KOREAN DRAMA REVIEWS!

I decided to write this post because I saw 2 dramas recently. by saw i mean around 1 ep or less.  one was on vicki and the other was on dramafever and i’m not including photo of the drama because as most people are aware all koreans look the same when it comes to kdramas. just go to dramafever and try to differentiate actors and actresses. even if you cn differentiate them they all look so similar… it’s due to plastic surgery or korea’s obessesion with certain features. i just annoyed seeing some of these actresses with the big eyebrows that are drawn in or their delivery which are all the fuckin same. for the guys i hate the SAME DAMN HAIRSTYLES.  thhe dramas where they cast the “plain looking girl character” with the short hair all look like the same actress to me….  the actress/actor look the same even with roles where the maincharacter doesn’t necessarily have to be drop dead gorgeous . i hate the lack of diversity. nayways if you want to see what the 2 dramas that i talk about looks like with the actresses and anything just open drama fever.com all of them look the same anyway.

so the 2 dramas are nodame cantabile && LIAR GAME. nodame cantabile is named  tomorrow’s cantabile in the korean verison.   it i korean-drama-washed to the max. first of all let’s talk about one of the strengths of the jdramas. they are shorter in number of epiodes, duration. it’s especially like that with LIAR GAME because that drama is 35 minutes long!!!! nodame is probably 45 minutes. korean dramas clock in around 50-55 minutes because they don’t air commecials in korea. if thing didn’t change from the 90s they air like 3 minute  of commercial let’s say at 8 or before 8 and then they air the full korean drama without any commercial interruptions.  also they tend to be at least 20 eps as far as i know. i don’t know how many eps  korean nodame or korean liar game is beause that 1 ep is enough to just  to steer me away

ALSO kdramas seem to be obsessed with remaking japanese dramas like hollywood remaking movies … sounds like they’re running out of ideas. they even remake GOD AWFUL  jdramas…. they were awful in japanese so the korean drama is probably just more annoying. by the way i was slightily interested in that remake of JIN because  i love jin but the korean vesion was just shit… i saw random clips and that was eonugh. and i think there was a guy in that show with a MODERN hair style. that REALLY PISSES ME OFF. they give the pretty guy the pretty girl hairstyle in a peirod drama and it’s one of those things i cannot stand. the version i saw was the legitimate korean version. there was this scandal because onechannel/company made the jin drama with permission, the other without and of course they deny copying the drama despite all the remarkable similarities and the 2 dramas were airing in the same season too… it’s so RIDICULOUS. are you china or something?  i hope the jin people sued their asses off and got their money.

LIAR GAME – before i watched i did a little research and found out how they added a reality tv component which reminds me of hunger games which activates my gag reflex lol. i love reality tv depending on the show because there’s bad ones and good ones. with regards to liar game i’m wondering why anyone woudl dothat. talk about blandifying liar game. ther’s no stakes. the show is fun or exhilarating to watch because you see people fall into the depths of despair. in the korean ersion there’s no stakes… it’s just oh i didn’t win the money. there’s no reaso to get upet or worked up. it’s public and everything is laid out on the table.  i watched the first 20 minutes and it was okay and i was relaxing while watching it for fun. however after a while i just had to fastforward.  ihated the part where they made the girl talk to the camera and tell her sob story. it reminded me of….. crappy korean dramas and just undoes everything that is liar game. the korean writers are so lazy. they pretty much copied scenes from the jdrama except they stretch them out more due to the duration of the show. i saw ihe jdrama a long time ago that they’re literally just translating chunks of dialogue and doesn’t do much innovation. all the interesting plot advancement or twists are straight from the japanese version. it makes me say what’s the point??????? of making a korean version. you’re just translating the script into korean and adding superfluous crap, and make up a korean opening song that is the inferior watered-down version of the japanese opening song because… they hate listenin to japanese?????/ wut?? the korean version is so damn tedious.  also the background music in japanese liar game KICKS ASSS

The korean drama has no distinct atosphere going on with the cinmeotgraphy, camera  work etc. it’s a typical korean drama. the japanese one was very distinct in its atmosphere and it was unique to the drama and i loved it to bits.  in the korean drama, kanzaki nao and akiyama (forgot his first name) are turned into korean drama  character blobs. they turned them into the typical characters you see in kdramas (akiyama turned into a typical “cool guy” in a korean drama which is WRONG. akiyama isn’t a typical “cool guy” in a jdrama…. because for one thing MATSUDA SHOUTA CAN ACT while many “good looking actors” in japan cannot act not that all good looking japanese actors can’t act but japanese pople tend to put people in the spotlight due to their good looks despite how little talent they have ). of course they interact with each other like typical korean characters in korean dramas in those typical scenes . of course they deliver lines in a certain way that is seen very frequently in korean dramas. and OF COURSE they say these lines that always IRK me when i hear them used in kdramas. i wish they would ban some of these pharses like they were curse words or something. i hate those phrases, they use them all the time, and the delivery is always the same and i can’t stand hearin git. but phrases i mean those typical phrases the main girl and main guy say to each oter when they insult each other or argue or are irritated with each other.  most importantly those phrases are NOT LIAR GAME.  they do not belong in liar game.   they gutted liar game and took out all the flavor and soul and turned into a bland korean drama.

they took all the excitement out of liar game  and made me question why bother? what is the point of this drama? the problem with  remakes are that they always make me question what is the POINT of making this? why don’t i just rewatch the original?  how is it possible that they put in so little effort and little copy-pate certain scenes or lines yet it’s so much worse? ‘

i watched parts of episode 2 and the little parts of eps with “x” and wow how can you f up the eps with the “x arc”. they sure know how to turn the most exciting plot into bland shit.

