Change (j-drama Spring 2008)

[Guest shinhaku]

this drama is rather funny. i like it better than gokusen 3 which has a higher rating but every episode is the same as the previous seasons. i wonder if there'll be a romance between Miyama and Keita. Miyama x Keita interaction is quite amusing. Kimura looks rather tanned, i was shocked at how tanned he was in the 1st ep XD

[Guest tokio]

i really hope someone could tell us where we can watch it. i really love Takuya...^^sad to hear that this show isnt getting that much ratings but give it time. Anyways love to see it, looks like it will be cute but intriguing throughout

[Guest dionne_wu]

CHANGE's ratings dropped slightly to 23% for its second episode, while Gokusen 3’s season-low rating of 21.1% this week may give the Kimura Takuya drama a chance to catch up.

[Amethyst]

I just seen episode 2. Ha ha ha it was so funny. Guys you should watch it although I am a bit confused to the government system but it was an enlightment.

Well as I thought they will make him a puppet PM, let see if its going to be like that! looking forward for episode 3.

Guys english subs of this drama is uploaded in d-addicts.

[Guest jade_frost]

Episode 3 Synopsis

Asakura Keita goes from elementary school teacher to a new member of the Diet after winning the by-election by a narrow margin. At that moment, Prime Minister Ukai Takehiko, who has had the lowest approval ratings in history, at last announces his resignation. As various speculations make their rounds, Keita is hit with an unbelievable situation.

Keita has been asked by Kanbayashi Shoichi, the chairman of the Seiyu Party, to run in the presidential election. He has already secured the support of senior party members. Despite Keita's bewilderment, the party's young Diet members place their confidence in him. Ubukata Tsuneo and the others want the voices of young people to be heard, adding to the referees for Keita. For whose sake am I becoming a politician? What should I do? ... Keita visits Nagano to see his students ... perhaps in a bid to find these answers. Miyama Rika chases after Keita.

The children, who haven't met Keita in a long while, think that politicians do bad things because of money and self-interest. Keita promises that he won't become such a politician. Then, the children naively tell him that if that's the case, he should become the Prime Minister.

That night, Rika comes to Keita's favourite star gazing spot. Rika is actually under Kanbayashi's orders to get Keita to run in the presidential election. She persuades him by telling him how she wanted to be a politician and Keita at last makes the decision to run.

And the last day of the speeches for the presidential election arrives. Keita's weapon against the veteran candidates is that he sees politics from the same angle as the people. Also encouraged by his mother, Takae, Keita, who is speaking what he feels, promises the audience that the political path he will follow to the end will be with the same consciousness as the people. Those words move the crowd.

As a result, Keita wins the presidential election with a sweeping victory and also receives the prime ministerial nomination from both houses of the Diet. At the Prime Minister's official residence, Keita, who is gingerly sitting on the Prime Minister's chair, receives a congratulatory fax from the US President. And at that same moment, Kanbayashi's mobile phone rings with a call from the US President ...

[Guest HollyBeth]

Where can I watch this at?? I was surfing the net and wanted to dl this from a site, but it won't play..

Can someone please tell me where I can watch this at? I want to see Kimura.. Thanks for the help

I can't wait to see this.. Is there a way that I can direct down load this???

[Guest HollyBeth]

Sorry,,

I just found a site for the show.. It was great.. I am so looking forward to seeing the rest of "Change"...

It's just great to see that they can be funny, serious and dramatic at the same time. I wish Kimura

good luck...

[Guest dysfunkti0nal]

Hmm my friend has been raving about this drama. Maybe I'll watch it xD

[Guest nelly]

you guys can watch it at anzv.tv

they have 2 episodes so far and it's subbed.

[Guest jade_frost]

Episode 4 Trailer

"Everything about me is the same as everyone else." Asakura Keita's speech before the people touches their hearts. He wins the presidential election, becoming the president of Seiyu Party and is installed as the 92nd prime minister of Japan - the youngest-ever in the country's history.

Even when Keita goes to the gents, he is accompanied by security personnel. His secretary, Miyama Rika, becomes his senior aide, as well as followed by four administrative secretaries who are her seniors. This is undeniably difficult to Rika.

Keita has to quickly get round to forming a Cabinet but because he knows nothing, he entrusts the entire formation of the Cabinet to Kanbayashi Shoichi. The young Diet members, who were counting on Keita, start feeling disenchanted that he does what Kanbayashi tells him.

Keita's new life as prime minister doesn't stop there. There are various documents from each ministry brought in just for the prime minister's signature. The inauguration, press conference, every possible cabinet meeting and a minute-to-minute schedule is foisted upon Keita. Furthermore, Keita has to start on the draft policy speech. Rika says he just has to sign without having to read the documents but Keita's gaze stops at a one of them. The words "suffering", "civil lawsuit against the government", "country doesn't accept responsibility" jump out at him ...

