redid this gif :)

Long Vacation: Episode 10 (1996)

Hero: Episode 2 (2001)

My 5 Favorite Legal J-Dramas

I love them because they have perfect balance of seriousness and humour, not too dark and not too comedic. And the chemistry of the main leads are fun to watch with their constant bickering. 😂

1. Hero (2001)

Kuryu (Kimura Takuya) is an unconventional prosecutor who has a habit of investigating the criminals himself before prosecuting, which agitates his paralegal, Amamiya (Matsu Takako) has it delays the process while more cases are piling up, and often conflicts with the police who thinks he does not trust their investigation skills.

The series is so good that it has a second season with a newcomer played by Keiko Kitagawa, a special episode with Haruka Ayase and a movie with both Keiko Kitagawa and Matsu Takako. I like their chemistry, not just between the main leads but the supporting characters as well that got pulled into Kimura Takuya's shenanigans.

2. Miss Justice (2018)

A similar tale of a public prosecutor, Ririko (Yoshitaka Yuriko) whose strong sense of justice get in her daily work as she takes time to solve each cases diligently, playing the role of a "detective" to ascertain that the suspects are really guilty before she prosecutes them. However, it only delays her other cases which snowballs.

This agitates her older and experienced paralegal (Yasuda Ken) who is tasked to ensure she completes each task on time without delay. But over time, both him and the entire department who got pulled into her shenanigans finally understands her reasoning and begin to respect her as a fellow prosecutor and not as a newbie.

3. Police and Prosecutor (2023)

Gota (Kiritani Kenta) and Minami (Higa Manami) are siblings who work as a law enforcer and a paralegal respectively. She works for an ambitious public prosecutor, Shuhei (Higashide Masahiro) whose values and principles are opposite of Gota, which often puts them at odds with one another when they work together on every case.

While Minami and Shuhei know the grey world in their line of work, Gota is a brash detective who only sees thing in black and white which often puts them at odds with one another. But their opposing personalities and styles of work eventually help to solve the cases in arresting and prosecuting the right criminal.

4. Ishiko and Haneo (2022)

Ishiko (Kasumi Arimura) is an obstinate law graduate who aspired to be a lawyer but after failing the bar four times, she gives up her dreams and works as a paralegal at her father's private law firm where she met the prodigy Haneo (Nakamura Tomoya) who passed the bar on first attempt due to his photographic memory.

Ishiko is a bit insecure in having to work with a prodigy while Haneo is actually terrible at adapting that he often mask it with his "superior intellectual". Their different personalities and styles of working contradict each other as the two of them, with their own inferiority complexes, are thrown together to solve cases.

5. Binta : Love and Law (2022)

Minowa (Matsumoto Toshio) is a former delinquent who doesn't have a regular job and never really thought seriously about life until he had to look after his young step-sister left behind by his late father. He lands a job as clerk, working for a strong headed lawyer, Natsumi (Yamaguchi Sayaka) who is dumbfounded by his "stupidity".

But his strong sense of justice is a welcoming change that she needed having work in a corporate law firm surrounded by "vultures" that the two decided to start their own private firm to genuinely help people that really need help and not simply for the big money. But with each case, they realize things are not as simple as they think.

Confessions (2010)

ロングバケーション (1996)

takako kimura’s kawaii microcosmos

* dad - joseph lavoie (takuya kimura)  * mom - barbara lavoie (takako matsu) * brother - andrew ‘andy’ lavoie (masaki suda)  * grandma - dorothy lavoie (hideko takamine) 

Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2004) Cast: Yuya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura, Mamoko Shimizu, Hanae Kan, You, Kazuyoshi Kushida, Yukiko Okamoto, Sei Hiraizumi, Ryo Kase, Takako Tate, Yuichi Kimura, Ken'ichi Endo, Susumu Terajima. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Yutaka Yamazaki. Production design: Toshihiro Isomi, Keiko Mitsumatsu. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Gontiti. Like his Shoplifters (2018), Hirokazu Koreeda's film is about a family in crisis. Not a dysfunctional family in the usual sense -- the families in both films function fairly well until the crisis -- but families that function despite not exactly being families. The one in Nobody Knows consists entirely of four children, ages 5 to 12. When the film starts there is a fifth member, their mother, but she's still a child herself, so hedonistic and irresponsible that she abandons them, leaving the oldest, Akira, in charge of his four siblings -- or rather quarter-siblings, since each of them has a different father. How Akira and the others managed to develop enough maturity and self-control to survive on their own in a Tokyo apartment is one of the unsolved mysteries of the film, but we somehow never question it as we live through the better part of a year with them. That's partly because Koreeda maintains a child's-eye view throughout the film, treating their efforts to stay together at all costs as an essential. We may sometimes think they'd be better off if the authorities learned about their situation, that they then might get the schooling and nutrition they deserve to become functioning adults. But when a friend suggests that they go to social services or the police, Akira rejects it out of hand: They would be separated, he says. It happened once before and it was a big mess. Togetherness is all. Eventually, the worst happens, but even then they take it in stride, and as the film ends the remaining children stay together somehow. Nobody Knows is a tearjerker and a heartbreaker, but it's also a tribute to the will to survive, made powerful by the remarkable performances of the very young actors, especially Yuya Yagira as Akira, who was 14 when he won the best actor award at Cannes -- the youngest person ever to do so.

Long Vacation, Episode 10

Kimura Takuya as Sena Hidetoshi

Matsu Takako as Okusawa Ryoko

Hero episode 8 (2001)

My Top 3 Favourite 90s J-Dramas

1. Beach Boys / ビーチボーイズ

Hiromi (Sorimachi Takashi) is a drifter who drifts through life without a purpose not knowing what he wants in life until he arrives at a seaside inn and fell in love with the sea that he works at the inn.

Kaito (Takenouchi Yutaka) is a top corporate ace that suffers a burnout after an incident at work that he takes a vacation at the same inn where he decides to quit his job and work there with Hiromi.

Makoto (Hirosue Ryoko) is a high schooler whose parents have divorced and she is left in the care of her grandfather who is the inn's owner. She find her life more vibrant since the duo arrives.

It's a story of three individuals, each with their own baggages of life, wondering what the future holds for them as they try to make the best of the present, which they know won't last forever.

2. Long Vacation / ロングバケーション

Sena (Kimura Takuya) is an aspiring pianist who struggles to achieve his dreams while working as a piano teacher and gets look down by his students who thinks he has no music skills.

Hayama (Yamaguchi Tomoko) is freelance model who struggles to find modeling opportunities as she grows older and her life turned upside down after she got dumped by her fiance.

The two end up living in the same apartment with affordable rent as they try to make sense of their lives and decides to take it as a "long vacation" from life to enjoy the present instead of worrying.

It's a story of two individuals struggling through life to achieve their dreams and contemplates giving them up in order to pursue something else in life or a day job just to survive.

3. Love Generation / ラブジェネレーション

Teppei (Kimura Takuya) is creative designer who got transferred to the sales department and struggles to adapt to the different work scope and rigid corporate setting and working environment.

Riko (Matsu Takako) is an office clerk working in the sales department who begins to get attracted to him but realises that he already have his eyes on someone he could never call his own.

By the time Teppei realises he had fallen for Riko whom he had spent a lot of time with and grew comfortable with, she was already set for an arranged marriage in her hometown.

It's a story of two individuals who are confused by love, each unsure if the feelings they have for each other are really love or just loneliness that yearns for each other's company in life.

90s J-Dramas just hit different, with the air of nostalgia, memorable songs, relatable life stories, characters with strong chemistry and perfect comedy timings. They make you smile and teary eyed.

Takako Kimura, Bear, Celestial Sphere, 2009

Thorax - Takako Kimura - Kannagi