Mystery Trilogy Special
This mystery special consists of three thrilling stories by three notable writers.
Kentaro Otani
Yasuharu Ishii
Yoshinori Kobayashi
Takashi Arikawa
Casts & Crew
Naoki Matayoshi
Kirin Kiki
Naomi Zaizen
Renn Kiriyama
Miori Takimoto
Noriko Nakagoshi
Toshihide Tonesaku
Yûta Nakano
Kanji Tsuda
Ken Mitsuishi
Juri Ueno
Kenta Hamano
Azusa Babazono
Misa Shimizu
Rei Dan
Makiko Watanabe
Yuri Nakamura
Ayumu Nakajima
Hidekazu Mashima
Hisako Ôkata
Meikyô Yamada
Midoriko Kimura
Also Directed by Kentaro Otani
Takarada, a member of a group of swindlers which has reunited to pull off a big caper involving down comforters, shoddy encyclopedias, and a panda suit. However, the actual scam they’re about to run takes a back seat to the trust issues between the group.
Transfer student Biito “Beat” Mizorogi, talented in fashion design, bring classmates together to stage a fashion show for the school's annual festival.
Dollmaker Haruhiko Kasukabe, nicknamed Haru-san, lost his wife Ruriko in an airplane crash 22 years ago and has been living with his only daughter Furi since then. It is the day of Furi's wedding. However, Furi only told Haruhiko about the wedding a month before. Since the bridegroom had some trouble at his overseas job, he was only able to return to Japan the day of the wedding, so Haruhiko has not met him even once. What kind of man did Furi choose to marry, and why did she hide such an important thing for so long...!? Haruhiko, worrying over all this, shuts himself in his room and decides not to go to the wedding... then, something completely unexpected happens to him. His late wife Ruriko appears before him. The truth is, she has appeared at Haruhiko's side many times before. What could be Ruriko's goal...
A high school girl, Sei Saotome, unexpectedly is transferred to an elite high school in Nagano prefecture due to her parents' house-moving. One day, she meets Mizuki and Taiyo, and is invited to join astronomy club with them. The personalities of two boys are completely opposite from each other. Sei, Mizuki and Taiyo struggle with sorrowful and impatient love-triangle...
Mizuho recently took over an eatery in Nago, Okinawa, which was left to her by her grandmother. She single-handedly runs “Gajimaru Diner” named after the large, deeply-rooted Gajimaru (banyan) tree in the area. Eventually, circumstances lead to her being brought together with an unknown traveler names Hayato, her ex-boyfriend Shota who had lived in Tokyo for the past seven years, and a beautiful woman named Riko.
A drama about young adults and the importance of text messaging on their love lives. In the drama, Han Seung Ho is a Korean foreign student who moves in with, Miu, his friend. Han Seung Ho wants to send a message to his first love in Japanese, but because his Japanese is weak, he enlists the help of Miu to write the texts. Through this relationship, the two end up in love.
40-year-old Asakura Hazuki works for a big publishing company and is the editor of the female magazine ‘Us’. However, the magazine is discontinued. Hazuki's contract with the publishing company is not renewed and she ends up losing her job. To make matters worse, she breaks up with Kosuke, her boyfriend of seven years, and is pressed for the loan on designer goods which she bought on a spree. At 40, Hazuki is on the verge of losing everything. At that moment, she happens to get scouted to be a bus guide on Ahiru Bus, a city sightseeing tour which she has boarded. She is plunged into the completely foreign world of female bus guides. Hazuki aims to turn her life around as she journeys around a rapidly changing Tokyo. -
On Christmas day, a bomb explodes in a shopping mall. The explosion was perpetrated by a serial bomber. A 9-year-old boy Kuro Hazama and his mother Mitsuko (Naho Toda) are seriously and transfered to a university hospital. With the elite skills of surgeon Dr. Jontaro Honma (Masachika Ichimura), Kuro survives, but is shocked to learn his mother is in a coma. Dr. Honma tells Tokio that when medical science advances, Michiko might one day awake. Tokio decides then to become a doctor. 15 years later, 24-year-old Kuro is a medical student and his mother is still in a coma. Kuro researches ways to awaken his mother whilst practising medicine without a licence.
