tek's rating: ½

Samurai Girl, on ABC Family
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Caution: spoilers!

A three-night miniseries, with each night having 2 one-hour installments. It's bast on a series of books, which I've nver read. Well. Starts out a wee bit cheesy, I thought, but it soon gets fairly good, and by the end of the first night, it was kind of blowing my mind. Of course, there were some things throughout that I didn't really find believable, and I'm not even talking about the occasional wuxia, Crouching Tiger-lite type moves (most of the martial arts action was reasonably believable, though). No, for the fantastic stuff (sword flying into hand, crystal displaying a vision, etc.), suspension of disbelief is a given; it's the more mundane things that bugged me. But aside from a few implausible moments (a Japanese doesn't know the word "shinobi"???), it was fairly enjoyable.

It begins with a young Japanese woman named Heaven Kogo (Jamie Chung), talking with her brother Hiko. Their father, Takuse, has arranged for her to marry a guy named Teddy Yukemura, which should be of benefit to their family. But she doesn't love Teddy (and once you meet him, you'll understand that). Still, she's willing to go through with it. However, Hiko has his own problems with their father, and he runs away from the family, so Takuse will no longer consider him his son. Oh, I suppose I should say Heaven is adopted, having been the sole survivor of a plane crash when she was an infant.

Anyway, after Heaven and Hiko's talk, the story flashes forward one year, to the day of the wedding, which is in San Francisco. And then... ninjas attack the wedding! (Don't worry, this will make a bit more sense, later. Sort of.) In the confusion, Kogo is shot by one of his own security people, and ends up in a coma, in the hospital, for most of the first night's installments. Hiko showed up unexpectedly, and rescued his sister, but he was killed by one of the ninja. Heaven receives some more help in getting away from a man named Noriyuki (played by Sab Shimono, of whose voice work I'm a fan, so it was fun to see him in the flesh), who works for the Kogo family. But... that was just a ruse, actually. She winds up on her own, and wanders into a Halloween party, at the home of Cheryl (she kinda reminds me of Chloe from Smallville) and her roommate Otto (played by Kyle Labine, brother of Tyler, of whom I'm a fan, and Kyle seems kinda cool himself, in much the same way as his brother). Otto develops an instant crush on Heaven.

Anyway, she wakes up the next morning in Cheryl's closet. And Otto, being an internet wizard, helps her locate a guy named Jake Stanton (played by Brendan Fehr, who I know from Roswell). Jake was her brother's best friend, with whom Hiko stayed for awhile after running away from his family. He's a martial arts expert, who runs a dojo out of his loft. Anyway, he gives Heaven a bag Hiko had left for her in the event of his death. Which contains a video in which he tells her the Yakuza have infiltrated their family, and that Heaven is in danger. There's also some cash and a fake passport. He wanted her to go into hiding, but she decides to stay and fight. I should also say Hiko believed she had a destiny... which involves a sword, the Whisper of Death, that's been in their family for a long time.

Meanwhile, Noriyuki has been kidnapped by the Yakuza, who are working for a guy named Sato, one of Kogo's advisors, who is in control of his company while Kogo is in a coma. When Heaven goes to the hospital to see her father, she steals a computer, which Otto helps her hack, and that conveniently displays a video feed of Noriyuki being tortured. So she and Jake go to rescue him, and later he tells Heaven of her destiny. There was an ancient scroll hidden in the sword, which shows a prophecy about her, apparently. So, she begins training under Jake (on whom, btw, she's clearly been crushing for years, since he first befriended her brother in Japan). She's supposed to become a samurai and... you know, do all kinds of amazing stuff, I guess.

Anyway, Cheryl and Otto didn't know about any of this, but eventually Sato learns their location, when Heaven checks her e-mail at their place, and sends a bunch of ninja to attack. So... they get involved, and are let in on all that's going on. Which Otto freaks out about, but soon comes to think is cool. Anyway. Jake, it turns out, used to work for the Yakuza, and uses this connection to learn where the shinobi who killed Hiko is, so he and Heaven go to confront him. After defeating him, he disappears, but Heaven finds his cellphone, hits redial, and thus learns that her father (now out of a coma) is in fact Yakuza, himself.

I need to also mention this other guy who keeps popping up, named Severin. He's apparently a British agent of some sort, who's been investigating Kogo for quite some time, and explains what was really going on between Kogo and Yukemura (Teddy's father). Kogo wants to gain control of the Yakuza Council. Severin wants Heaven's help bringing her father to justice. She calls her father to say she's coming home, though she tells Severin she hopes to prove her father is innocent.

