~*Heaven's Coins - Drama*~

this may be a very old drama but worth watching...
~*Heaven's Coins*~

Synopsis
A woman named Aya is working in Hokkaido for a doctor, Shuichi, that left Tokyo for personal reasons. Aya is both deaf and mute and she’s secretly in love with Shuichi. After awhile Aya tells him, but Shuichi has decided to return to Tokyo to work but promise Aya that he will return soon and then they will get married. Shortly after he has an accident resulting in a memory loss. Time passes and Aya decides to go to Tokyo to find out what happened.

Cast
Sakai Noriko
Osawa Takao
Takenouchi Yutaka
Hosokawa Naomi
Ibu Masato
Ryu Raita
Sakai Wakako
Tanaka Minako
Kitahara Masaki
Kato Zenpaku
Nishimura Tomomi
Nakamaru Shinsho
Oka Mitsuko
Nishio Takumi
Hisamoto Tomoko
Kikuchi Norie
Nakano Kumiko
Hotaru Yukijirou
Tateishi Ryoko
Tayama Ryosei
[edit]Production Credits
Screenwriter: Yamasaki Junya
Directors: Yoshino Hiroshi, Aryouchi Itsukida
[edit]Review by Kanin
It’s a different love story and I was a bit reluctant at first cause there were many other dramas I wanted to view first, but I got hooked on this pretty fast.

There are alot of characters in this drama. There’s Shuichi’s father who runs the hospital and has a dream that Shuichi one day will take over as director. And there is Shuichi’s half-brother Takumi, a doctor with no self-confidence half playboy who has a mother that urges him on to be the next director for own personal reasons. Their father has absolutely no plans for Takumi to be his successor and is just waiting for Shuichi to reconcile with him and return home. There’s a few bad characters who aim to take over the hospital by all means. And to complicate things more there is the girl who was responsible for Shuichi’s accident, who falls in love with him and plays a few dirty tricks on Aya, she’s quite phsycho actually. The central pieces is about Aya and her struggle to win back Shuichi’s memory and to see her dodge every single hurdle that comes her way, and there are a lot of them. It’s actually pretty cruel at times.

Altogether this was a highly enjoyable drama even though I didn’t get to hear the lead speak one single word, it’s a definite 10 drama.

At first when I discovered that one of the lead characters was not only deaf but also mute I was a bit reluctant about it, because I actually like to hear Japanese spoken. I felt I was loosing half the drama, plus another concern was, how was the communication gonna be when always writing on paper between Noriko and another person, I mean, wouldn't it be repetetive and annoying in the long run.

Well it turned out my worries wasn't neccessary cause the communication was brought to another level and with alot of tricks it never got repetetive. Maybe it allowed facial communication to excel instead. One of the things I like about Japanese dramas is the subtle way of speaking in contrast to western way, and especially the women. So in this example of not speaking at all (as in Aya’s case) gives a new meaning to being subtle and it was quite beautiful to see.

The drama starts very briefly covering the relation between Aya and Shuichi. Then almost instantly hospitalizes Shuichi with a memory loss due to an accident. And pretty fast, somehow Aya ends up working in that same hospital Shuichi is treated, which is btw his fathers hospital.

To see Aya and Shuichi building up their relation from scratch is like watching the movie backwards, cause we never got to see their relation much in the beginning. So for Aya it’s like starting all over again with a person she never met. With Shuichi suffering from a memory loss is like turning everything upside down for Aya, cause at first she was handicapped person being both deaf and mute, but now she is put in the driving seat towards Shuichi.

The questions Shuichi is dealt with according to his memory loss are quite touching and real. As he said, "did I forget any important promise", "did someone love me", "was I in love with someone".

This drama quickly came to life in just 1 episode actually. And knowing that the lead character Aya was both deaf and mute made me feel this was gonna be a bit darker drama. But somehow Aya is portrayed as the person who has the heart in the right place and with the finest personality which makes her shine above the rest. That’s the nice thing about her character, you don’t feel pity for her being handicapped, just because she’s got such a strong and upright character.

One thing that constantly comes to mind is, why can’t she just say she and Shuichi were going to marry before the accident. But at the same time, accepting that fact she don’t tell anything (which actually is not that odd), makes it a much more lucurative ground to build up tension and excitement. And it feels like the whole drama is over, once he gets to know the truth.

After a while everything turns against Aya, almost everybody gets unfriendly with her. She even decides to leave Tokyo at one point. The girl who was responsible for the accident Shuichi had is constantly making things troublesome and Shuichi’s brother Takumi is madly in love with her and he’s a bit psycho too at times.

One nice effect was when Aya is informed Shuichi and Shoko are engaged and so the music and all sound around her stops, it’s like entering her world for just a moment. Pretty cool effect.

How things turn out at the end is a bit surreal and hard to believe because how can you live with someone you know love another. And there’s a few more things that stand up as hard to process but apart from those it’s a great drama with an actionpacked script.

To fully enjoy this drama you also need to view part 2 “Hoshi no kinka 2�? which was made the year after (1996) and it’s a direct continuation of the first drama. I thought everything was said and done in the first part, but the story will pop up another notch and accelerate to a brilliant finish which will leave it’s storyline on your eyes for a long time. If you like a serious drama this is for you.

I loved it and it’s a clear 10/10 drama.

Not to mention, it has a very nice theme song too, titled "Heaven's Coin" for it's 2nd season.

Very very nice drama there! Watched all 3 seasons of it.

Yeah, all 3 seasons are very very nice dramas... Sakai Noriko's acting was superb! Many old jap dramas are really nice... like this 1 when it was broadcasted in 1996.