It has been announced that Taiki Sato, a member of the dance and vocal group "FANTASTICS from EXILE TRIBE," will appear in the TV Asahi drama "Shiori-chan Kokoro no Koe wo Kikaseteyo" (11:15 p.m. to 12:15 a.m., excluding some regions), which will be broadcast on December 13th. He will play Kiyotaka, the boyfriend of the main character Shiori, played by Mori Kasumi, who has been dating her for two years.
The drama is a phantom project that Suzuki Osamu, who retired from his job as a screenwriter and television writer at the end of March this year, wrote while he was still active and had been saving it for later. It is made up of three short drama episodes, and depicts the pretense and true feelings of a cunning woman, with the front part appearing as a heartwarming story and the back part featuring the main character's inner thoughts in the same footage.
Sato will appear in the first episode. In the front part, Kiyotaka, played by Sato, and Shiori go on a date on the Ferris wheel to celebrate their two-year anniversary of dating. However, Kiyotaka, with a gloomy face, begins by saying, "I have something to tell you." In the behind-the-scenes episode, Shiori's true feelings about her delighted Ferris wheel date are revealed, leading to an unexpected turn of events.
Sato commented, "I've worked on Osamu's work many times before, but this time it was an interesting project that made me think, 'As expected of Osamu Suzuki!' So I accepted without hesitation. The same scene is repeated twice, but the inner thoughts are added to create a completely different story. It's a drama with a structure never seen before, and I thought it was very groundbreaking."
This was his first time acting with Mori, and he reflected, "During breaks in filming, Mori would talk to me a lot, brightening up the atmosphere on set, which was a great relief. The teamwork with the staff was also perfect, and I feel like I understood in just one day why people all over Japan are so crazy about Mori. When we were filming, we basically shot a script that was several pages long in one long take. It was quite difficult because I had to think while Shiori was acting, but they were in perfect sync with each other and the filming went smoothly."
Also appearing in the series were Shunsei Ota from "OCTPATH," Takeru Goto from "INI," and Tomoki Maruyama. In the second episode, Ota will play Minato, a junior colleague at the advertising agency where Shiori works, while Maruyama will play Rikiyama Kenji, her abusive boss. In the third episode, Goto will play Azuma, the heir to a wealthy family who Shiori meets at a drinking party.
