Tiger & Dragon

タイガー＆ドラゴン (Tiger & Dragon) is a Japanese drama series that aired on TBS from April 15th to June 24th 2005 and consists of 11 episodes. It also has a special episode that was aired on January 9th 2005.

Story: The story evolves around two different worlds, yakuza and rakugo, that become combined and entangled through family and friendship in this drama. Toraji Yamazaki is a yakuza and belongs to the Ryuseikai Shinjuku but dreams of becoming a rakugo story teller while Ryuji Yanaka is the son of a rakugo master and a fashion designer with a quite unique taste in fashion who quit rakugo a long time ago even though he has talent. As they both face difficulties and meet various people their bond of 'Tiger and Dragon' keeps intact most of the time.

Cast: In the very first place the acting in this drama was not supposed to be taken serious since it is a comedy so I can't say much about how well/realistic the actors can do their job. Tomoya Nagase as Tora was a character in this drama that I personally wanted to fulfill his dream. The acting made him literally seem like a tiger occasionally but that was one of the main points of the drama.
Junichi Okada as Ryuji was somehow a pitiful character I seriously couldn't get myself to like. The character was written a little bit too.. much from time to time. I remember scenes in which it just had me shaking my head.
Misaki Ito as Megumi certainly did have her part in this but her character was also some cliché kind of female. Pretty but not the smartest. I think she acted well in her part.
Toshiyuki Nishida as Shokichi Yanaka or Hayashiyatei Donbei (note that I left this order because turning the last name and given name around would sound weird in the case of such a long last name I think) was a fatherly figure that also did kinda well in his role. Takashi Tsukamoto as Ginjiro Nakatani is the clueless son of the leader of the Ryuseikai Shinjuku. As a character he was very likeable in his clumsy way at first and improved a lot, the acting also showed his change in character well in the end.
Other actors in this drama include Yu Aoi as Risa, Tsubaki Nekoze as Tsuruko Yanaka, Sadao Abe as Ryuhei Yanaka/Donta, Yosuke Asari as Susumu Murata/Udon, Gen Hoshino as Dontsuku and Yoshiyoshi Arakawa as Jumptei Jump.

Soundtrack: The opening song "Tiger & Dragon" was recorded by Crazy Ken Band. While I personally still don't really like the song I think the vocalist has a kind of voice that suits the song well.
The ending was "UTAO-UTAO" by V6. Personally I do like this song a lot more than the opening and I would occasionally listen to it just for fun, too, I think.


This drama gave me a hard time thinking about the rating. While I did like it somehow and didn't have a hard time finishing it - it failed as a comedy for me. Hence I rated it as 6/10 because it honestly didn't even make me laugh once. It wasn't bad though and as a kind of satirical drama about family, yakuza and friendship it would most likely get a better rating. However, if you want to watch it don't hesitate to do so. I think even though this drama might not be a comedy everyone likes there are aspects others might find interesting except for the jokes.

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.