Kasumi Arimura
Shoko Ishida
ISHIKO and HANEO: You're Suing Me?
2022
Ended • 1 Season • 10 Episodes
Overview
A paralegal who graduated from a big-name school teams up with an offbeat lawyer, taking on oddball little cases out of a small, neighborhood law office.
Seasons
- Status
- Ended
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 10 episodes
- First aired
- Jul 15, 2022
Cast
Reviews
5 min readThe Law as a Neighborhood Block Party
I’ll admit it: I wasn’t expecting to laugh out loud at a legal drama. Not because the law can’t be funny—Legally Blonde proved otherwise—but because most legal procedurals treat the courtroom like a gladiatorial arena, all tension and gravitas. ISHIKO and HANEO: You’re Suing Me? doesn’t just sidestep that expectation; it gleefully trips over it, then offers the bailiff a cup of tea.
This is a show where the biggest case of the week might involve a disputed parking spot, a misdelivered package, or a neighbor’s overgrown bonsai tree. And somehow, that’s the point.
The series unfolds in a small law office run by Ishiko’s father, Wataro Ushio, a man who seems to have turned the practice of law into a kind of community service. His daughter, Ishiko (Kasumi Arimura), is the straight-laced legal assistant, fresh out of a prestigious school and armed with a binder full of rules. Then there’s Haneo (Tomoya Nakamura), the office’s resident lawyer, who approaches the law like a jazz musician—improvisational, a little messy, and occasionally off-key.
Their dynamic is the engine of the show, and it’s a delight to watch.
What makes ISHIKO and HANEO work isn’t the cases themselves—though they’re charming in their absurdity—but the way the show treats the law as something that exists in the everyday, not just in the dramatic. There’s no Perry Mason moment where the truth is dramatically revealed in a hushed courtroom. Instead, the truth emerges over shared lunches, awkward apologies, and the kind of small, human negotiations that most legal dramas would dismiss as too trivial.
The show’s episodic structure reinforces this: each case is self-contained, but the real story is in the way Ishiko and Haneo’s relationship evolves. She learns to bend the rules; he learns that sometimes the rules exist for a reason. It’s a workplace comedy, but one that’s more interested in the people than the punchlines.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThe first client got sued for charging a phone
TBS sold ISHIKO and HANEO: You're Suing Me? as a Friday 10 p.m. legal comedy about tiny lawsuits. Plug your phone into a cafe outlet and the shop takes you to court. Keep extra change from a convenience store and someone files. Kasumi Arimura is Shoko Ishida, a Tokyo University law graduate who failed the bar four times and walked away from a fifth try. Tomoya Nakamura is Yoshio Haneoka, a high-school graduate who passed on the first try with a photographic memory, then froze when real clients walked in. Older recaps that called her a prosecutor had the job wrong. She is a paralegal at her father's neighborhood firm. latestnetflix.com's view is that The English TBS catalog still tags them "Miss Compliance" and "Mr.Bohemian." 
, ,
Masashi Sada waited until 70 for a regular drama role.
The office is Ushio Legal Counseling. Sada, the singer and novelist, plays Wataro Ushio, the soft boss who takes cases for free and gets scolded by his daughter. TBS said this was his first regular role in a continuing drama, in a year that also marked 50 years as a performer. Eiji Akaso is Ao Ooba, the first client, the man with the cafe charger. He stays on as office help. Oideyasu Oda is the soba-shop neighbor who keeps asking Ishiko out. MEGUMI is Haneo's prosecutor sister. Issey Ogata is his judge father. Masafumi Nishida wrote the original. Ayuko Tsukahara and Takeyoshi Yamamoto directed. Junko Arai produced. The first episode ran 15 minutes long. Nine more sat near 54 minutes. The run was July 15 to September 16, 2022. RADWIMPS closed the hours with "Ningen Gokko." ,
On the official site Arimura called Ishiko a paralegal she had not played. "She is hard-headed, but I want to show her charm and innocence in the back-and-forth with Haneo." Nakamura said the cases might be things that happen around you, or things that have already happened, and he hoped people could enjoy it lightly. It was her first TBS drama in four years, after Chugakusei Nikki. For Nakamura it was the first Friday slot since Nagi no Oitoma.
Video Research put the Kanto average at 7.3 percent.
Episode 1 opened at 6.9 percent. Episode 4 hit 8.4 percent. The finale closed at 8.0 percent. Netflix added the ten episodes for US subscribers on November 9, 2023. ,
Then the Academy awards arrived in November.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f2lYyKjuIo
The 113th Television Drama Academy Awards handed the show five trophies. Best Picture. Best Actress for Arimura. Best Actor for Nakamura. Best Supporting Actor for Akaso. Best Director for Tsukahara and Yamamoto. Arimura told The Television it was a fun team where they could shoot while laughing all day. They still talk about wanting a special. She said Nakamura played so freely on set that she wanted to ride that. He asked to close with a beat that recalled their earlier exchanges, including a line about Haneo hiding behind a pillar when they first met. "Ishiko is earnest and hard-headed, but to play her I tried not to get trapped by the Tokyo University resume. I kept flexibility in mind," she said. The 33-second TBS trailer still opens on the cafe lawsuit. , ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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