Japanese comics are as popular in the rest of Asia as they are in Japan. The 2012 Taiwanese drama series "Chocolat" (BS-TBS, Tues., 7 a.m.) is based on a manga originally serialized in Big Comic Spirits that itself was adapted as a Japanese TV drama in 2003.
The Taiwan version is set in that country but stars Japanese actress Masami Nagasawa, speaking Mandarin, as a Chinese music student who was born and raised in Japan. Before she died, her mother ran off to Taiwan with her lover, and now the daughter is trying to find the lover, a former gangster who has opened a cake shop.
Taiwanese heartthrob Lan Cheng-lung plays a different gangster who has just been released from jail and returns to the gang headquarters only to discover the cake shop instead. There he meets this woman from Japan and he is changed forever. Subtitled in Japanese.
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