Keiko Kitagawa, Sailor Mars from the live action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon TV series, has a couple of new movies in the works! She will star in a movie “Judge” and a movie sequel to the “Akumu-chan” TV series.

In “Judge” Keiko Kitagawa will star alongside Satoshi Tsumabuki who also appeared in Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift as the guy from the trailer who says “Go” to start the race. Although Keiko Kitagawa also starred in Tokyo Drift they did not share any scenes together until now. The movie is a comedy who’s plot has them pretending to be a couple. Filming will take place in August and September. The film is currently slated for a January release.

The Akumu-chan movie is a follow up to the 11 episode TV series which aired at the end of last year in Japan. This movie will have many actors reprising their roles as a new student joins Ayami’s (Keiko Kitagawa) class as her students all know him from their dreams while Yukio knows him from her nightmares! Filming is already underway though no release date has been announced.

Source: Tokyo Hive and Tokyo Hive.

Akumu-chan, the new show starring Keiko Kitagawa from the live action Sailor Moon show, has now aired it’s first two episodes. If you, like me, don’t live in Japan and don’t understand Japanese, you can download the show and English subtitles from D-Addicts. If you keep an eye out on that site’s torrent page and subtitles forum you’ll be able to get the rest of the episodes as they are released and eventually translated. You can also watch the show on Crunchyroll for a price. New episodes air Saturdays in Japan.

Since this is a Sailor Moon site I won’t be talking about this show on a weekly basis but wanted to give my thoughts on the first episode and the show in general. Overall I think it’s pretty good and that Keiko does a great job. I’ll likely be checking out the rest of the series, something I haven’t made an effort to do with her shows since Mop Girl.

The premise of the show has a young girl, named Akumu-chan, who has nightmares which predict the future. She enlists the assistance of her teacher, played by Keiko Kitagawa, to help her try to prevent the tragedies she predicts from happening. The dreams she has are always vague, so the show is always full of little surprises.

There’s a great deal of mystery in the show which will probably keep the viewers interested. Not only do we not know how the mystery of the week will play out but there’s also an element of secrecy behind the motivation of many of the main characters, and seeing that develop should be fun. The writing in the first episode was pretty good so here’s hoping that keeps up.

The show has a good deal of elaborate effects. This is TV so they look a little cheap but the production value is somewhat impressive with a lot of CG used to make things like the trippy dreams come to life.

The acting in the show is a mixed bag. Keiko Kitagawa, who plays the main character Ayami Mutoi is fantastic as always. I would watch her read the phone book and acting well is much better than reading the phone book so that’s a big bonus. The rest of the cast isn’t totally great and ranges from passable to laughable, mostly with a later. While Manatsu Kimura who plays the young girl Yuiko is pretty decent for a child actress a lot of the adults are pretty bad. GACKT, a Japanese pop star, plays the love interest. He is clearly not an actor by trade. Various other actors in the series like the nurse, other teachers at the school and Yuiko’s grandfather played by Mark Twain are pretty much just bad actors.

As was mentioned earlier the theme song is done by Momoiro Clover Z, the band that has been tasked with doing the theme song for Sailor Moon. Check out the full song below:

Akumu-chan seems to be a decent Japanese drama series. Here’s hoping that Keiko and the show have great success.

Also check out Keiko Kitagawa and GACKT on the Japanese variety show “PON!” below.

There is also an interview with Kieko Kitagawa about the series on Crunchyroll.

This past Monday Keiko Kitagawa, Sailor Mars from the live action Sailor Moon series, appeared on the Japanese talk show Shabekuri 007 (しゃべくり007) to promote her new series Akumu-chan. I can’t say I’ve ever seen this show before or really know much about it. In fact I can’t really tell what the title even means. This seems to have a game show type format with a number of Japanese comedians but without any real points or prizes at stake. I’m sure it’s quite hilarious if you know what they’re saying… maybe…

The show has been uploaded to YouTube in six parts. I’ve put those into a playlist and embedded it below for your convenience:

I’d watch Keiko read the phone book so I’m happy to watch this too.

I understand the first episode of Akumu-chan is in the process of being translated. We’ll post more information about that when this is complete.

Keep reading for Keiko’s new Citizen watch commercial …

Keiko Kitagawa’s new TV series “Akumu-chan” will begin airing in less than two weeks on October 13th at 9pm (Japan Standard Time). Now that the show is a little closer to air more has been made available including information about the theme song and some footage.

The artists that are performing the theme song should be familiar, they’re none other than Momoiro Clover Z, the all girl group that’s going to be singing the theme song for the 2013 Sailor Moon anime. This is their 9th single which you can read more about on their official site (translation). It will be released on November 21st. Part of the theme song can be heard in the video embedded below which also features clips of the show:

Here’s a short trailer for the show which doesn’t show a ton:

What does everyone think? Does this show look like it’s worth checking out?

Once the show airs we’ll be sure to share information about how English speaking viewers can check out the show. Until then if you live in Japan you really should be checking it out on October 13th.

Keiko Kitagawa, the actress who played Sailor Mars in the 2003 live action version of Sailor Moon, will be starring in yet another Japanese drama series starting in October. The show is called “Akumu-chan” and it will be playing on NTV at 9pm every Saturday. Keiko has undoubtedly had the most success of all her cast mates since the show’s end, which is only fair considering she is by far the most talented and beautiful of the bunch. Besides many drama series Keiko has also starred in a number of Japanese films as well as having a small part in Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

In this show Keiko plays a teacher named Ayami Mutoi who has a student, Yuiko, who has nightmares which predict the future! This causes Keiko’s character to fight the future or something of the sort most likely to solve some mystery and right a wrong each week. This doesn’t seem completely unlike another series “Mop Girl” which Keiko also starred in which had her mopping up crime scenes and then going back in time to stop murders from occurring.

Keiko talked about the show and her role on her blog where she also posts a ridiculous, but not unwelcome, number of pictures of her cat Jill. Keiko, Jill is a girl’s name. What are you trying to do to this guy? I can’t read Japanese but google translate gives an English translation which is about as good as tossing a bowl of alphabet soup at a wall and hoping the letters land in the right order.

This show is based on a Japanese book “Yumechigae” written by Riku Onda in 2011. You can buy it from Amazon Japan but you’ll find owning it futile unless you can read Japanese.

Here’s a random video clip that doesn’t really say anything but has Keiko talking about how she’ll be on the show. You should watch it because Keiko is very pretty.

Rest assured the Japanese drama fan community is much like the anime fan community so we can expect that this title will likely be fan subbed for anyone interested. More on that once the show begins airing next month.

If you somehow have not watched the live action Sailor Moon series I urge you to just head over to the Internet, download this show and watch it before doing anything else. Don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t go to work, just watch it and thank me later.

Thanks to SOS Sailor Moon Brazil which is somehow the first place I heard this news from. English speaking readers can also not read the show’s official site for more information.