NODAME CANTABILE

i made it through the first 10 minute sor so? this drama was even MORE copy paste and laziness compared to liar game and and… it screamed POINTLESS.  i haven’t seen this drama in a long time but i can tell the converstations and scenes were direct copyt paste from the j-drama so how do you expect people to not compare.

anyways i hate the lack of diversity in korean actors. why is these no diversity? why does chiaki look so… sterile? lol .  watching the show feels so unnatural sometimes because i don’t know anyone in real life who looks like the korean actor for chiaki. he looks too sterile… no facial hair no pores … just perfect skin… i know dramas feature good looking actors and actresses and i like that.  i like good-looking people in dramas too  but in this instance something is offf. anyways he gives me the creeps and his acting is lacking. in general, korean dramas are off-setting and feel almost scary to watch because no one in the drama look like real poeple that you see in real life even with the side characters. i undersatnd that people want to see good looking people and dramas are fake  and whatnot but the disparity between real people and peple in dramas is off-putting especially in korean dramas.

i promised no picture of the dramas themselves but you can only undersatnd what i’m saying by seeing his face

the girl casted as nodame like th eguy creeps me out because her skin is too perfect etc and yes all korean dramas are like that i know ….

ANYWAYS while i was watching it i thought korean chiaki is creepy with his face and chiaki’ rival…. gave off vibes of gayness! i interepeted  the scene where he was saying mean shit to chiaki  about germany or something as flirting. he was dressed so gay and his hairstyle was gay and his way of talking wasn’t entirely straight. in short he was oozing gay and so i thought wow this korean drama is breaking walls down with gay cahracters  lol. j/k ( WAS NO ONE ELSE THINKING WHAT I WAS THINKING… if you want to chck it out thi scene is from ep 1 when chiaki is outside somewjere) but seriously iwas expecting a gay sex scene between them later on  in the episode becausae of that awful show “ohw to get away with murder” (sreiously nearly eveyr episode had a gay sex scene and so many characters are sleeping around and it’s so ridiculous… it’s a show with no good characters.  annelise is so eh though the actress is very talented )

the korean actors are just copying the japanese actors… i hated the korean guy’s acting… everything came off as over-acting in a bad (not saying tamaki hiroshi i ssuper talented and perfect… i will say that his rendition had charm) , annoying way. the girl just pissed me off with her nodame impersonation. i call it impersonation and not acting. like liargame . they just translate all the dialogue to korean and stretch it out and makes me say wtf is the point of this show? why don’t i just watch the japanese version? acting i cringey. it makes me cringe.

i watched the 2 dramas not to talk shit about them but out of sheer curiosity and with the faint glimmer of hope that they innovated and made something interesting to watch that a fan of the original version could enjoy…  they don’t innovate. nobody seems to understand the concept of REMAKING a drama. it doesn’t mean copy paste, stretch out shit, add typical-bland-korean-drama BS.. you could say making a movie from a book is re-making the book since the director is not going to COPY PASTE from the book since a movie is a not a book. the movie will bore people to death if all you do is copy paste the book with a shitload narration and pan-scans etc . speaking of which  i HIGHLY recommend the movie CONFESIONS and the dramas LIAR GAME AND NODAME CANTABILE (this one isn’t that amazing to be honest. i’m not obsessed with it). happppppppppppy new year.

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aLSO i’ll write my litle reivew on hunger games movie because i was dragged to it because i can’t seem to leran how to say no.

it’s shit. it is lame (this YOU CANNOT DENY) with awful analogies that do not need to be mentioned and awful non-tension building tedious scene that somebody had the audacity to write, audacity to act out and audacity to direct and audacity to not edit out of the movie (not onlt that that scene had characters no one gave a shit about so i rather they perished and died in that scene that way that scenes accomplishes something and wastes 9 inutes and 59 seconds of my time as opposed to a full 10 minutse). unles you enjoyed twilight, stay away. plot is bad, characters are bad, most importantly it’s nearly 3 hours and the whole movie can be summed up in less than 10 seconds…. “insult to my intelligence”

DRAMA reviews PART II

PART II because I don’t like having so many pictures load for one post…

I would like love to actually watch more japanese dramas but i barely have enough time to watch all the japanes etlak/variety shows that i want to watch/check out all the korean/japnaese music, watch my american dramas, read the books i want to read  that are in japanese/english and other stuff.
I don’t know when i’ll watch them but eventually right? so b.c. of that i’m just going to post this and the list of dramas i’m looking forward to watch. feel free to leave comennts like don’t watch that drama it’s super boring etc. lol. just no goddamnned spoilers.

oh wait i forgot to mention anime… it’s at the bottom of my priority, oh whatevs. well when i get through everything else. for the past 3 years or whateer it’s been pure shit getting released since they’re in an anime buble so once it pops i hope i’ll have time… you know good timing.

AND if this makes any difference… I watched all these dramas with either japanese subs, raw, or with korean subs translated to japanese via google translae. in other words I did not watch any of them with english subtitles.

REALLY GOOD

JIN – I’ve always thought i would never watch jidaigeki and i thought i would drop this drama after 1 ep of “trying” but i got sucked in! sorta like JIN did into ~. But anyways the first half of the first ep is sorta boring and the later part of the ep with kichi is sorta annoying (he keeps saying ~~~) but I was still sucked in from the overall  feel of the ep + my anticipation of what is to come. I say give this drama at least like 3 eps and if you still don’t like it then there’s something wrong with you! but seroiusly i don’t know how you don’t get sucked into it by then. it is jidaigeki but it is pretty damn edgy sometimes. Sorta like how mad men is really edgy even though it’s in the 50s.. especially in comparison to gossip girl trying really damn hard to be edgy in 2011 (but still this show is sorta fun to watch.. with the fast-forwarding of the annoying conversations they also have to do after the after-math lol). BACK TO JIN: I love the the song/BGM. You know a show is VERY GOOD when it has everything going on for it. the costumes/background music/casting/acting/camera work/etc.