Well, that brings us up through the start of episode 3, so we're a third of the way through the miniseries at this point. I feel like I've already given away too much, so from now on I'm going to try to limit what I say as much as possible. The great thing about this story is all the constant twists and turns, though that also makes it difficult to even convey certain things, such as the introduction of new characters, without giving away everything that's going on up to that point in the story. Everything just keeps changing. I can tell you there are characters who aren't quite what they seem, and even once you've learned something that completely changes how you see them, it's always possible later on you'll learn something else which once again puts them in a slightly new (greyer) light. Maybe.

Um. So anyway, Kogo and Yukemura had, for the past 20 years, been interested in something called the Marishi Protocol. (I may be misspelling that. I think Heaven said that "marishi" means "heavens" or something like that, in Japanese, but I don't think that's right, and I can't find any word with a similar spelling that's right either, so I think they may have made it up. I'm wondering if it's actually written in the books?) Anyway, Heaven and the Whisper of Death are two parts of the Protocol, and there's one more to come. A mirror (which actually looks like a big chunk of quartz), which is hidden away in a shrine on top of a mountain. When these three items are brought together, in the proper place... something's supposed to happen. It's never made clear exactly what that is, but it's supposed to change the world, apparently. Kogo is very keen to have control of this power, which is why he's guarded Heaven so closely all these years, kept her insulated from the world. In the end, he'll explain certain things to Severin, who doesn't believe in the prophecy.

Meanwhile, a woman named Karen shows up at Jake's place, who is his ex-fiance. Which complicates the possibility of a relationship between Heaven and Jake. But she's one of those people who may not be what she appears, and about that, I can say no more. Another character I feel I should mention is a former Stanford professor named Tommy Fleming, who translates some ancient text written in a dead language. (He and Cheryl have immediate chemistry, btw.) I don't want to reveal Tommy's fate, but I will say his involvement in the story precipitated a couple of different adventures for Heaven.... (Yeah, I'm leaving out lots of the adventure elements of the story, to avoid spoilers.) Next, I want to mention a woman named Sonia, who is Kogo's money-launderer. Severin hopes finding her may help him in his efforts to take down Kogo, but ultimately she seems to be in the story for little reason other than as a tie to another character, whose true identity has already come into question. And who will become, seemingly, Heaven's greatest enemy.

Anyway, I think that's pretty much all the characters I need to mention. And again, I apologize for not telling you about any of the major plot developments in the final four episodes, I feel like it's a disservice to the story, not mentioning all the stuff that happens, but it would be a greater disservice to spoil all the twists, which are a big part of the fun of watching. In any event, Heaven and her new enemy have a final confrontation in Kyoto (where the locals treat Heaven as the legend she supposedly is, and one young girl even gives her a fan, which... eh, is worth mentioning, I guess; apparently, it belonged to her mother, and I don't mean her adoptive mother, Kogo's wife, I mean... a possible god who had, according to Kogo's story, fallen in love with a mortal 20 years ago, and left a daughter behind...)

So anyway. It's at this showdown in Kyoto, with Heaven, the Whisper of Death, and the mirror, all brought together, finally, in the proper spot, that this big event is supposed to take place. The world-changing event of the prophecy, Heaven's destiny, the whole point of the story.... Does the event happen? What is it? Am I going to tell you? The answer to at least one of these questions is "no." But I will say that after the battle, the story flashes forward 5 months, with Heaven back in San Francisco. Is she the savior of the world? Is she a great leader? Is she a ghost? A goddess? A waitress who rather implausibly is allowed to talk on a cellphone while serving customers? Again, you won't get an answer from me. But I'll remind you that everything changes, and that... new twists can always come along that seem to negate or at least alter old twists. Whatever sort of life Heaven chooses... destiny tends not to give up on its objects. And I wouldn't mind seeing the story continue at some point. Then again, if it just ends where it did, open-ended as it might seem, I'm good with that, too.

As I said in the beginning, it was a fairly enjoyable story. And I liked the characters (Otto and Cheryl were particularly amusing, though they were also good in their more serious moments). The mythology behind the overall plot was kind of... hard to follow, didn't seem to make alot of sense, but the actual events of the story were engaging enough. And somehow, the personal drama (family, friends, romance, whatever) mixed well with the action and prophecy stuff. And some of the reasoning people had for certain things... often rang true for me, and sometimes surprisingly sensible. Dunno what else to say, really.