[forevergirl]

Im definitely gonna watch this, aside that I like the synopsis, and I like the actor TAKUYA KIMURA, he got my attention in his drama PRIDE, like the way he winks and I think He's HOT in that series..MAYBE!

[Guest HollyBeth]

Im definitely gonna watch this, aside that I like the synopsis, and I like the actor TAKUYA KIMURA, he got my attention in his drama PRIDE, like the way he winks and I think He's HOT in that series..MAYBE!

forevergirl, I agree that Kimura is HOT... Honey, he never ages.. haha... I really liked him in Hero.. Why can't he be my PM????? Why?????? I'd vote for him ASAP......

Looking forward to seeing Ep 3....

[Amethyst]

Ahhhh I can't stop myself, I read jade_frost episode 4 trailer summary now I'm totally desparate to see the episode 3 & 4.

[Guest shinhaku]

thank you for ep 4 trailer spoiler XD this is one of my fav drama this season!

[Guest jade_frost]

Episode 4 Synopsis

"Everything about me is the same as everyone else." Asakura Keita's speech before the people touches their hearts. He wins the presidential election, becoming the president of Seiyu Party and is installed as the 92nd prime minister of Japan - the youngest-ever in the country's history.

Even when Keita goes to the gents, he is accompanied by security personnel. His secretary, Miyama Rika, becomes his senior aide, as well as followed by four administrative secretaries who are her seniors. This is undeniably difficult to Rika.

Keita has to quickly get round to forming a Cabinet but because he knows nothing, he entrusts the entire formation of the Cabinet to Kanbayashi Shoichi. The young Diet members, who were counting on Keita, start feeling disenchanted that he does what Kanbayashi tells him.

Keita's new life as prime minister doesn't stop there. There are various documents from each ministry brought in just for the prime minister's signature. The inauguration, press conference, every possible cabinet meeting and a minute-to-minute schedule is foisted upon Keita. Furthermore, Keita has to start on the draft policy speech. Rika says he just has to sign without having to read the documents but Keita's gaze stops at a one of them. The words "suffering", "civil lawsuit against the government", "country doesn't accept responsibility" jump out at him. This is the legal proceedings that fishermen downstream have filed against the country because they can no longer fish as a result of the large numbers of jellyfish following the construction of a dam.

Keita says he can't sign it if he doesn't understand the situation so he summons the government officials and starts pursuing the issue. Nirasawa begins conducting a site investigation. Then, a staggering amount of documents are brought into the Prime Minister's Office by the officials to give Keita a hard time. Even so, he sacrifices his sleep to read the documents until he can understand what is going on. If the country loses one lawsuit, it will also lose the other issues one after another ... Kanbayashi is displeased with Keita's stance. So he asks Onoda Asao, who had been the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport at the time the dam was constructed, to persuade Keita.

Onoda accedes but responds that it is for the country's sake and not because of Kanbayashi's request. He goes to the Prime Minister's Office attempting to persuade Keita but finds himself being told that compensation is only natural if something wrong is done. Keita says that he had pledged to handle affairs of the state with the same perspective as everyone else. Seeing Keita's strong will, Onoda recalls the time when he entered politics. He tells Keita the name of the scholar who studied the association of large numbers of jellyfish with the dam construction.

With Onoda's assistance, a reinvestigation is opened. In the end, the country withdraws its appeal. Kanbayashi feels irritated that he couldn't bend Keita to do his will.

[feje210]

jade_frost: thank you very much for the synopsis of episode 4. now i can understand the story of episode 4 that i saw yesterday. i like the story so far and of course takuya's acting is good too, were in he give justice to his character as asakura keita.

[Guest jade_frost]

Episode 5 Trailer

Asakura Keita is extremely busy as Prime Minister. However, one day, there's a gap in his schedule and he takes a day off. Keita wants to see the sights in Tokyo but the security plan can't be ready on time so he has abandon the idea of going. Even so Keita yearns to go to a donut shop he ate at previously.

His wish is somehow granted through Miyama Rika's arrangement. However, just at the moment that he is going out with Nirasawa Katsutoshi and Miyamoto Hikaru, something unexpected happens. The daughter that Nirasawa had with the wife he had split up with a year ago says she will be coming to visit. Knowing of his daughter's sudden visit, Nirasawa slumps.

At that moment, the front door bell rings. It is Nirasawa's daughter ... and also the US trade representative Harry Bingham! Because Bingham had been denied by the Japanese on the Japan-US Structural Impediments Initiative, he says that he wants to discuss the matter directly with Keita, the Prime Minister.

[Guest shinhaku]

this drama is getting better every ep! dont know why the rating is going down. the latest ep was so hilarious. I love all the main characters in there XD

[Guest jade_frost]

It might be lousy, but political TV drama 'Change' lives up to its title

By PHILIP BRASOR, Japan Times

Pre-premiere hype is important for Japanese TV drama series since their broadcast runs tend to be limited to 13 weeks. They don't have time to build an audience the way more open-ended series do in the West. As many people as possible have to tune in right from the start.