I love the sadness/poignancy that comes from this show. very well done.I didn’t realize the actor  who plays saki’s brother is also masumi(?) in nodame cantabile till after I finished watching this show + looked up the actor lol. I

JIN II – LINK TO OFFICIAL SITE (You can read the interviews from the cast members)

Let’s just say lots more stuff happens.. JIn goes to new places, meets new people, a bunch of years pass so there’s some changes etc. So anyways it IS interesting. It’s just the first episode was WEAK since it was the dragged out premiere episode as any drama does lol. You can read about it in my previous entry. also the first ep was re-hashy of season 1 or at least it felt like it.

They do give an ending so there IS A POINT TO WATCHING THIS! I heard it’s different from the manga beause of whatever changes they made. I heard the manga’s even better!! I think for the most part people don’t mind the ending. I thought it was well-executed nd I don’t wnat to think about it and see if there’s plot-holes or something. I don’t want to think about that cause it’s just confusing  &&  it requries thinking. but from my impression it’s fine. I have no issues with it. But then somebody on ch-review was like I loved it till the ending… that killed it for me blahblah. they also said it’s too dark and it’s harder to enjoy with the whole family and i agree with that… I don’t like watching that kind of stuff either but yeah it’s there in this sesaon. other harsh criticizers were saying oh jin keeps going on side quests/episodic plots but I thought they were well-done (you know how the aVERAGE dramas hvae the annoying episodic plots that are predictable or just plain cheeesy) like I learned about edo jidai more though i was irritated with one of them.

Like the first season, good poignant sadness NOT typical/forced/embarrassing as hell 1 liter of namida. On the official site which I have to start reading soon to get any other info like new intereviews etc… they have this flash thing and it says FUTATABI KANDOU  which  menas you’ll be moved again. and that is TRUE. But they did have melodama issues sometimes which I mentioned in that other pohst about JIN but even with that it’s still so good. Like if it was out of 10 it would be like 9.5 or something even considering the bit of melodrama at times. The scenes with the historical people are just AMAZING and I watched each of them at least like 5 times.. one cause it’s hard to follow that dialogue and two because it’s SO WELL DONE. I feel like it probably has a lot of re-watch value just from those SCENES which are amazing. It does have the typical j-drama thing going on too whenEVER saki talks to JIN… there’s too much pausing or long pauses but that’s like how all j-dramas are pretty much so… and i’m sure the pauses aren’t as long and frequent in JIN as compared to like hana yori dango… right? probably. But like seriously the pausing makes it harder to follow the conversation.. it really does. I have to make conscious effort to remember what they’re atlking about otherwise i can’t follow their conversation and then i hvae to rewatch that convo. because they pause i end up rewinding to remind myself what they’re talking about in the first place lo. it defeats the purpose of pausing and talking slow…. cause it’s too slow and pause-y i can’t follow what they’re saying lol. i even have the japanese sus on.

after watching it i asearched for clips on youtube of the cast promoting the show one I came across was them talking about the show and uchino-san (sakamoto ryouma) is talking and he IS SO DIFFERENT. he’s not talking like ryouma at all with the tosa-ben etc.. his facial expression is completely different.. I’m like this is so different, it feels so unnatural. It comes to show what an amazing actor he is! I feel sad that his private life is going bad with the divorce but you know i can’t deny his acting skills! It’s NOT JUST him. LikE I said before JIN meets a lot of new people right. but all the actors they casted were all so amazing and memorable. also for the casting they had to cast people who had to speak differnt dialects like I loved it when saigou/saigo spoke because rhytm or whatver you call it … is very RELAXINg lol (I wonder if it’s also like that for poeple who don’t understand japanese… if  so what i’m sayin’ is completely valid lol). So I loved that aspect. From my ears that have listened to a lot of japanese it sounds goood… the dialect he spoke. I’m not sure if the actor actually speaks that dialect or if he just practiced a lot like uchino-san or if that dialect even exists today (it probablydoes right.) but it sounds goood… I don’t hear that annoying accent thing like when hyoujungo/tokyo people try to say naniyanen (kansai-ben phrase). It just sounds annoying and bad wrong. ALSO I really liked the actor for higashi (though i predicted his background or whatever) because he’s good looking lol. But his acing skills are good too.  I’ve seen that actor before only on variety/talk shows only a couple times randomly and i just assumed he’s not good at acting (I know it’s not fair to say that) like didn’t he play some nekketsu (hot blooded) teacher or he would seem like he would which would involve annoying melodramatic chesssy scenes/lines.  I really enjoyed all the new people. I wasn’t sure if kurogawa (is that her name?)… she came on in ep 2 .. if her acting was goood… like did they really talk like that. she was so cut=e so whatevs  (´ε｀ )(´ε｀ )

I don’t know which sesaon is better but I loved both. they’re different. I was first apprehensive  because people were like OMG I loved season 1 and season 2 isdisappointing blahblah. I just think they’re so different so I don’t really feel like comparing personally.

ABOUT THE LAST SCENE OF THE LAST EPISODE

so on this talk show the cast was tehre and I forgot who said what but basicaly oosawa-san’s script was  blank for the last scene .　so that was his first time reading it and he’s honest to god reaction (while he’s in character as minagata). One take😀

this is  alittle boy not  a little girl. it just so looks cute from the back like a dress or something soo…

this is cg? real? well it looks pretty. There’s lots of pretty scenery scenes to be seen in JIN. YAY I just used that writing technique where you use the same sound over and over… if only jin was sin. what the hell was that crap called? alliteration? why yes it is and it’s the first syllable so it worked!

I think JIN is the BEST J-drama I’ve seen so far (I’m so glad I learned japanese and started watching j-drama otherwise I would have NEVER WATCHED IT or if I did hear about it I would’ve not eve ntried)… to the point of i feel like i have to move hanazkari kimi/watsahitachikyoukasho to gOOD but i really like them too and i get different type of  enjoyment out of both of them. I think I would have to say #1 for me at lesat. It’s just they put so much effort into making it like they said they traveled all over japan to film even just one scene and the acting is amazing. It feels like it’s so meant to be that this drama is amazing as it is like the actress who [plays nokaze lived in france for i  don’t know how long (i forgot). I love how she plays nokaze with the way she talks and everything… I can’t imagine anyone else playing her role. I just enjoyed watching it so much!

