Kinkyori Renai Ep 03 Review

While quiet around others, Haruka (Abe Aran) started Kinkyori Renai (近キョリ恋愛) entirely cheerful around his two friends – Mirei (Ishibashi Anna) and Kanata (Kishi Yuta).

But then his stepsister Ririko (Adachi Rika) returned to Japan from America and ever since then, Mirei and Kanata can’t stop talking about her.

They begin this episode by noting that Ririko seems to have quickly recovered after being dumped by her boyfriend. When Haruka points out that Ririko and Tachibana (Nagayama Takashi) have actually gotten back together, that throws the other two for a loop and they demand answers.

Kinkyori Renai Ep 02 Review

At the conclusion of the first episode of Kinkyori Renai (近キョリ恋愛), Ririko (Adachi Rika) asked stepbrother Haruka (Abe Aran) if she could stay with him after getting into a fight with her boyfriend. Considering Ririko moved all the way from New York back to Japan in order to be with this boyfriend, she is necessarily confused and distraught.

Also at the end of the previous episode, we saw a preview of scenes involving adult Haruka (as played by Yamashita Tomohisa-kun) which I took to be part of this series. Thankfully (since those scenes deal with issues I don’t find entertaining), that’s all going to be part of a movie that I’ll never watch (not my kind of thing). This series is actually the prequel to that movie. That relieves the worry I had about Yamashita-kun’s part in this series – he in fact has no part except in the intro.

So, that leaves us with these three fun-loving characters:

This installment begins with Mirei (Ishibashi Anna) and Kanata (Kishi Yuta) being concerned after hearing how Ririko had to seek refuge at Haruka’s place. Even though they just met Ririko, they’re worried about her and the possibility that, after falling out with the boyfriend she had done so much to be with, she might do herself harm.

Kishi-kun was especially brilliant at injecting over-the-top dramatics to this possibility to keep it from being too morbid.

Weekly Oricon Rankings (Ending 08-24)

The top single for the past week was EXILE TRIBE’s “The Revolution” which sold 321,879 copies. Now, I hate to be suspicious or anything, but that’s around three times what the group normally manages on a single, so either this is a whopper of a song (I haven’t heard it), or I have to suspect something fishy is going on. I probably wouldn’t be as suspicious if not for that blatantly manipulated single from EXILE last year. If you know the story behind this single, please provide details in the comments.

Facing the opposite situation, Golden Bomber did worse than they normally do on their New Year’s singles, though we haven’t seen a single from them released on a date other than January 1st since November 2011. “Roller no Kizudarake” (ローラの傷だらけ) sold 42,845 copies to take #2.

At #3, “Get Away/The Jolly Roger” from VAMPS sold 35,777.

Tackey & Tsubasa got #4 with “Dakinatsu” (抱夏－ダキナツ－) seeing 29,246 sold.

S/mileage was at #5 with their new single “Aa Susukino/Chikyu wa Kyo mo Ai o Hagukumu” (嗚呼 すすきの/地球は今日も愛を育む) selling 28,051.

The second week of sales for Kis-My-Ft2’s “Another Future” brought it to #6 with a very strong 26,997 copies sold for a total of 241,679.

“A-ha-ha! ~Chouzetsu Bakushou Ondo~” from Super Girls took #18, tacking on 6,984 to bring its two-week total to 48,369.

Taking #23 in its third week, “ER2” from Eight Ranger – the alter-ego of Kanjani8 – sold an additional 5,084 and now has a total of 231,889.

Kinkyori Renai Ep 01 Review

Time to start the Summer 2014 drama season!

It was an interesting coincidence that I started this blog in the season where NTV began a long string of late-night dramas featuring Johnny’s juniors with Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou. Since then, I’ve made a point of covering that time slot through strong dramas and weak ones. This season, the new drama in that slot is Kinkyori Renai (近キョリ恋愛), which is a romance drama, and that’s the one kind of story I have the most trouble with. That’s for a number of reasons, including the culture gap between my concept of love and that often found in dramas based on manga (as this one is).

That fair warning aside, there are some reasons I’m looking forward to this drama. Abe Aran-kun proved to be an engaging personality in the otherwise dismal SHARK Season 2, and I would like to see if he is as good an actor as I (and whoever decided to give him his first leading role) think he is. I expect Kishi Yuta-kun, Takahashi Fuu-kun, and Tajima Shogo-kun to bring a lot of energy and humor – something that was sorely lacking Sprout, the only other pure romance in this time slot. This will be Tajima-kun’s first foray in a drama, so we can make an initial assessment.

The drama begins, however, with a much more famous member of the Johnny’s agency – Yamashita Tomohisa-kun. He plays Sakurai Haruka at the age of twenty-seven while Abe Aran-kun plays the same character at seventeen.

We see Haruka as an adult – and an English teacher at that – first.

He seems to have the complete attention of one half of the student body of the school he works at, which should be a bit uncomfortable . . .

. . . but then when one of this students asks him – in English – if he’s seeing anyone special, his answer seems to be one of those doki-doki responses. In other words, it appears like he cultivates the attention of girls. Already I feel my stomach churning.

Shounen Club 2013.12.18 Review

So here we hare: the Shounen Club (ザ少年倶楽部) Christmas Special! I got a ton of screencaps out of this one – more than I could put in this review without slowing the page loading to a crawl (apologies ahead of time if it still took too long to load) – so you know it had to be good with plenty of stuff to see.

Well, okay, there were scenes like this which irritated me – especially in the opening Christmas medley:

After Nakajima Yuto-kun and Yabu Kota-kun introduced what we would get to see on the show, they kicked things off with Sato Shori-kun and the Fab Four (Iwahashi Genki, Jinguji Yuta, Miyachika Kaito, and Kishi Yuta) singing the Japanese version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.

The dancing here was pretty basic, but hey, it’s a Christmas medley. The next song was a brief part of “Awatenpo no Santa Claus” with Shori-kun still in the lead.