Kenchô no hoshi (2006)

Director:

Hiroshi Nishitani

Writers:

Nozomi Katsura (novel)
Shinsuke Sato (screenplay)

Release Date:

25 February 2006 (Japan)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Plot Keywords:

Pork Barrel Politics | Civil Servant | Supermarket | Working Class | Espirit De Corps

Cast

Yûji Oda	...	Satoshi Nomura
Kou Shibasaki	...	Aki Ninomiya
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bengaru	...	Kazuyoshi Kurusu
Gaku Hamada	...	Manabu Aki
Hisashi Igawa	...	Kanji Shimizu
Kôji Ishizaka	...	Hitoshi Koga
Mahiru Konno	...	Takako Shinozaki
Toru Masuoka	...	Takao Asano
Jin Nakayama	...	Taketsugu Shinozaki
Seiji Nôtsuka
Setsutan Oh	...	Reimi Kim
Kaoru Okunuki	...	Hiromi Sato
Wakako Sakai	...	Yuriko Ogura
Kuranosuke Sasaki	...	Keita Sakurai
Toshihiro Wada	...	Kyoichi Hamaoka
Ken'ichi Yajima	...	Yasuo Kitamura
Sayaka Yamaguchi	...	Mika Tabata

Also Known As:

Star Reformer (International: English title)
The Star of Prefecture Government (International: English title)

Runtime:

Japan:131 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Hong Kong:I | Japan:G

Filming Locations:

Takahashi, Okayama, Japan

Company:

Fuji Television Network

Along comes a drama that changes everything..........

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Satoshi Nomura, a top-level bureaucrat of a prefecture government, has passion for his career. One day, he applied for and was hired by the fixed-term personnel exchange training between public and private businesses. This personnel exchange training is part of some big prefecture project. This project is very big, so success of this personnel exchange training will probably determine his career. 7 or 8 members of this personnel exchange training went to different workplaces. Nomura went to a supermarket called "Mantendo". But Mantendo had many problems and was in danger of closing. His bureaucratic training wasn't useful in the smaller, private company and he didn't have a very good relationship with his co-workers, especially Aki Ninomiya who was a younger part-time worker, who also happened to be his trainer. As if that wasn't enough, during his troubles at Mantendo, he lost his position in the prefecture project and was dumped by his fiancé. Things were looking pretty bad for him. Just then, Ninomiya invited Nomura to go to department store together for some field study market research, but he thought it was a date. There, he found many things that he had never thought of and was changing his mind and his terrible situation.

It had been a long time since I had seen a drama with acting this intense, yet believable. The only complaint I have about this movie is the sometimes droning musical score that did very little to add to the suspense at times. But overall, this movie stands out above the other Asian dramas I've seen as one with real heart and a clearly devoted cast.