AND THE SONG this time is by none other than hiari ken.  love that man and I hope to GOD he is NOT gay it might ruin his songs for me? So anyawys I love it and I heard it a bunch of times after i finished watching it because I MISS THE SHOW and I like the song except for that one part  where it sounds like he didn’t reach the note or something or it’s strained? it’s jus tlike i don’t know why they released it like tha. But anyways the lyrics MATCH UP quite well let’s just say… is that a spoiler? but yeah it reminded me of jin a lot as it should and it’s  a good choice of song again.

I thought the end of episode 4 or 5 or aorund there was just classic. maybe that’s going too far to say. the scene with ryouma saying oman to that jorou (prostitute in edo jidai) and i just thought it wasn’t CHEAP at all. it keeps that sex appeal factor without the cheapness… It’s realistic and makes the scene more memorable and it actually does a purpose other than just sex apppppeal or whateve ryou call that. It was a just great way to show us the urgency and the seriousness of that situation and how close it was etc etc. So I thought it was SOSO SO brilliant and at that moment I was like OMG Jin reached a level that I never thought J-drama could ever reach  ( since i watched lots of american dramas and american dramas have lots of sex in it lol) from the time I watched my first j-drama which was bloody monday (orz OTL) which I found to be average lol. and you know fan-service in anime is SO SO LAME and SOSO UNREALISTIC AND SOSO UNNATARUAL and pathetic. I HATE OTAKU PANDERING! but i can’t be helped since they’re in horrible horrible financial economical conditions. So i feel bad for them and i hope they don’t actually like making shtty otaku pandering anime but they have to … to survive.

Caps from last ep😀

GOOD

GONZO – I still didn’t finish watching it. fail. lol. hopefully sooooooon. It’s good it’s just i don’t have time😦

ABOVE AVERAGE

can’t decide… it’s b.t. good/average level

Mop Girl – It was so much fun. A pleasure to watch. It has its problems and good parts. It could be more deep and whatnot. It’s actually funny. the team work/chemistry between kitakwa keiko and tanihara shousuke is good. I love tanimura shosuke😉

I really like how they casted kitakawa keiko and really utilized her cuteness like that episode with hakurankyou or something or the other times when they make her dress up in cute disguises/costumes. If it was ayase haruka i don’ tknow… i don’t like her!! as of now (2011) kitakwa keiko’s sorta fading… with like ishara satomi/kuriyama chiaki rising. Like she wasn’t even mentioned in the london heart’s episode when they choose the number one girl… Like no one chose her… unless one person did?? doubt it.

one thing that i didn’t like that stood out was the the guest actors’ acting ability was LOW which is really bad since the situations those guest actors’ characters are placed are in are sorta hard to act out.. it requires acting skills… so we get some weird overreacting/hyperness BUT at least the main people can act. Kitakwa keiko is fine, eikura nana is NOT.

also some of the episodic plots are weak but i love some of the ways they dress up for the occasion each episode. if you just watch it for fun like you’re supposed to then mmaybe you can overlook some of the weak points like me.

SOME LINKS to transcripts i found online just in case.. this + korean subs->japanese hopefully covers any hard to catch lines.

http://ameblo.jp/cm215408081/entry-10060049050.html
http://ameblo.jp/hagumi/theme-10005670038.html

But seriously… sometimes I follow it fine and then there’s scenes where i cannot catch ANYTHING they say… it’s either i don’t know what the words or it’s how they say it… I would listen to a billion times over and i still have no idea what the faq is being said/talked about and then i find the transcript like the ameblog up there… (japanese people who can catch that stuff since they only speak japanese and understand japanese unless they’re billingual) and the ni go oh.. then i do the soramimi -effect thing and go yeah it does sound like that BUT without it i would still be like wtf they saying. It’s usually i know what they’re saying… I just can’t catch it.

Gyne ギネ 産婦人科の女たち – This was one took me by surprise. It’s one of those dramas i never would’ve watched because it came out fall of 09 when tokyo dogs, liar game, fumo chitai, samurai high school, jin also came out so  i heard NOTHING abt it. But luckily because somebody left the commercial on the avi for some other drama… which led me to watch a commercial for this show (ep 5 or 6 or something). From watching that I was like OMG even if this drama is crappy I have to at least watch that scene or episode. It’s the court room scene of course. but I thought just as drama it was really entertaining especially because I was watching monster and mother at the same time… unlike  those two the camera work and lighting and other fundamental stuff was done well (there are j-dramas that can’t even get these fundamentals right) &&&  It just didn’t have the usual/cliche/crappy j-drama feel or that feel was kept to a minimum. I just felt like the episodic plots/overarching plots weren’t the usual tired, typical plots (ie. samurai high school). It just kept me interested with the plot/arcs…. they were interesting and seemed thought-out and well done, One could argue that this show is more like sanpujinka no bakatachi but I just really liked as  drama entertainment. It made me want to watch the next episode, etc (which is you know logical… that’s why you watch the drama because you like it NOT because a bunch of losers praise it somewhere on the internet). Of course it can be better and the way it ended was like… not really an ending. but seriously WHY DID THEY SAy　神ドラマ to MOTHER…. no it’s not mother it’s MAZAA lol. ugh so silly.

AVERAGE

Liar Game II -It’s not as good sesaon 1 because 1. it is 45 minutes? instead of 35 minutes (sesaon 1) Yes it is dragged out. They play the song (I love the song tho ) every episode and they stretch the reactions whenever something shocking happens which happens many times every episode because it is liar game. but the thing is… it’s just not that shocking or interesting. There were a couple tricks that i thought was interesting like the round with the cards and…. probably something else. Like last season  they don’t develop the side characters that much at all or the main characters that much it’s just like… i’m sick of it.  what’s the point? i feel bad for the actors… they have nothing to accomplish at work. If you watch season 2, you can pretty much be really disappointed in the movie. the movie is by the company (not part of the original manga so i guess i should go read the manga) and so the story is not that good. it’s like a mesh of sesaon 1 tricks and season 2 tricks so it’s like i’ve seen that. They even have an X… which was an awesome arc from season 1. I guess watch if you’re a fan just don’t forget to fast-forward?

