Days With You

恋極星 (Koikyokusei; Days With You) is a Japanese movie directed by Amiy Mori and released in March 2009.

Story: Natsuki Kashiwagi lives in Sapporo, Hokkaido, and takes care of her autistic brother Daiki Kashiwagi. One day she is reunited with her childhood love Souta Funabiki who moved away to Canada when they were young. The two fall in love again but Souta suffers from a serious disease and decided to not get surgery again since the disease is always returning.

Cast: Another movie with Erika Toda in it, this time as Natsuki Kashiwagi. Her acting is really good in my opinion, she manages to portray the happiness and the hope as well as the sadness and the burden of caring for her brother alone after her fathers death well.
Kazuki Kato delivers another great character as Souta Funabiki. The way he portrayed the struggle with the disease and the hopelessness but also the will to fight for his love and his parents was portrayed well and really made me hope the best for him (and the fact that I just hate sad endings of course makes me hope for the best all the time as well).
And Ryuya Wakaba as Daiki Kashiwagi did a great job portraying the autistic younger brother. I don't know much about autism, just that there are of course different forms, and I was wondering if what he was portraying was a real form of autism but I think it fit the story well in total and did highlight the fact that he somehow needed his sister to help him.


I can't say I loved this movie but I kinda liked it so it got a 7/10 from me. It is not necessarily a movie I would rewatch even though I do love the setting and the acting a lot but the story doesn't really offer a big surprise. I honestly knew what disease they would use right when I read about a 'serious illness', it is just what usually happens in dramas and movies.
But what I have to admit is that the Japanese movie producers know how to make a heartwrenching melodramas just by using some stereotypical things.

Death Note: The Last Name

Death Note: The Last Name is a Japanese movie released in 2006 based on a manga series:


Story: As in the first movie, Death Note, L and the team of detectives trying to find kira. Light joins the special unit after the death of his former 'girlfriend' Shiori. Now being placed next to L, he wants to get rid of the ones in his way. As L is still suspicious he decides to observe Light closely.
Suddenly another kira appears and needs to be found. Both owners of the Death Note's together would be even more dangerous since one of them is a good strategic player while the other seems to see the name of the victim..

Cast: Okay, so I have no idea what I should really put on here. The main cast is of course the same as in the first movie. Kenichi Matsuyama as L and Tatsuya Fujiwara as Light Yagami. While in this movie Light seems to be more insane than in the first one which makes the acting more intense it's as good as in the first movie as well.
And let's not forget about Erika Toda as Misa Amane. While I love her style I think she's a little bit too psycho in a different way due to a trauma. All she wants is to be loved after all.
And there's Nana Katase as Kiyomi Takada who would do basically anything for her career.


I personally really liked how things involved. Many things were easy to understand because of the connections between the characters. Nothing seemed to be just fate but a plan carefully made.
The story is a little bit too crazy later though. This might be a spoiler but Light seems to have gone completely mad.
So my personal rating is a 7/10 which is not as good as the first movie but still not that bad.

Code Blue 2

コ-ド·ブル- Season 2 (Code Blue Season 2) is a Japanese medical drama series that aired from January 11th to March 22nd 2010 on Fuji TV. The series consists of 11 episodes.

Story: Once again we are following the four interns Mihoko Hiyama, Megumi Shiraishi, Kazuo Fujikawa and Kousaku Aizawa through the last year of their fellowship training. After Dr. Kuroda left the Shohoku University hospital the four of them work under Dr. Keisuke Tachibana who shares important memories with Dr. Kanna Mitsui. While this series still shows the life within the hospital and quite dramatic cases outside the hospital, it is also focused on family bonds and personal relationships.

Cast: Once again we have Tomohisa Yamashita as Kousaku Aizawa in this series, and what else can I say? I like his acting overall, and I like his character even more, especially episode 5 was pretty cute (you'll get what I mean when you know the drama).
By far another one of my favorite characters is Mihoko Hiyama played by Erika Toda. She's the one who has to encounter the biggest problem due to a mistake she made and I was just hoping for her to get through the hardships without too many problems. So her acting was quite on spot.
Yui Aragaki as Megumi Shiraishi shows an interesting development due to the experience in her field. While her father wants her to go a different path in the future she starts to take responsibility for her own life because she wants to stay in lifesaving and help patients with her knowledge.
Kazuo Fujikawa or actor Yosuke Asari shows an interesting development as well. While he's still called "the worst" (Ep. 11, figure out by whom on your own) as he has always been fighting to even be allowed to go on the helicopter, he's saving a life in the worst circumstances one can imagine but also manages to do a good job in general with his kind personality.
Luckily also flight nurse Haruka Saejima played by Manami Higa is back in this series and we hear more about her private life. Her character becomes even more warm and opens up and it's quite good to see how she's caring about the one's she loves.

Soundtrack: What can I say about this? Two songs by Mr. Children and I don't really like the band itself because of the vocals (just not my style, I don't want to argue about this) so it's only like "meh" to me.

My personal rating after all is 8.5/10 mainly because it focusses too much on family and relationship issues. Yes, that's part of everyone's life but I found myself to be rather bored by most of the scenes involving only relationships so I couldn't bring myself to give this a better rating.  It's quite nice though and reminded me of my childhood (there was a series called "Medicopter 117" airing here in Germany when I was a child and I loved it) so I really liked the topic in itself a lot.

