71. リッチマン、プアウーマン (Rich Man, Poor Woman)
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆☆

Hyuga Touru: young multimillionaire CEO of the highly successful IT company “Next Innovation.” Natsumi: soon to be graduate of Tokyo University with zero job prospects. Their two paths cross as Natsumi attends the Next Innovation job fair, and she ends up becoming heavily involved in the company. Will Hyuga change the world, or will he be banished from his own company he built from the ground up. Picture “The Social Network” meets the story of Steve Jobs, combined into one fast pace, technologically hip romantic comedy.

72. Priceless
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆

Kindaichi, charismatic worker at company Miracle, is accused of illegal activity at work and is instantly fired. However, being framed, he has no idea that the real reason he is being fired is because his father who he has never met turns out to be the company president of Miracle, and left the entire company to him in his oral will. His brother, also whom Kindaichi doesn’t know exists, is the only person to hear their father’s last wishes, and decides to run the company himself. He quickly fires Kindaichi to make sure that the will is never fulfilled.

Kindaichi’s bad luck continues, his apartment catches fire with all his possessions  and now he has to work his way back up from 0. He eventually will rise up to start his own company, and possibly take on Miracle.

73. 泣くな、はらちゃん (Don’t Cry, Hara-chan)
Japanese Level: ☆

Hara-chan is a drunk in a bar who has loud conversations with his pub buddies. He and his friends don’t realize that they are actual manga characters that appear in a sketch book that is used as a way of venting for a depressed factory-worker Echizen. Every day is the same in their manga world, until one day a disturbance causes Hara-chan to enter the real world. What happens when he meets his creator Echizen? What happens when the rest of the characters also start to find their way out? How will Echizen and her co-workers react to this strange and ridiculous situation?

74.  大切なことはすべて君が教えてくれた (Everything Important, I Learned From You)
Japanese Level: ☆☆

Shuji wakes up in his bed to a young woman he doesn’t know sleeping next to him. He doesn’t remember anything and rushes out telling her to lock the door and leave the key in the mailbox when she leaves, apologizing profusely for whatever he might have done. When he arrives at the school where he works as a teacher to start the new semester, he is shocked to find that the woman from his bed that morning is his new student. He must unravel the mystery of what actually happened before his fiance finds out, the school finds out, or the student tells someone.

75. ビッグマネー 浮世の沙汰は株しだい (Big Money!)
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆☆☆

Shirato, recent graduate with no experience at all, attends an interview for a job at a big financial institution. When asked why he wants to work there he responds that “it seems like a good job.” He is quickly rejected due to his super casual and naive attitude. However, through a random good deed he does on his way home, he is introduced to a legendary financial trader who decides to take him under his wing, and teach him the ins and outs of everything there is to know about trading, the stock market, and how to seriously make money. In return, Shirato will help his mentor take down the most corrupt bank in Japan, a place that has destroyed the lives of thousands with its scam insurance policy.

This drama presents one of the coolest views of the Japanese financial world I’ve ever seen, and it is a fun look at a subject that you may normally have zero interest in (I know I did before starting this). Comedy drama + finance = success? Yes!

76. おひとりさま (All By Myself)
Japanese Level: ☆

Satomi likes doing everything alone. She goes to movies alone. She eats at restaurants alone. She is in her early 30s and decided she doesn’t need anyone. Her life continues this way until a new teacher arrives at her school where she works. 10 years younger than her, and fresh out of college, the two start to form a strange relationship when he starts living with her because he doesn’t have a place to live and she feels bad for him.

77. 歌のおにいさん (Song Brother)
Japanese Level: ☆☆

Kenta is a member of an up and coming rock group. Everything is going well until the band makes its major debut, but the record producer decides Kenta is unnecessary and replaces him. Kenta, now without a job, still wants to be involved with music, so he takes the closest related job he can find. As a singing cast member on a children’s morning show.

His role? Sing kid songs on TV. Can he become the next superstar “Song Brother” and will he ever find his way back to his former glory?