Oh and poeple on 2ch think that part of the reason of the downfall of liar game was toda erika… and how she is no longerg pure and innocent anymore. lol. something about she went out with v6 member or someone and how her hair is brown… and well obviously people change and grow up and all that so… we can’t make her confine herself to whatever for our crazy fan mentality but…. I agree with them that… she is just different. If her character NAO changed maybe it owuldn’t have been such a big deal. but seriously it’s ust so UNREALISTIC how her chaacter doesn’t change at lalllllll. not even at the end of the movie???? I really wish they did stuff with akiyama and nao.. .then the movie might been actually good…. they sorta did stuff but not really so in the end they didn’t do anything as far as that realm is concerned.

BAD======

Samurai High School

I wish they chose another actor for the “friend role”. i don’t want to insult his acting skills or whatever, but i just feel like it’s too much of a stretch. the way he talks is like…. pissing me off. He won’t open his mouth that wide or something and that voice that’s supposed to be all meek or whatever… I don’t know. It just pisses me off. I wish they made that character more believable somehow. he’s a big ass white guy for gawds sakes.

It’s fun for a few eps… It’s like a silly/dumb/fun. THEN It gets boring and really just ordinary (the storylines are so ordinary and pointless-seeming). I don’t like the miura actor and i guess he was okay in this drama but i tihnk overdid it a little but who knows how a _ from _ would act in a _ so maybe it is on the ball? but the fact is the ending is shit and so…. NOOOOOOOOOOOO. By the way i got bored by this by ep 3 or 4…  episodic storylines were very weak. so i fastforwarded 5 and 6 like crazy then just skipped to 9 because it became a chore to watch. Then I fast-forwarded episode 9 like even more crazy and then i was like such a shit ending. can’t even make a disucssion out of that ending except it sucks balls. but still at the same time i don’t care about it…😦

AND this screenshot is NOT spoilery if you know what scene this is from then you know it’s not. it’s just so dumb ugh.

PAPA TO MUSUME NO Nanokakan – It was fun/ny and cute/seemed good at first but after a few eps it gets old. In fact, it gets dumb. In fact the last episode was unbearable and a lot of fast-forwarding was done to finish watching it. It is an interesting premise it’s just it can’t even last (by “last” I mean be intersting) 7 eps.

j-subs here

Saito-san

The third lady (u know what i mean if you watched probably)’s acting was bad. it was like for reals? the director allowed this? It’s mostly the way she said her lines as opposed to the actual lines. The way she said it was so strange…. just not very sincere-sounding.

It’s like you don’t have to watch it. It’s not that good or that… anything. It has cute kids and well sometimes it’s done well but sometimes not…  j-subs to all the eps here

MOTHER – This and kaibutsu-kun drive me insane because they both are BAD dramas in my eyes yet people were praising them like crazy especially mother. they wrote like kami dorama  (kami= god) and i’m like no… It’s extremely slow, boring, melodramatic. I hate hate hate the main actress. I don’t think i’ll be able to watch any other drama with her in it because the way she talks is irritating. she whispers everything and it’s like… whispering does not equal good acting. as much as the guy from densha otoko was annoying, he was fine in watashitachi no kyoukasho but i don’t know about her if she’s going to do this acting forever!

And the little girl in the show is getting all famous and getting on this tv shows… not that i really care. she’s okay.

p.s. I wonder if there was some sorta significance with this scene (the screenshot that i took) with those things  she reached for… i wouldn’t know lol.

I was actually excited to watch this show becaue they kept talking about this show on various japanese info shows and the praise on the online boards and whatnot. they’re like oh they take such a serious theme and blahblahblah but it’s just not well-done so no.

there’s like no japanese to learn from it either. like there’s barely any talking.

Oh and here’s a thing from 2-ch matome that I really really really AGREE WITh.

マザーは、後世に語り継がれる程の糞ドラマ
もはや放送事故レベル
マザーってギャグドラマだろｗｗ
一分に一回突っ込み所のあるドラマなんて初めて見たｗ
役者も大根ばっかりｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ
よくあんなに下手くそな役者ばかり集められたなｗｗｗｗ
子役なんて見てて痛々しかった
顔もブッサイクだしｗ
松雪も糞ウザかった
何が｢つﾞくﾞみﾞーーー｣だよ
お前の声は人を不快にさせるんだからテレビに出てくんなよ
死ね

マザーは昔の家なき子みたいなもん
10年たったら誰も見むきもしない
かといって今高視聴率な訳でもない
早い話屑ｗ
展開が非常に都合よすぎる
リアリティありそうに見えてまったくリアリティがない。

It’s from ichiban TSUMARANAI dorama thread. sometimes that thread is more helpful than ichiban omoshiroi dorama.

it’s not as 涙頂戴 as 1 litter of teals. but . you know

Kaibutsu-kun – It’s for kids. There’s melodramatic scenes… which always follows oono. i don’t know why. It just gets lame and more and more boring and ugh…  I know everyone is really tryiing hard to make this show and everything with the special make up and wahatnot (like alll the promotoin on the TV) but the script is just… maybe it’s good enough for kids but not for me. actually the dramas that get promoted like crazy with actors coming out on the talk/variety/news shows usually suck the most… i’ve noticed.

I can’t believe the 3 d movie is coming out…

STAND UP! I tried to stick with this drama for too long (so boring and slow). should’ve given up or skipped/fast-forwarded earlier. it’s just ugly… people’s hairstyles/clothes etc lol. but i heard that DAIGO’s acting in the LADY hanzai profiler was really good that he was better than kitakawa keiko and the other main cast lol.

