Brief Story Line
Genba Shido (Toshiaki Karasawa - Voice: 110 Emergency Control Room TV series, Persona Non Grata etc) was working as the captain of Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) in Tokyo. When it was found out that there was a plot to assassinate the potential first female Prime Minister of Japan named Urara Asakura (Yukie Nakama - Trick TV series, Gokusen etc), Genba must do whatever it takes to protect her. Meanwhile Urara also had some personal problems that might affect her political ambition.
During his assignment, Shido was assisted by his most trusted person in CTU, Itsuki Mizuishi (Chiaki Fujiyama - Kill Bill: Volume 1, Blade of the Immortal etc) with the support from Takumi Nanjio (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi - Railroad Tigers, Ip Man etc). Things became very complicated for Genba when his only daughter Miyu (Hiyori Sakurada - Tokyo Ghoul movies etc) was missing on that same night & his wife Rikka (Tae Kimura - All Around Us etc) had to look for her separately.
So how would the story conclude? You can find it all in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
I mentioned above that 24 (created by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran) was one of my most favorite TV series as it managed to combine the thrill and action nicely plus the lead star Kiefer Sutherland was able to portray his character Jack Bauer perfectly. In addition, it also has a real-time element that I really admired (I did several tests on the time it required between one scene and another with the ticking clock and found that it was indeed spot on). Although sometimes it was tiring to watch 24 episodes per season, but it was always worth the time and effort.
So when I found out about this series, I was excited and wanted to give it a try and see how it would be adapted into Japanese version. But once I started watching, I immediately could feel it very similar to the US version's first season plot line. The lead character Gendo was married with 1 daughter and had to protect a very important person, though this time instead of the first black president in the US, it was the first female Prime Minister of Japan. As I continued watching, I found more and more similarities but I thought maybe they would make it differently later. Sadly though after a while I realized that they were really going for the exact story. Now I do not mind reliving the 24 tiring hours that Gendo had to endure, but since the story followed faithfully the original series, there was no thrills anymore since all the supposed shocking twists I could still remember, albeit vaguely (after all that 1st season was released back in 2002).
The one difference that I found was the duration of each episode of this Japan version was roughly 1 hour including the brief scene of what happened in previous episode and scenes which occurred some time before that particular day. There was no such scene in the US version (all seasons are available on Disney+ so I could check again just to make sure). One thing that surprised me was the real time in here was not as perfect as the original series. I have checked multiple times and found the minutes between two scenes with clock ticking was not exact.
The action sequence here was decent and has a strong TV movie feel, unlike the US series where it seemed to have a high production value. The special effects were just so so, but most of the cast did their job nicely. Toshiaki Karasawa was quite OK in his role including during the action scenes (despite looking more mature than Kiefer did in the first season). I did not recognize Yukie Nakama until my wife told me she played in Trick TV series that we both watched long time ago. I think she was quite suitable as the clean politician and a loving mother. But the person who I admired the most here was Chiaki Fujiyama who was very convincing as the Japanese version of Nina Meyers (the character she was based on).
In addition to those names as the main cast, there were also the appearances of many people in few episodes such as Shiro Sano as Gendo's boss Onitsuka, Yuki Tokito as Milo the IT expert in CTU, Michitaka Tsutsui as Urara's husband Yohei, Yuki Imai as Urara's son Yuta and many many more. Some have more screen time than others but mostly they would have significance to the story development (you would notice it whenever their names were mentioned on the screen). Overall this might have been very interesting for people who want to see a good Japanese series with unique story telling where events occurred in real time. However for those who have seen the original series, it might not be that fascinating.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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