Go, Masao! describes the relationship between people and their dogs. Comedian Hideki Matsumoto and a labrador retriever named Masao are selected to appear on the travel corner segment of a TV animal program. Until Hideki Matsumoto and the labrador retriever Masao become popular, they help each other.
Doctor Rie (Miho Kanno) is know as the Joan of Ark of Obstetrics & Gynecology. She works in a challenging environment with clinics shutting down due to lack of doctors and the system itself breaking down. Dr. Rie then helps an infertile woman conceive with a surrogate mother which is prohibited in Japan...
Also Directed by Yasuharu Ishii
The setting of the drama takes place 10 years after the F4 graduated from Eitoku Academy. Edogawa Oto is the daughter of a former company president. Her life completely changed after their family business went bankrupt. Her fiance is Hase Tenma, the popular student council president of the rival school. With declining enrollment due to a recession and the rise of a rival school, Eitoku Academy is now ruled by the Correct5 whose leader is Kakuragi Haruto. The group seeks out, then runs out, any students whose families haven’t made appropriate donations to the school. When Haruto and Oto discover each other’s secrets — that Haruto buys self-help items to get stronger, and that Oto is poor and works at a convenience store – they promise to keep each other’s secret.
A series of events leads single, 25 year old Mikuri Moriyama and 36 year old Hiramasa Tsuzaki to marry as a cover.
At the age of 10, Shin Tamura’s happy family life was torn apart when his policeman father was sentenced to death and imprisoned for murder. Now, some 30 years later, Shin is determined to prove his father’s innocence by solving the mystery at the heart of the case. Finding himself transported back in time, Shin must uncover the shocking truth, change the past, and restore his family’s happiness.
Sunako is very happy living her life in the darkness of her room, with her skeleton friends and her horror movies to keep her company. The darkness she so loves is pierced brightly by four dazzling young men, who come to live in the same mansion as her, and she soon realizes that they have orders from her aunt to do anything to turn her into a prim and proper lady.
Smile is a Japanese television drama series, shown on TBS started last April 17, 2009. Jun Matsumoto plays the lead role of Vito, a half-Filipino, half-Japanese man who always smiles despite all of the problems and difficulties he faces. the series focus on foreigners and mixed race children who suffered from racism
Kurosaki is a young man whose family was destroyed by swindlers. Despite that, Kurosaki grows up to become a con artist known as Kurosagi. As Kurosagi, he swindles other con artists and returns the money to the original victim. He works with the master swindler Katsuragi Toshio even though Toshio had a hand in the destruction of Kurosaki's family. Kurosaki's life begins to change when he meets Yoshikawa Tsurara, a young law student who disapproves of his disrespect of the law. Can she persuade Kurosaki to give up swindling and his quest for revenge?
"Ouroboros" is an ancient symbol that depicts a snake eating its own tail - meaning infinity. Based on a popular comic, a clumsy detective and a cool gang stand up to true evil. Ikuo and Tatsuya grew up in a children's orphanage together. When their favorite teacher, Yuiko, is murdered, a policeman wearing a gold watch covers up the incident. Ikuo and Tatsuya promise each other to avenge their teacher someday. Twenty years later, Ikuo is a detective in Shinjuku second police station investigating various cases with elite detective - Mizuki, while smart and handsome Tatsuya has become one of the top members of a gang group.
Shinzanmono is a detective Japanese television drama, part of the Spring 2010 season of the Japanese TBS Network. It is based on the latest novel in the "Kyoichiro Kaga" series by mystery author Keigo Higashino and is set and filmed in the Ningyo-cho area of Nihonbashi, Tokyo. This series was followed by a special "Akai Yubi" aired on January 3, 2011 and a feature film The Wings of the Kirin, released on January 28, 2012.
