Hasegawa Momoko always dreamed of working as a wedding planner... but fate, and her own prodigious bad luck, landed her in the opposite of her dream job: a funeral home.
Her particular job is cleanup, often at the sites of murders or suicides, and as the title implies she's usually the one who has to carry the mop.
However, Momoko has a special ability: when she touches the corpse of someone who has died before their time, she is sent back in time to set things right! In many ways this show has all the typical features of Japanese comedy renzoku (for non-geeks, that's a TV drama serial usually in 8 to 12 parts, usually 45 minutes runtime).
There's a comical unrequited romance, a mixture of out-and-out comedy and rampant sentimentality, a premise which is bonkers by Western standards, and a well-defined formula which almost every episode sticks to tightly.
However, what sets this above the majority is the leading lady, Kitagawa Keiko. Some may remember her from the live action Sailor Moon, but here she shows a different side to her acting and its her presence which really brings Mop Girl to life.
She's just a naturally funny comedy actress, making little gestures like a double-take or a hesitant bow into laugh-out-loud funny moments. She's gorgeous too, which doesn't hurt none! The background cast is also striking, especially Tanihara Shosuke (who played the revenge-driven cop in Sky High) as the grouchy and indifferent love-interest (he has a thing for white girls - poor fool!), and Sato Jiro as their indecisive boss.
The formula of the show is varied enough to provide consistent laughs, and the quality of the acting ensures that the sentimental or semi-serious moments don't fall flat.
It doesn't grip me the way more serious dramas have, and it doesn't have the compulsive flow of an ongoing plot, but this is a superlatively fun and entertaining show which never fails to leave me with a great big grin on my face!
