wataru appears and begs them to let him go and gets beaten up badly. Luckily, the Yakuza-boss arrives and beats the bad guy up instead. So Ryousuke and Wataru are free to go. Yuuta becomes captain again, they get their homeroom teacher to be their coach and have two new members, namely Ryousuke and Nippori.

The new formed group decides that they want to join a festival and start practising. But Nippori leaves the rhythmic gymnastics club. When Wataru asks him for the reason, he replies with being too bad at it. But the real reason is that he had to take extra work so that his sister could go on a school excursion. The group finds it out and helps him and they manage to arrive right in time for their performance. They lose. But all of them are saying that it was great fun anyway.

One of Wataru’s previous “friends”, his name is Akabane Reiji, wants to become King of the school. After the refusing of Ryousuke he wants to bring Kiyama on his side.  But he doesn’t show any interest. So that guy spreads the rumor of Kiyama killing somebody. Which he didn’t. That’s the same Wataru tells everyone in their club. After that Satoshis heart disease is discovered and he can’t be in the club anymore.

In the same time Wataru gets a message, which says that they got Kiyama and he rushes of. It’s a trap for both of them to come to the same place, so they can beat the shit out of Kiyama and Wataru. They fight well until Wataru gets injured because he wanted to protect Kiyama. Fortunatly, he isn’t hurt that bad.

Kiyama makes his peace, joins the club and Satoshi is allowed to stay as manager.

Soon the team gets the chance to join a trainings camp at the university with the girls’ team and the red ones (Keep in mind they’re eeeeevil!). But at the beginning Mizusawa seems to have a problem with Kiyama’s joining to the team. Anyway, at the trainings camp the boys can’t join the real exercises, they have to replace the garbage and clean the windows. During the camp Satoshi finds out the reason why Mizusawa is acting strange. Mizusawa loves Kiyama. But this information was heard of one of the other boys’ team. The next day the boy (of course he had to tell it to everyone) he makes jokes about the homosexuality of Mizusawa and the fact that he loves Kiyama. Nobody of the team knows how to act around Mizusawa and so Mizusawa decides to quit tumbling. His last word to his team mates were formulated in a notebook. Wataru and the others read this and they get guilty conscience. At the end, after Wataru and the others tell him how much they need him and that he can’t quit he comes back and they perform at the exhibition. Because of the unnatural training they get a clean performance (You know, waxing, polishing,waxing…) and surprise everyone.

One day Yuuta gets scared to jump because of an accident. So he starts a secret training which Wataru discovers. They start training together. The reason why Wataru sees Yuuta training is that he only just figured out that his father is still alive, although very sick, and wants him to visit.

With a little bit training and the help of the other teammates Yuuta can jump again. And even Wataru resolves his problem with visiting his father. The first meeting didn’t go that well.

But Hino has problems with his dad too. Wataru rescues him one night and they end up talking. Wataru say that Hino should go talking with his dad, but Hinosays that Wataru isn’t in any position to lecture him. Wataru takes it to heart and goes back to talk with his dad. He manages to  invite him for the tournament, but he dies meanwhile.

The next day Hino’s father had a talk with the teacher about taking Hino from school. Hino is angry and says that he doesn’t want to do rhythmic gymnastics anymore.

But Wataru hears him and goes and apologizes to his dad and invites him to the tournament.

At the day of the tournament Kiyama and Nippori get lost and beaten up by some delinquents. But Hino replaces them since he owes Wataru this. After this Hino wants to be finally a part of the group performance and because of the great performance with Hino they are chosen to go to the next tournament.

So, one day after practise the group decides that they need new music and new stunts. Kashiwagi, their coach, hears this and tries his best to collect any kind of data he can find.

However, the group decides that they need the help of a professional coach and get one. When they tell Kashiwagi, he hides his disappointment and tells them how happy he is about that.

Training with the professional coach goes well and Kashiwagi thinks that he’s not needed any more. So he considers an offer of one of his old soccer colleagues to teach kids how to play soccer.  He tells his thoughts to the girls’ team’s coach and Wataru overhears this. He tells him to do what he wants, because he helped them so many times and he wants to help him.

But it turns out the professional is an imposter; he taught them the choreography of the last year’s winners (I don’t know how Yuuta didn’t know about this. Thought he was a fan…). Kashiwagi shows up in the same time and, boy, is he angry at the imposter for not taking his team seriously. He hits him and takes full responsibility and resigns. (I think I wrote this somewhere before… but where…?)

