Cast Round Up

Pretty soon I'll be finished talking about the With the Light manga, after that's finished (or probably before, who knows) I'll be talking about the With the Light drama.

I already have a post on here about the differences between the manga and the drama, but now I'll be doing recaps/reviews of the episodes one by one.

The drama is 11 episodes long and each episode is about 40-something minutes long since they were intended for an hour-long television time slot.

Anyway, this isn't a post for talking about the show. It's a post for talking about the cast/characters of the show... some of them.

Onward, ahoy!

Here we have the school staff that work closely with Hikaru. These four are pretty much the only faculty we actually see during the drama but they aren't the only teachers working at the school (I hope).

The principal (who is a woman in the manga) is played by Watanabe Ikkei and is the Mr Awesomesauce of the show. The music teacher is played by Ichikawa Mikako. The manga didn't have a music teacher so I'm not really sure why one was included in the drama but, whatever. I also don't know the reason why they switched the genders of the next two teachers. Sakura-sensei is played by Takeda Shinji and is the drama version of Wakabayashi-sensei, who was a woman in the manga. Sakura-sensei teaches the mainstream class. Rio-sensei, played by Kobayashi Satomi, is the drama version of Aoki-sensei (male) and Hikaru's Special Education class teacher.

I don't know what the actress' name is, but in the drama this girl's name is Moe. The best way to describe her is that the writers of the drama took Moe and Eri from the manga and made them one person and called her Moe.

Masato's mother is played by Takahashi Keiko and Sachiko's mother is played by someone else whose name I don't know. The two of them show up a lot in the drama and this is the version of Masato's mother that I like the best. Sachiko's mother is awesome in both versions, but I don't hate Masato's mother in the drama like I do in the manga.

Wataru and Kenta are two of Hikaru's classmates and friends (along with Moe). Wataru is the drama version of Ishida-kun and Kenta is the drama version of Oki-kun. Despite the changes made to the names and ages, the characters' personalities are pretty accurate.

And here we have Miyu, whose name in the drama has been changed to Hotomi. Hotomi's character is just as if the writers took Hiroaki, changed him into a girl, and gave him to Miyu's parents.

Hikaru's father Masato is played by Yamaguchi Tatsuya. He's a pretty awesome character, I like him a bit better than the manga version because I find him a bit more realistic and... three dimensional, I guess?

Shinohara Ryoko is Hikaru's mother Sachiko, slightly less preachy and slightly more reserved than the manga version.

And last, but not least, we have Saito Ryusei as Hikaru himself. If I have one problem with the drama version of Hikaru it's that he almost never shows any emotion. See the picture of him there? That's pretty much the way he looks for the whole show. Aside from that, though, I have no complaints.

Look forward to episode reviews/recaps/whatever coming in the near future. Also keep an eye out for reviews of the last three With the Light manga volumes.