Tokyo Love Story

Tokyo Love Story (東京ラブストーリー) is a manga by Fumi Saimon. Tokyo Love Story was adapted as a Japanese television drama (dorama) in 1991. It aired on Fuji Television in 11 episodes (plus one special) between January and March 1991. Actors include Yuji Oda, Honami Suzuki, and Narimi Arimori. The drama's theme song, Love Story wa Totsuzen ni by Kazumasa Oda is Japan's 8th best-selling single in history.

Synopsis
Snagging a new job at Heart Sports' sales department, Kanji transfers to the Tokyo office, where he meets his new colleague Rika and is reunited with his best friends from home—Mikami and Satomi. Mikami, Kanji, and Satomi have been friends since they were children, having grown up in the same small town. Mikami is Kanji's best male friend and Satomi is their platonic female friend whom both Mikami and Kanji have had a crush on since high school. After seeing Mikami forcedly kissing Satomi, Kanji felt despair, however, then quickly developed strong affection for Rika who was always energetic, funny, encouraging and caring. Their relationship was rather unstable to begin with, given Kanji's history with Satomi as well as Rika's (not so) secret affair with her and Kanji's boss Sendo [this affair was much more of a determinant in the original manga than in the drama, when Rika got pregnant bearing Sendo's child (not shown in the drama version), which was one of the reasons why Kanji chose Satomi over Rika]. In the meantime, denied by Satomi who thought Mikami was just playing with her, Mikami's attempts on pursuing his med school classmate Nagasaki had also been with much frustration.

Cast

 * Honami Suzuki as Rika Akana
 * Yuji Oda as Kanji Nagao
 * Narimi Arimori as Satomi Sekiguchi
 * Yosuke Eguchi as Kenichi Mikami
 * Akiho Sendo as Naoko Nagasaki


 * Tokuma Nishioka as Natsuki Waga
 * Kaori Mizushima
 * Miki Ito
 * Hideyuki Nakayama

Production staff

 * Producer: Toru Ohta (大多亮)
 * Director: Kozo Nagayama (永山 耕三) (episodes 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 11), Ouhiko Honma (本間歐彥) (eps. 3, 4, 6, 8, 10)
 * Screenwriter: Yuji Sakamoto

Episode titles and viewership

 * 1) 「出会いと再会」20.7%
 * 2) 「愛ってやつは」20.8%
 * 3) 「二人の始まり」19.9%
 * 4) 「君の翼になる」17.1%
 * 5) 「いつも思い出して」19.9%
 * 6) 「赤い糸に結ばれて」20.1%
 * 7) 「愛は待たない」22.4%
 * 8) 「この恋を信じたい」22.9%
 * 9) 「行かないで」26.3%
 * 10) 「約束」29.3%
 * 11) 「さよなら」32.3%
 * SP:「東京ラブストーリー特別編」29.9%