Kashiwagi asks the girls’ team coach to look after the boys and she gives the boys a box full of material that Kashiwagi collected for them. She helps them to get a new choreography (It’s called Kashiwagi Special), practised all night with them and on the next day they show it to him. Afterwards they say they don’t want him to leave and he takes back his resignation. (That is apparently possible in Japan.)

Some days later they get a new student which Kaneko recognizes as his childhood friend Yashiro Koichi. Because “Kou-chan” seemed to go down the wrong road, Kaneko wants him to join the club, thinking he could change back to the Kou-chan he knew.
After a couple of incidents like fire in the club room because someone smoked there, and an old man get beaten up, the team stands before a withdraw of the final tournament because Nippori and Ryosuke get accused for those incidents.
It’s obvious who did this but Kaneko doesn’t want to believe this and thinks he can still change his old friend.

Also Wataru’s previous friend Akabane Reiji shows up again! He apparently got expelled and let Kou-chan do all that stupid stuff. Only to cause trouble for Wataru and his team.

Anyway, Kou-chan gives in. He couldn’t stand it any longer because Kaneko was the only one who defeated him. Kou-chan wanted to help his friend and he tells everyone that he is responsible for the incidents.

After some days have passed the Washizu tumbling club (previously named the eeeevil red ones here) asks our tumbling club to train in their hall. Seeing them train, our group realises that they aren’t good enough and they have to improve the choreography. But to be sure who can handle with the new choreography, they make an entrance exam.

Well, the first time they fail miserably. But they eventually talk to each other and find their sync again, but Nippori fails at the tree times backflip and also Kiyama can’t participate because he got a fraction on his wrist.

Akabane, he wants still to destroy the club, actually had an evil plan but Kiyama gets in his way. (He had a heart-breaking goodbye speech on the phone)

Kiyama begs in front of Akabane for his team, but he gets beaten up and Akabane calls Wataru, who decides that he should help his friend even though it means to let go of his hobby.

Wataru now gets beaten up together with Kiyama, but they keep on talking about friendship and so on. Just when Akabane had enough and decided to give Wataru the finishing move, Yuuta and all the others step in and continuously beg for their teammates to be returned.

Akabane finally gets a heart (no seriously, that’s what it feels like while watching) and decides to let them go.

They enter the tournament all beaten up and of course the fine society wonders. But they manage to get the viewers on their side and have a good time on stage, which is why they celebrate even though they’ve lost and couldn’t go to nationals. But as Yuuta says, it’s all about the friends they made. The drama ends with the guys doing flips in the sand.

Conclusion

This drama was great. A real shounen- drama about friendship and chasing after their dreams. I liked it very much. Never the less the music played a big role to make the story that great. The music was epic and matched with every situation. With the music there came always the speeches along and they were also epic. I had sometimes the feeling, that Martin Luther King sits somewhere in a corner and tells the boys what to say. Because of those speeches, I had to cry a lot and not only in the last episode, no, since episode 4 or 5 (it was very early) my tears ran continually down my face.

As for the actors I have to say they did a great job (but what do you expect if there is like Yamamoto Yusuke and Seto Koji in the cast?).

One point what I thought was great, too, was the topic about homosexuality. I didn’t expect it. I never thought that they would really go with this. I mean, when I hear Japan, I still think of a nation where homosexually is still a forbidden theme and not allowed by the society. I think their openness was great. But what it’s sad, they couldn’t hold the topic longer. Homosexually was the topic of only one episode and afterwards it was never mentioned. Maybe Japan isn’t that open after all…

But sometimes the motivations of some characters were poor. I mean, you’re evil only because your friends didn’t ask you to join the club too? Hello? Those pussies! Go home and cry but don’t try to sabotage others. Or this: Every friend let me down and no one believes me, so I’m evil! I don’t really get these motivations to be evil. Here the writers could more think about that the antagonists could have had a deeper personality.

But for what it is, I honestly liked it. It was very surprising and fun to watch. And that being said: REAL MEN WEAR PINK!

"Ninth Inning, Two Outs, Bases loaded..."- A Rookies Review

Originalname:	ルーキーズ | Rukizu
Also known as:	-
Release Date:	19. April - 28. July 2008
Director:	Yuichiro Hirakawa, Takeyoshi Yamamoto, Jun Muto
Writer:	Yoshihiro Izumi, Masanori Morita (manga)
Cast:	Ryuta Sato, Hayato Ichihara, Keisuke Koide, Yuu Shirota, Akiyoshi Nakao, Sousuke Takaoka, Kenta Kiritani, Takeru Sato, Kazuyuki Asano, Shunji Igarashi, Yosuke Kawamura, Hiroyuki Onoue, Eri Murakawa

 Plot

A baseball match. That’s how it all begins. The baseball team is aiming for Koushien Championship. But as their batter angrily hits the catcher with his bat, their dreams were shattered as well.