MAGERARENAI ONNA

I saw episode 1, parts of ep 2, and a few minutes of the last episode. Um this drama is crappy. It’s very boring, nagasaku (the actress who played the friend? or pseudofriend?) is really really annoying. Her acting is just nothing special just exactly what I expect which makes it so boring. Episode 2 was really boring and i knew what parts they were going to make dramatic or shocking or whatever at those set scenes but like it’s just not and i predicted it while i was wtaching ( it’s not that hard)>. ALSO I watched the preview 3rd episode and I was like wow that 3rd episode is going to be torture to watch b.c. it’s not going to be sad or anyhting… it’s just what it is.

I knew nothing was going to happen till the last episode so I just watched the last episode after fast=-forwading through the second episode. though i must admit even out of that i watched the last 5 minutes or something. I was just like this is lame… absolutely nothing has happened – this show is just depressing. I got sick of this show after the first episode and then the second just confirmed that this show has nothing much to offer. I love tanihara shousuke-san but he seems to be in bad dramas a lot lol j/k. who knows. DO NOT FORCE YOURSELF TO WATCH THIS DRAMA TO LEARN JAPANESE JUST BECAUSE IT HAS THE JAPANESE SUBS UP ON D-ADDICTS, same for KAIBUTSU MOTHER ETC unless you ACTUALLY enjoy watching those dramas. They really are just sucky. you’re better off watching a drama you actually like/enjoy with korean subs that are translated to japanese subs which I discussed in a previous post.

stuff I watched real quick cause I fast-fowarded/only watched parts of last&first ep and it most likely belongs in the BAD.BELOW AVERAGE/average section if i did watch more of it to decide… but it’s not worth my time.

mioka – lol it makes 1 liter of namida look good. BUT it was fun watching the actress on shabekuri 007.

shoukojo seira – boring boring boring.

Anna-san no Omame– at first i was like interesting. then i realized it’s just really annoying. I liked that one joke with the mannueqin… that was really unexpected and I thought it was funny. but everything else is just so annnnnnoying and never ending and never changing. I think  Isaw ep 1 and then 2-4 was painful to watch and tthen i fastforwarded watched the last ep ….

UNFAIR –I stopped at ep 7 or 5 or something. It’s just boring and i know there are plots I just don’t feel like thinking about this show. I suggest watching BONES. It always comes down to Is it as good as Bones? is it even close? is it half as interesting? for these kind of shows… and usually the answer is NO so NO.

RIKON BENGOSHI – amami yuuki　THING. it’s just not good enough. some over-expression like building shaking etc which could be seen as bad or good.  it’s just not enough to warrant me to finish watching this… something is missing. it’s not enough/ good enough etc. they try to make it interesting with the acting and dialogue/scenes but it’s feels like they’re just trying too hard. I mean i guess i could see why some people enjoy this b.c. they like what i just mentioned BUT i’m not one of them.

BOSS – amami what’s her face always plays the same character over and over. I can see that the writer’s are trying to make it interesting with all these engaging conversations b.t. amano and whoever ex. the episoe with shida mirai… it’s as if the show is pretending to be better than it actually is which is not that good…. BUT it’s just not enough. it’s just not… especially if I start comparing it to BONES. I love kenkobayashi-san on like talk shows and i’m not going to criticize his acting in this drama but like there really is nothing special going on with the cast/characters really either. his acting was fine, i have no complaints…

Dragon Zakura – It’s really really dry/boring. I don’t think it’s that interesting. I ‘m not that obsessed with abe hiroshi. I was like if it is the usual slow/boring/dry drama then at least i’ll watch for whatever tips for learning but even with that mentality i stopped watching afte rep 2 or something. I am not obsessed with YAMAPI but I did enjoy his acting and everything in NOBUTA PRODUCE.

GTO – I couldn’t watch episode 1. sorry i can’t take this old 90s vibe by that I mean slow paced boring etc. the anime is slow-paced boring too BTW -for the anime there are some good eps and funny parts but just too slow sometimes. people go crazy over this one but i won’t lol.

HOTARU NO HIKARI – so this is why i do not like ayase haruka. she is NOT cute. if you want cute go watch MOP GIRL. I feel like FUJI-something nao-something is always in crappy dramas. this show is not funny, boring, slow. not much going on with the story. I think I watched till ep 3 but i just hate ayase haruka in those drama. it’s just really uninteresting.

MR. BRAIN – I saw the ep with nakama yukie cause i read somewhere about her acting. um it’s just this show is not good enough. it comes down to is it as smart as bones and the answer is NOOOO

No pictures added for these because it takes time and work to do that. and more importantly, none of these dramas are THAT visually appealing (how shallow) anyway…

&&& randomly my anime reviews on Elfen Lied
Honey and Clover, Azumanga Daioh, Fruits Basket
Full Metal Panic & Kare Kano

DRAMAS I WANT TO WATCH SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON… to watch list.

IF you want to suggest some to me go ahead though i don’t know when i’ll get around to watching it

Shibatora

Majo Saiban

tiger dragon
RINJOU

quiz show season 1. season 2= NEVER

the japanese subs!

白夜行

tetsu no hone.

nihonjin no shiranai nihongo- i heard it was crappy tho so maybe i ‘ll watch a little to see.. do like the actress

tobo bengoshi

Love Shuffle – J- subs!!!

http://jpsubbers.positivehosting.com/Japanese-Subtitles/@Reairs/LoveShuffle/

nouryouku with tanimura shosuke & ishihara satomi

CHASE – on ep 1。 lOVE THE song. 退行　菊地成孔 It used to be up on youtube.I love the song so much i ripped from the video file so i could listen to it. jazz at its best to say the least yo.