Ryūsei no Kizuna is a novel by mystery writer Keigo Higashino and also a Japanese television drama adapted from the novel. The novel was released on March 5, 2008, after being serialized in Weekly Gendai from September 16, 2006 until September 15, 2007. With the opening theme "Beautiful days" by Arashi and the insert song "Orion" by Mika Nakashima, the drama series began on October 17, 2008.
Tottori Kenichi is a foul-mouthed but gifted veterinarian nicknamed Dolittle. His catch phrase is 'pet care means business'. He is the director of his animal clinic and rescues not only 'voiceless' pets but also helps their owners, who lack understanding and caution, with their problems and worries. Working with him is animal nurse Tajima Asuka. Hanabishi Masaru is Dolittle's rival, a charismatic vet and director of another animal hospital who has not only an opposite personality but also a different stance towards pet care.
Also Directed by Yoshinori Kobayashi
Kiyoshi, a brilliant detective, inquiries on mysterious cases with his childhood friend, Ishioka, a novelist.
When a devoted detective probes the suspicious death of her father, she uncovers massive corruption and finds herself in grave danger.
“Zouka no Mitsu” portrays the story of a beautiful criminal (Dan), who makes incomprehensible demands, saying, “If you want to pay, you decide the amount.” Tanabe will play the role of detective Hashiba, who tracks the criminal down.
A pet groomer at a salon in Shirogane, Nogami Meiko has a lot of celebrity dog-lovers as customers. She cheerfully serves customers with care, and her skills are tried and tested. The salon's owner, Kotomi, has a strong faith in her, and she is admired by her colleagues. Meiko leads a quiet and fulfilling life... however, there is another side to her. She has a plan for revenge that she must accomplish. In truth, when she was 19, she was imprisoned for murder but there was also another side to this case. And just as she's about to execute her plan, she meets a man named Mashima Takuro. She acts mysteriously around him and for some reason, he makes her feel better. Is he the only miscalculation to her? Or a reckoning?
Monster parents-a neologism that denotes parents who repeatedly make unreasonable demands to their children’s school and prevent it from functioning normally. Takamura Itsuki is the ace lawyer of a major law firm. One day, she is assigned on a case requested by a school board, and learns of the existence of "monster parents." She meets a parent who wants the school to fire a teacher with a dialect for fear that he may exert bad influence on her child, a parent who insists that her son get a regular position on the soccer team, a parent who refuses to pay the lunch fee because it doesn’t taste good and so on. She is, at first, reluctant about this case, but gradually becomes determined to solve the problems.
Suzuki is an eccentric at university hospital who has been conducting a research to come up with a miracle drug for cancer on his own. One day, Suzuki finally succeeds in developing a new type of anticancer drug that completely hinders the self-renewal of all cancer stem cells. However, his colleagues do not seem to share his excitement, and he is not even allowed to carry out clinical trial on humans. Suzuki is disheartened and completely at a loss by this but then he comes across a girl, Manami, who is suffering from terminal cancer. With help from her, he successfully carries out clinical trial. Yet, things take an unexpected turn. What will become of Suzuki, Manami and all the others around them? What is the fate of this new drug? Pandora's box released all the evils as soon as it was opened. What is it that is ultimately left inside?
Motoharu Akiyama is an elite pilot who has just completed astronaut training at NASA. Something happened in his past that caused him to go out searching for the meaning and purpose of life. However, he hasn't been able to find a satisfactory reply and the void in his heart has only expanded. But Akiyama has a meeting that changes his life. He meets Reiko Nishina, a director at an investment bank, who is looking at investing in an attempt at the first Japanese space shuttle launch. Although the meeting was pure chance, it affects Reiko greatly. She realizes that although it looks like she has everything, there is something she wants that she doesn't have. And this meeting has an effect on those around them also...
A young daughter (Mana Ashida) supports her father (Etsushi Toyokawa) who is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.