We cut to some months later we see the same team, that was so eager to go to Koushien, became a group full of violent delinquents. They would’ve been thrown out of school already but since that would mean a loss of reputation, they are still there.

But the principal has a plan. He hires a teacher, who was known for hitting his student and resigned afterwards. He should repeat his mistakes and the delinquents should have a fight with the teacher, so that all of them could be thrown out.

Without knowing the teacher arrives at the school. It’s our main character Kawato.

Mikoshiba is a nice student, who has only one dream since the incident happened: To play baseball with friends once again. But since his dream is so hopeless, he decides that he just should drop out of school. But Kawato steps in and tells him to wait until he knows, what Kawato can do. With that Kawato decided to become the baseball coach.

Since Mikoshiba begins to trust Kawato, he gives him the keys to the clubroom, much to the dislike of the clubmembers. They want Sekikawa, the fastest, to steal it back, but while he was trying to do so, he gets to know why Kawato was hired. He begins to think differently of Kawato.

As Shinjo finds out that they cleared out their ‘paradise’, he gets really angry. And he tracks down Sekikawa and beats him unconscious. The rest of the group arrives and tells him to stop, because this is not the way you treat your friends. Shinjo says that he’ll not tolerate any kind of betrayal. As Mikoshiba speaks up, he gets dragged to the roof. The others want to stop him, but drag Sekikawa into the nursery first.

Sekikawa tells them what he heard when he was getting the keys and they run to the roof and Sekikawa stops Kawato from hitting Shinjo. Instead he lets himself get hit by Shinjo and covers up for him afterwards.

Kawato finds Wakana, Okada, Yufune and Hiyama smoking on the roof one day. Okada, Yufune and Hiyama quickly hide their cigarettes but Wakana states that he couldn’t throw them out since it would mean he didn’t have enough members. Kawato takes his cigarette, puts it out and then hides it in his pocket. Wakana, who is pissed off, lies to him by telling that they would rather play football. Kawato believes him and tries everything possible to get them into the football club. This and watching him weeding the ground at impossible hours finally gets Wakana to feel bad and he confesses that he lied to him. (A hilarious chasing scene later) Wakana decides to join the team with Okada, Yufune and Hiyama to follow soon after him.

The baseball club has to face more hardships as someone wrote mean things on the walls of their clubroom. This gets the club members angry and they go to defend their pride. As they arrive they find Aniya and Shuji already fighting.

Things work out fine for them and they don’t get suspended.

On the next day Aniya arrives at the newly painted room while the club is dressing up. After a good laugh they go out and Aniya is left alone in the room, gazing at the “Aim for Koushien” poster which Kawato made for them. Kawato gets in and Aniya yells that he shouldn’t be that stupid since he’s only amateur, rips the poster apart and storms out. This gets to Kawato and he tries his best to be a real coach.

Aniya however also still hasn’t forgotten about baseball since he teaches the kids how to do it.

There is a pitcher vs. batter duel between Kawato and Aniya (with epic rain, epic slowmotion and epic mud) which Kawato loses and, according to his agreement with Aniya, has to give up on the baseball club.

On the next day he wants to tell his boys that he has to stop being their coach, but Aniya comes in his training cloths, tells that Kawato has to learn the rules to not be an amateur anymore. So he joins after all.

And that is good because their first game is waiting. With Aniya they have the minimum requested players. Most of the pressure lays on Aniya since he’s the best player. To win this match he has to run, to throw the ball very fast and to hit very strong. No wonder he gets exhausted. Kawato sees that and risks an inning to lose that Aniya can rest. But there is another problem. Wakana, the catcher, can’t close his hand because he had to catch the fast balls from Aniya. His hand is red.
In the mean time we see that Shinjo is in the dressing room and looking at the changes. Then he sees a locker with his name on it and in this locker are his clothes. This plucks his heart since he believed after all those things he did, they wouldn’t want him back.
In the moment, it’s the 9^th inning bases are loaded, Wakana has to bat, but he can’t grab the batter perfectly. To hide his injuries he tells a joke: he will hit with one hand. In this moment, Shinjo appears in whole uniform. He knows that Wakana is injured and replaces him. He hits the ball and it’s a homerun. The Rookies win this game.

However the coach still wants revenge because Kawato hit him during the game. The principal resigns for Kawato. (But the new principal is still a hole, so his resignation was entirely pointless! Yay…)

One night Hiyama decides to train because he is the worst batter in the team. But Enatsu, who was that batter that hit the catcher with his bat, finds him and beats him up.