GONZO – didn’t finish

atami no sousakan- jsubs relesaed.
suzuki sensei jsubs relesaed.

carnation – love the shiina ringo single and the other 2 songs on the single.

soredemo ikiteyuku

shinya shokudou2.…do ihave towatch the prequel plus itlooks reallly boring…so ill try 1ep?

youkai nignen bemu =is this another kaibutsu-kun? surprisd that kamenashi isn’t dragging the ratings down lol

kaseifu n omita – it has mad high ratings. it even beat jin 2’s finale ratings by like a lot?….kaseifu got 31.5%  at one moment during the airing of episode 8 . but the average is 29.6% and 29.0% in kantou and kansei, respectively.

jin 26.1%  but the most views at any second was 31.7% so it did beat kaseifu in that aspect but not the overall aspect. this 31.7% was like the part when we get to that new phase in the last episode if you remembers.

erika = that kuriyama chiaki drma? lol not sure. but i love the single.. .both songs!

joou no kyoushitsu SP – did not know they existed lol.

I FEEL LIKE this list was longer? it’s probably somewhere on this computer.

ACtually it is a lot loonger. I started using evernote instead of notepad. I don’t have to worry about losing stuff and it’s a good way to organizae plus I can access it anywhere. I can also search multiple “notepad” files . the only downside is it’s not as simple as notepad so let’s say I was scrolling the secret garden script while re-watching ep for certain scenes that dre wme on.. it goes crazy and moves it all the way up and then i have to rescroll down… which is a bitch and unnecessary. so in this aspect, notepad kicks evernote’s ass…. if it had one.

J-drama “Reviews”~

Gonna share my opinion on some J-dramas to get recommendations, get stuff off my chest, etc. Sorry about my poor writing skills but well i don’t like to read books so I can’t help it ? But I do diligently follow the CC on my tv as i watch my american darma lol… that’s why I’m so good at spelling (all these spelling errosr are due to this laptop keyboard/ my fast typing skills lol)

there are NO spoilers or PLOT summaries etc (unless you highlight) because I personally believe in going in as blind as possible so that I’m not bored/have some sort of preconception… plus there’s no NEED. I hate people who paste long summaries in their reviews. It’s like I came to read a review not the summary + review.

First I’ll share my pet-peeves as far as dramas go.

1. I hate korean drama. The main girl actress (in the 20s or whatever) always pisses me off. Her bitchy whining and complaining always does. It’s just boring to me. Plus they drag like no tomorrow. And I’m Korean so

2. I don’t like melodrama. By all means this does not mean any scene where someone cries but for some reason for k/j-dramas, especially k-dramas most of the crying scenes are just melodramatic. Especially korean dramas with making the male character cry. It’s not even crying, it’s like bawling and they like zoom in and they just show that scene for like what seems like 15 minutes. Well I can’t watch it, it’s too pathetic. And it’s not sad.

3. Draggy, slow etc is just UGH. I don’t like the draggy/slowness of j/k-dramas. There’s a ton more but I’ll just get into as I review the dramas that committ that “cliche” or whatever.

I wrote about it in my lang-8 blog~

HERE

But there’s still more than bother me.

ONTO THE Drama reviewS:

REALLY GOOD – As in it definitely made me want to watch the next episode. And the pace is good. None of them are draggy or slow.

They all have good BGM and theme song, etc.

Nobuta wo produce – It’s not melodramatic

Hanazakari no Kimitachi – I thought this show was gonna be s*** but I was mistaken. It was really nice to see a huge cast be utilized. I loved the comedy, and some of the “fan-service” bothered me.

watashitachi no kyoukasho – I was recommended this drama by someone and it just has a really good story. I’m just dying to find out more. Acting is really good… I don’t think it’s melodramatic.

Only problem is it’s sorta slow at times. It won best scriptwriter.

nodame cantabile – I already saw the anime so it made it less fun to watch but still very enjoyable. I would say drama v over anime v because as an anime it’s too “ordinary” while as a drama it’s weird. Weird = intersting.

GOOD

Last Friends – I think we all know there’s problems with the show like more development for Takeru or Sousuke, etc. But it was still mad fun to watch and I was excited to watch the next episode. They used the song way too much but I love that song.

Hana Yori Dango – Overrated. The melodrama sorta killed it for me. Also it was way too manga at times. There were parts that juts made me want to not watch the next episode. Like the end of episode 2 with

***the kiss. It’s so dumb and manga. I couldn’t stand it.*** And then the thing sakurako in ep 5? ***CHEESY* There were parts that made me cringe, embarrassed to be watching it.

Hana Yori Dango II – More melodramatic than part 1. I frikin’ hate how the j-dramas have to try to be all dramatic, which equals unnatural. You know how it is. They make someone go after someone. But then instead of running all the wya to the person, they stop like 10 feet away. Then they start talking with so many frikin’ pauses, like ridiculously slow. It’s so unnatural. It kills it.

Liar game – So I thought the ratings for this show was low with like the numbers around 11 or someting. But then I read somewhere it isn’t because it’s saturday night at 11 or 10. But anyways, it’s like almost addictive. It’s mad fun to watch. I’m also a fan of the actors so all the better. I really like fukunaga’s actor lol. Can’t wait for S2 and movie.

LIFE – The pace for this show is mad good. It’s fast and I just wanted to find out what happens next. I guess there’s some problems with the story… But it was just mad fun to watch, you can watch this whole show in like 2 days. Plus the acting, directing, camera stuff was done with thought.

above average

joou no kyoushitsu – I loved some of the stuff akutsu-sensei said. but my problem is that the pace is sorta slow as in boring.

haken no hinkaku – sorta slow at times. I liked the haruko vs. shouji~

zettai kareshi – only saw couple eps

average

Propose Daisakusen – Well it deteriorated and I’m not that big of fan of yamashita. I think it’s bad when I care more about tsuru x eri than rei x ken. too much drama cliche.. Examples: ken running every episode for what seemed like 10 minutes of the episode, using the theme song during the ep as well as at the end of the ep. The ending was terrible, it was like slap in the face. And the BGM wasn’t that great for me.

bloody monday – melodramatic [crying], boring at times. I don’t like haruma-actor at all. They always make him cry, why? He always plays characters I hate? It all started with 14 sai. There’s good twists but it’s like boring half the time.

