Stepsisters (1985) – Episodes 01-04

April 13, 1967 was a fateful night, when both Shinobu Mastumoto and Chizuko Daimaru were born under the same mysterious star. Their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different. Chizuko was born into a Tokyo family of power and wealth, and her mother died during childbirth. Shinobu grew up in a rural fishing village, and her mother struggled to raise two daughters after her father abandoned the family and became a petty criminal, drifting in and out of jail for years. But despite their differences, Shinobu and Chizuko share a common destiny, intertwined by a secret that could end up tearing both families apart.

Chikyodai (commonly known in English as “Stepsisters”) is one of those wonderfully over the top 1980s J-Dramas produced by Daiei TV. This series was based on the 1934 Nobuko Yoshiya novel “This Road, That Road.” The same novel was also adapted into a movie directed by Yasushi Sasaki in 1936, and a Fuji TV drama titled “A Winter Round Dance” in 2005.

The first episode starts out somewhat slowly with a bit of exposition, but things don’t take very long to get just as bonkers as any of the other Daiei dramas. The show features a moody biker gang leader who expresses his rage through jazz trumpeting, a pastor who loves drinking and fighting, and a theme song that’s a cover (with very different Japanese lyrics) of the cheesy 1980s bubblegum pop-metal classic “Runaway” by Bon Jovi.

This is a joint project with G.U.I.S. (Grown Ups in Spandex), a tokusatsu subtitling group that mostly specializes in 1980s and early 1990s entries in the Toei Super Sentai series (including two of my favorites, Liveman & Jetman). We started work on this together a few years ago, but the project stalled after the first three episodes due to the translator being very busy in real life. Now we’re back on track, with a brand new episode, and new revisions of the first 3. Several more episodes are in the works, so look for those in the near future.

Get the softsubbed version from Nyaa or Mega.

Or the hardsubbed version from Nyaa or Mega.