Fuji TV's "Change" (Monday, 9 p.m.) has it easier than most since it stars Takuya Kimura, the most bankable actor in Japan. The opening episodes of all his series since 1998 have ranked at the top of the ratings charts. More significantly, the news that Kimura, who tends to play strong silent types in glamorous professions, was going to take on the role of a nerdy public schoolteacher elevated to the position of Japan's youngest prime minister, made the series more topical since it seemed he would be playing against type.

But around March, rumors started circulating that the show wouldn't be ready by mid-April, when all the other spring drama series would start. Some weekly magazines speculated that the delay was due to unfinished scripts, while others thought the producers wanted to avoid a head-to-head confrontation with "Gokusen," a Nihon TV series that was also a guaranteed ratings winner even though it was scheduled for a different night.

The jitters seemed to be justified when the May 12 premiere of "Change" came in second to "Gokusen" in that week's ratings race. The left-leaning weekly Kinyobi said the show's writing was characterized by "poor imagination and low intelligence," and derided the casting of Kimura, who had admitted in interviews that he was uninterested in politics. The more conservative Shukan Bunshun was just as scathing. The reporter called the first episode "devoid of content" and complained that Kimura's character, Keita Asakura, doesn't rise to Japan's highest office through ambition and vision, but rather because he is the scion of a political dynasty. Even worse, he's totally ignorant of the workings of politics and government. What could be more incredible?

There's more than a touch of schadenfreude in these verdicts, and while "Change" suffers from the poor pacing and lackluster direction common to all Japanese TV dramas, contrary to Bunshun's contention that the story "reveals nothing" about its subject, it does give the impression that the producers did their homework, and not just because they secured permission to use actual Nagata-cho facilities for location shooting.

In the first episode, Asakura's father, a Diet lawmaker from Fukuoka, and older brother are killed in an airplane crash. The ruling Seiyu party has to find a replacement and pressures Keita, an awkward elementary school teacher working in Nagano Prefecture, to run for the empty seat. Keita is estranged from his family and disillusioned with politics, but agrees because he believes he will lose.

During the campaign, he's coached by Rika Miyama (Eri Fukatsu), the representative of the party bigwigs in Tokyo, and the hired "election planner," Nirasawa (Hiroshi Abe), to do things by the book. But when his opponent brings up a 20-year-old scandal involving his late father, Keita bucks his handlers and admits publicly that he believes his father did once accept a bribe, which was why he vowed never to enter politics. This uncommon show of candor wins him the election, though only by a few hundred votes.

We already know that Asakura's rise is being stage-managed by Miyama's boss, Kanbayashi (Akira Terao), a party executive, for reasons that have little to do with change. Like the current ruling coalition, the Seiyu Party is unpopular and trying to avoid a general election that might remove it from power. When the boorish prime minister (Shiro Ito) is forced to step down due to a sexual-harassment accusation, Kanbayashi cultivates Asakura for the post of party president. Despite his lack of political experience, he is very attractive to the public. After only a week in Tokyo, he's a star in the women's magazines and on the wide shows. Kanbayashi's plan is to install Asakura as prime minister to boost the popularity of the party, after which a general election can be called and a more seasoned party member — himself, presumably — will step in.

The cynicism inherent in this plan sounds familiar to anyone who follows what goes on in Nagata-cho, and you don't have to be a psychic to see where the plot is going. The party expects a good-looking puppet, but Asakura will rebel in favor of what he believes is right — what's best for "the kids," as he always puts it — and thus bring about the "change" that Japan needs. By the fourth episode he is already locking horns with the bureaucracy, which is shown to be smug and out of touch, over a dam project that threatens the livelihoods of local fishermen. And he does it completely on his own, carrying out his own research, seemingly in the space of 24 hours. At that rate, Asakura will probably be signing a nonaggression pact with Kim Jong Il by episode nine.

The point of Asakura is that he's both innocent of the normal machinations of Nagata-cho and dedicated to "keeping his promise to the people." It's hardly an original idea, and given Kimura's limitations as an actor and the sentimental detours the script often makes, it doesn't promise to be a compelling one either. At worst, the series could turn into a pale imitation of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," but at best it could remind viewers, in a way that's easy to digest, of the self-serving nature of politics and how it's led to the current malaise in government. Whether or not Kimura's legions of fans take such knowledge to heart and vote the bums out of office is another thing, but in the end "Change" could do us all some good.

[RanP]

I must say I didn't have high expectation at 1st when I heard it's about politic & all but now I just LOVE it XD so hilarious lol the cast is amazing; the storyline seems more simple than I thought, easy to follow ^__^