Code Blue

コード・ブルー  ドクターヘリ緊急救命 (Code Blue - Doctor Heli Emergency Lifesaving) is a Japanese TV series consisting of 11 episodes that aired on Fuji TV from July 3rd to September 11th 2008.
The special was aired in January 2009.

Story: Code Blue shows the life of four interns in the Shoyo University hospital. Being responsible for emergencies, those four are flight-doctors-in training and work with Doctor Heli, a program involving a helicopter transporting patients to offer help as fast as possible. However, those four work under Dr. Shuji Kuroda, a senior doctor who's said to not really like young people. Mihoko Hiyama is a straight-forward young woman while Megumi Shiraishi seems to be more calm and doesn't want to hurt people with words if she can avoid it. Kazuo Fujikawa is a talkative young person but seems to lack skills sometimes while Kousaku Aizawa is extremely quiet and cold which is why he can deal with emergencies well.
While working together, those four experience difficult situations.

Cast: As I am not one of those who watched many J-Dramas I think it's something special when I can say that I've known a few actors. And well, those are actually two but nevermind.
Tomohisa Yamashita is a quite good as Kousaku Aizawa. Why exactly? Well, I don't really know about his acting in general but this cold character in this series just fits him perfectly, and also the emotional scenes with his grandma (not a huge spoiler I guess) seem to be fine.
Erika Toda is in this series as Mihoko Hiyama. Compared to the movies I've seen her in before (*cough* Death Note *cough*) her role in this one is strong and confident. While I found her sometimes to be the difficult type of person, I did like her acting overall as well and seeing two different sides of one actress is a good thing as well.
As Megumi Shiraishi we see Yui Aragaki. While her rather shy character sometimes was too quiet in my opinion (or just didn't say what she thought), I was a little frustrated with her being careless in the end. Nonetheless I think she was a necessary part of this series, mainly because they wanted to show completely different characters.
The same actually works for Yosuke Asari as Kazuo Fujikawa. While at some point you pity him because he's seriously not that good compared to the others, in the end it seems like he just needed to adjust himself to the team and the new surroundings while following his dream to become a flight-doctor. Since he doesn't seem to be blessed with extremely medical talent, he's working hard to make his dream come true.
My favorite character in this series was by far Haruka Saejima played by Manami Higa, a young and extremely beautiful flight nurse who seems cold at first but warms up in the end. She's an important part of the team itself and she's good in what she's doing, sometimes even better than the average doctor.
And lastly I feel like I need to name Toshiro Yanagiba as Shuji Kuroda. While at some point one might start to hate him he's a good doctor and wants to safe patients in the end. That's also the reason why he's strict when it comes to the interns.

Soundtrack: The music in itself is not bad. The opening, "HANABI" by Mr. Children isn't bad, as an opening song it's quite nice actually. But then again the music in the whole series sometimes missed the atmosphere. This might be only my opinion but especially during those emergency operations I would actually expect something more dramatic if it's about life and death.
That being said, the soundtrack is probably the weak point this drama has.


After all a 9/10 for the series and an 8.5/10 for the special are still a good and strong rating because of the interesting stories told in such a short amount of time.
While the worst part in fact is the music in general it's not that bad and didn't really make me dislike the drama, that was just something I need to say.
Also, something about the special in itself: I found the talk about separation alright. Yes, it was nice, but not nearly as exciting as that huge accident (should I feel bad for saying this?). The last part of this special episode (actually almost two hours long) was rather slow, there was no major action since emotions were most important then.

Death Note

So I bet nearly everyone knows this movie.. it was the first Japanese movie I've ever watched and really popular but I wanted to review it anyways~

デスノート (Death Note) is a Japanese movie based on a manga series. It was followed by two more movies, Death Note: The Last Name and L: Change The World. The first movie was released in 2006.

Story: A Shinigami, a God of Death, drops a Death Note in the human world where Light Yagami finds it. "The human whose name is written in this book shall die" it says. Light decides to try if it really works by using the names of released criminals - and finds out that it's true. He decides to create a new ideal world.
Meanwhile the police figures out a pattern since all the criminals die of a heart attack and there are no leads around. Detective "L" was placed in a police force to help solving the mysterious case, and he somehow gets closer to Light..

Cast: There's a bunch of people included in the cast. At first we have Tatsuya Fujiwara as Light Yagami (yes, I know that usually in Japan the last name comes first but I'll just leave it like this because I think it's easier for most people). And his opponent L is played by Kenichi Matsuyama. I have to admit that I still can't choose who I think is cooler. I have to admit that actually Light has some things that speak for him.
Then there's Asaka Seto as Naomi Misora. She also becomes an opponent of Light and she also figures out that he's kira. That becomes obvious when she brings Yu Kashii as Shiori Kashino, a girl who's pretty close to Light into the game.
Not that important in the first movie but still one of the most important characters in the whole series is Erika Toda as Misa Amane.
Of course there are many many more characters but it would take ages to list all of them on here and I think this should be enough for now.

So this movie got a 9/10 rating from me, it's probably one of my most watched movies and I seriously like it a lot. It's a great movie for fans of crime and fantasy stories as well as manga and anime fans and the duel between Light and L is awesome to watch.
Oh, and I love the Shinigami, Ryuuk. Shinigami and apples - if you know the movie/anime/manga, you'll get this. Ryuuk is such a great and funny part of this movie. And I don't think he's scary at all though he looks a little.. strange.