78. さばドル (Aged Idol)
Japanese Level: ☆

Watanabe Mayu, Akb48 star, plays herself, playing the role of a high school teacher. The story is that Mayu is actually 37 years old, and through some fancy makeup techniques, she becomes a 17 year old idol.

No one knows her secret, especially not her class that she teaches, who just consider her an annoying and ordinary older woman. She has been successful in keeping her secret so far, since her two appearances are like night and day, but slowly some people start closing their way in on the truth. Will she be able to maintain both identities or will this be the end of both her careers.

This sounds like a really stupid drama, and it is, but it was surprisingly fun to watch (even if you aren’t an akb48 fan).

79. 絶対彼氏 (Absolute Boyfriend)
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆

Riko, average office lady with romantic troubles, unknowingly becomes the test subject for a new product by the super high-tech company Kronos. Their new product? Robot boyfriend. Configured based on all of Riko’s preferences, she must now adjust to living with her new boyfriend. But with his constant embarrassing attempts at requests for love, dating, and sex, Riko wants to get rid of him.  But at the penalty of facing 1,000,000 yen for breaking the strange contract she signed, for now she has no choice but to stay together with him. Maybe she will even learn to love her robot?

80. プロポーズ兄弟 (Proposal Brothers)
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆

The story of 3 brothers and a close friend with no brothers, and how they finally get married.  4 episodes, each one covering one of the characters, connects all of their stories together. They show the 4 character types: older brother responsibility, middle brother neutrality, spoiled younger brother, and privacy loving friend with no brothers. When each of them falls in love, will their personalities get in the way or will they overcome the way they were brought up.

This is a very light, romantic comedy miniseries with a great story.

81.白い春 (White Spring)
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆

Former small time Yakuza Haruo was just released from serving a long jail sentence. On a dangerous assignment where he was trying to earn enough money to pay for an operation to save his fatally ill girlfriend, he accidentally kills someone.

On release, he finds out that his girlfriend passed away from the illness because she never recieved the money for the operation. Haruo tries to find out what happened to the money for the operation and finds that his girlfriend had a child with another man. Did he take the money and betray her? Haruo will find out some startling truths as he gets closer to this family.

While this is a serious drama, it has its fun comedic moments, and Abe Hiroshi shines as always.

82. ぎらぎら (Dazzle)
Japanese Level: ☆☆

Kohei, mid 30s with a family to support just got fired. After unsuccessful attempts to find a job in this terrible economy, he decides to return to his previous profession. Number 1 host at a very popular host club for women. While battling the generational gap with his young co-workers, hiding this from his family, and returning to his former host glory, Kohei faces one challenge after another. Will he still be able to dazzle the night world?

83. 崖っぷちのエリー (Edge of the cliff Eri)
Japanese Level: ☆☆

Eriko, a poor student whose mother spent their life savings to send her to art school, has a dream. She wants to become rich by becoming a Manga artist. However she has a problem. She isn’t very good at art. To top that off, she doesn’t have the money for all the art supplies she needs to get through school.

But she will do anything and everything to achieve her dream. Will she end up as a top manga artist living the good life?

84. ファーストキス (First Kiss)
Japanese Level: ☆☆☆

Mio, who has spent a long time living in America, has a fatal heart illness. Her only option for survival is to undertake surgery with a 50% rate of survival. To help make her decision, she decides to go back and visit Japan for a few months and stay with her brother Kazuki.

But don’t be fooled by this setting. Mio is a total brat and prankster, and her goal of visiting Japan seems to be more about messing with her brother’s and his weird roommates’  life than doing any deep thinking. But she eventually finds some useful guidance. This is a comedy at its core.

85. スクラップ･ティーチャー(Scrap Teacher)
Japanese Level: ☆☆

After 10 years of unsuccessful attempts, Sugi has finally become a junior high school teacher. However, the school he joined is falling apart, from the inside and out, and the teachers have all stopped caring.

Sugi can’t seem to change the school alone.  But when a mysterious trio of new students arrive, they take on the task of scrapping all the teachers and rebuilding them from the ground up.

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