Through a phone call he reaches the others who of course want to help him. But Kawato comes and decides that they should have a match. And so the game against their shadows from their past begins.

Enatsu doesn’t take the game serious and plays on his own. His teammates don’t approve of this and they nearly start a fight on the field. But through Kawatos speech they start to play seriously and they nearly win the game. But our team manages to improve tooand ends up winning against them.

They feel better now. And qualification games lay ahead so Captain Mikoshiba and manager Yagi went to the lottery drawing of their next opponent. But as they come to school they find their baseball field covered in trash and completely demolished. The first years responsible for this appear. One of them, Uesaka, states that his biggest dream is to conquer Tokyo and to get to his dream he has to beat the violent baseball team first. But the team doesn’t want to fight since this would cost them Koushien. So they just pick up the trash.

Mikoshiba is having a hard time on his own since his team is known as the violent baseball team and nobody wants them to participate. He gets to feel all the hate of the other teams and begins to wonder if they’re allowed to participate. He talks with Kawato about it in the locker room while the other eavesdrop from outside.

After they won some games the journalists get interested in them and find out that Kawato had a violent past. The high school baseball confederation demand to talk to him. But they get interrupted by a teacher saying that the baseball club has been in a fight again, when they really didn’t fight back.

Kawato begs them to not expel them. And they agree on two conditions: Kawato isn’t allowed to come to the game and if their team doesn’t win the game they’ll get expelled.

So the game starts without Kawato and it couldn’t go worse since Wakana, Sekikawa and Aniya have major injuries from the fight.

Outside of the stadium we see Kawato listening to the game. After a while Uesaka finds him and tells him to go inside since his team needs him. He then decides despite of his agreement to be with his team. He gets caught by the security and escorted to the confederations chef. So they agree that Kawato would resign.

He comes to the game and it begins to look better for the team. Everyone gives his best and they win the game.

Since Kawato resigned they lost the rest of the matches and didn’t reach Koushien, but they still practised a lot during that time. Kawato ends up returning (He took his teacher exam during that time) and everyone is happy to see him.

Conclusion

After the rollercoaster ride that “My GF is a Gumiho” gave me, my poor heart couldn’t take anymore Romance. So I switched to the next best thing: BROMANCE!

“Rookies” is a nice drama about friendship and achieving your dream. (You know, the normal stuff…) So focus on the good and bad stuff. Firstly, the good stuff: The cast was good! They could play the funny moments as well as the serious ones. In my opinion, Koide Keisuke (Mikoshiba) was the best actor. You could really feel his devotion for baseball and his teammates. Also, I think his change was the most visible and comprehensible: From the shy boy to a remarkable Captain. The others were just good and that worked well for their roles, although Ichihara Hayato and Murakawa Eri could’ve had a little bit more chemistry. (Seriously, even Koide Keisuke and Murakawa Eri had more chemistry!)

All matches were EPIC! I mean, epic slides, epic running, epic hitting, epic speeches, epic rain and not to forget the most important: EPIC SLOWMOTION!

The music was great! The score and also the ending song KISEKI from Greeeen were very fitting and matched with the emotions. KISEKI represented for me the hope that dragged them through the story. Though, I had to get used to it first. I wasn’t used to hear such tunes from J-Rock. But it grew to me very quickly and found myself humming the tune very often.

Let’s go to the bad stuff: Only Mikoshiba had a character development. The others mostly remained the same. And that’s really a let-down for a story that is partly about changing.

What also was annoying, every time a new face appeared you knew, that he wanted to destroy the baseball team. The guys already had to fight with enough prejudice. They should’ve just let the story take that direction more towards the end.

And now a funny aspect: the half Crows Zero Cast was in this drama!

Let’s start with Takaoka Sousuke aka Wakana. His role wasn’t much different from Izaki, the role he played in Crows Zero. In both he was a fighter, except in Rookies he had more funny scenes.

Next, Tsutomu Takahashi, who played Takashi Makise, in Rookies he had the role  as a regular student who attacked Aniya.

Really?

And now for the person, who surprised us the most. We really didn’t recognize him. Kenta Kiritani, who played Tokio in Crows Zero, had the role of Hiratsuka in Rookies. I was shocked! Tokio was one of my favourite characters in Crows Zero and here he was just a comic relieve I didn’t really care about. Clap your hands everyone for a really unpredictable actor!  

There are more people who played in Crows Zero, because of that you especially look at the similarities, but Rookies really can’t be Crows Zero, since it goes into another direction than Crows Zero.

You should go check it out if you have time and need a rest from Romance.