NHK's "Drama 10 'Themis's Uncertain Courtroom'," which aired its final episode on March 10th, and the network's historical drama "BROTHERS IN ARMS （Toyotomi Brothers!）", which reached a conclusion with its ninth episode on March 8th, both began airing in January of this year and have been well-received by drama fans. In both of these works, Yui Narumi and Shiraishi Sei shone in their leading roles. With these two works as stepping stones, further breakthroughs are expected for them. Let's look back at their journeys so far and introduce some commonalities between them.
Narumi, who played the heroine lawyer Noa Onozaki in "Themis's Uncertain Courtroom," was born on May 16, 1998, and is a 27-year-old from Hyogo Prefecture. She began her acting career in 2018 and made her drama debut the following year in the NHK Asadora of 2019). Since then, she has steadily advanced her career, starring in the film "A Genuine Happy End" released in December 2021, and has been featured in numerous commercials for companies such as the job information site "Levatech," Nintendo Switch's "Super Detective Case Files: Rain Code," "Kuraray," "JCB Card," and "Wakachiku Construction." However, at that time, she still seemed to be a relatively unknown figure.
One turning point was her transfer to the talent agency "Flamme" in April 2023. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that she would appear in the NHK Taiga drama "What to Do, Ieyasu?". In her first Taiga drama, she played Ina, the somewhat mischievous daughter of Honda Tadakatsu (played by Yuki Yamada), who is said to be the "strongest warrior of the Sengoku period". Last year, after playing the lead role in the second episode "A Landscape with an Iron" of the NHK omnibus drama "After the Earthquake" (later made into a movie), she appeared in "Anpan" for the first time in six years as a Asadora. Her excellent portrayal of Kotoko, a girl who is usually demure but becomes talkative when she drinks, is still fresh in people's minds, and most recently, she played the heroine for the first time in the drama "Themis's Uncertain Court".
Meanwhile, Shiraishi, who played Nao, the childhood friend of the protagonist who becomes the "tragic heroine" in "BROTHERS IN ARMS （Toyotomi Brothers!）", was born on August 10, 1998, and is 27 years old and hails from Kanagawa Prefecture. She made her entertainment debut in the 2016 TV drama series "AKB Love Night: Love Factory" (TV Asahi). She gradually began to appear in commercials, dramas, and movies, and around 2018, she started to be featured in magazines as "one of the next generation heroines." In "I"s" (BS Sky PerfecTV!), a live-action adaptation of Masakazu Katsura's popular romance manga, she was selected from among approximately 700 people in an audition to play the main heroine, Iori Yoshizuki.
In the 2019 drama series "Absolute Justice" (Tokai TV/Fuji TV), which aired around the same time as "I"s," she played the high school version of the protagonist, Noriko Takagi (Sayaka Yamaguchi), a "monster of justice," in the early part of the drama, and then played Noriko's grown-up daughter in the latter half, embodying the character's hidden ruthlessness and madness, proving her versatility as an actress. Her career continued to flourish, and from April of the same year, she served for a year as the 12th generation CM girl for the wedding information magazine "Zexy" (Recruit), which is said to be a "gateway to success for beautiful young talents." She also starred in "Girl Gun Lady" (MBS), a "new era adult tokusatsu drama" that aired in 2021, based on an original story by Bandai Spirits and planned by ADK Emotions. Last year, her "villainous" portrayal in the Amazon Original drama "Marry My Husband" also became a hot topic.
Shiraishi has also been affiliated with the talent agency "FLaMme" since May of last year, and like Narumi, she is one of the newcomers to the agency (in recent years, Riho Yoshioka, Nakamura Riho, Miyazaki Yu, and Neru Nagahama have also joined the agency). As mentioned earlier, Narumi and Shiraishi are the same age. This generation (born in 1998) has attracted attention for being full of talented people in the entertainment industry and has been called the "Flower of '98" or the "Miracle Generation," but compared to the four who have been heroines in Asadora(Suzu Hirose, Kanna Hashimoto, Aoi Wakana, and Haruka Fukuhara), Narumi and Shiraishi debuted a little later, and their names only became known around the age of 20, which is not particularly early.
In fact, Narumi was originally a big fan of Hirose, who is the same age as him, and participated as an extra in the 2018 film "Chihayafuru -Musubi-" starring Hirose, which led him to pursue acting. As for Shiraishi, there have been surprisingly many comments from people saying that they were "seeing his acting for the first time" through "BROTHERS IN ARMS （Toyotomi Brothers!）", and conversely, (even if that is just the viewer's own preconceived notion) one of his charms is that he is "not overused" and "doesn't have any strange connotations," and I feel that he is similar to Narumi in that respect.
Incidentally, and this is completely off-topic, but in past interviews, they have both said about themselves, "There's absolutely nothing fluffy about me" (Narumi) and "I don't think I'm girly at all" (Shiraishi), which suggests that their true personalities are rather "straightforward," and the atmosphere they exude is also somewhat understated, which is nice. In any case, after their performances in "Themis's Uncertain Court" and "BROTHERS IN ARMS （Toyotomi Brothers!）", there's no doubt that we're looking forward to seeing what kind of performances they'll deliver in their next works.