1 litter of tears – Mad overrated. Too much drama cliche. Let’s see the rain. Yes, how many times did they make it rain hard for dramatic effect. It was so convenient. There were way too many cliche “lines”. I think these are lines that any drama/anime fan would understand and can respond to [in Japanese]. Some of the conflicts was just too trite ie her brother/soccer thing. That shit was painful too watch. That plot is just like cheap and I just don’t like it. I wish they would’ve made it more deep/complex than just these done-to-death family theme crap (the cliche lines, melodramatic crying). melodramatic. I did enjoy it to an extent and of course I wanted to know how it ended but I totally see where the haters are coming from. I heard the book is better~ and FYI the haruto character was added from the request of aya’s actual mother to represent helplessness…

seigi no mikata = too average. BGM drove me nuts after a couple eps😦

Became a fan of yamada yuu and shida mirai. It was funny cause obviously it’s a comedy. It got into a slump somewhere along the way.

14 sai – too melodramatic, childish. My favorite character was kiritani-mom~ lol. I would’ve dropped it if it wasn’t for that Mr. children’s song~

Plus it’s slow…

yume to ame no ato ni- watching now. really bad BGM. It reminds me of the 90s or something lol.

densha otoko – boring… dry… slow… sorta cliche like the scenes where yamada ***gets into trouble incessently*** as if they’re using that to fill up the time. Those scenes are not funny so.. well more like frustrating. I don’t get the popularity with the show when it’s this boring.

tantei gakuen Q – almost done watching but as of now. It’s just been deteriorating or maybe…

kekkon dekinai otoko = boring.. I hate michiru or maybe it’s the actress. It just seems too over-acting like the way she moves her head when she emphasizes something while she talks.

saitou-san – only saw one ep

Bad

mei-chan no shitsuji – why did it win best drama. WAS THERE NO GOOD DRAMA that season. I’m a fan of mizushima hiro after I saw ikepara but damn this show’s bad. I wish I never watched it. Yamada Yuu is good and so is mizushima h. but the __ nana (mei) is just eh. I never really liked her. Her acting always felt like passable but not good or anything special. It seems like everything she’s in is bad but maybe one day she’ll prove me wrong. But anyways the problem is the script.. it’s just too childish and like vague.

gokusen 1 / II – S1 – Every episode’s plot felt like a shonen school anime’s filler ep plot. I especially hated the one with the child cause I hate it when they pull the child-sympathy crap. Mad boring. I like some of the comedy parts/

=====

Please recommend me some good drama that isn’t melodramatic and isn’t sluggish/draggy/slow. 　宜しく！

And don’t write/paste the plot summary. I like going in blind because knowing what happens makes it boring to watch..

Oh and I can’t wait till Mad Men starts in AUGUST~~

Gonna share my opinion on some Japanese dramas to get recommendations, get stuff off my chest, etc.Sorry about my poor writing skills but well i don’t like to read books so I can’t help it ? Another blog with jdrama reviews

First I’ll share my pet-peeves as far as dramas go.

1. I hate korean drama. The main girl actress (in the 20s or whatever) always pisses me off. Her bitchy whining and complaining always does. The ajumma bitching is bad too. Not sure which is worse(probably ajumma cause they have more years on them so more experience in bitching). It’s just boring to me. Plus they drag like no tomorrow. There’s like way more reasons than this but I’ll leave it there. And I’m Korean so

2. I don’t like melodrama. By all means this does not mean any scene where someone cries but for some reason for k/j-dramas, especially k-dramas most of the crying scenes are just melodramatic. Especially korean dramas with making the male character cry… It’s not even crying, it’s like bawling and they like zoom in and they just show that scene for like what seems like 15 minutes. PLUS the music makes it a whole lot worse, the melodramatic BGM. Well I can’t watch it, it’s too pathetic. And it’s not sad.

LIKE in koreanversion of HYD (which I didn’t watch) gawd I hate JANDI, I don’t know if I hate her name more. so ridiculous!! lol.

Domyouji is crying WTF. And I heard Hanazawa Rui cries too. LOL Hanazawa Rui crying… No not the hanazawwa rui part, the guy who plays hanazawa rui in the korean V. He can’t act at all so that scene musta been hella funny.

Actually I don’t remember if Domyouji cries in HYD or II but I think he probably didn’t and if he did it probably not as melo as this? Well HYD is pretty melo in its own respects like that rain scene in II.

3. Draggy, slow etc is just UGH. I don’t like the draggy/slowness of j/k-dramas. There’s a ton more but I’ll just get into as I review the dramas that commit that “cliche” or whatever. Basically I hate TYPICAL K-J-drama.

I wrote about it in my lang-8 blog~HERE and HERE. But there’s still more than bother me.

If you want to know my anime peeves HERE (more reviews in the profile sectioN). there’s a lot of spoiler lol cause they don’t allow spoiler tags nemore but anyways all the hater ones are hilarious for the most part.

Drama reviews:Sorry if some of the pictures are really random but I wanted interesting/pretty screenshots.

REALLY GOOD – As in it definitely made me want to watch the next episode. Also the pace is good. None of them are draggy or slow. They all have good BGM and theme song, etc.

Nobuta wo produce (2005) – It’s not melodramatic The comedy/drama/portray l of etc etc is just done so well. If you pay attention and think about stuff that you can see how the several plots in the episode connect to each other (I only realized it when I read the dramanote entries). There were parts where the quality was just high like episode 4 (That scene was awesome and I couldn’t predict it). It won all those awards and it was my first high school J-drama (good choice :)) I loved Akira’s “lingo”, it was cute. It was like okay and then I kept watching and the next thing I knew I was on ep 10 and well that’s the last ep. I really enjoyed watching this! JAPANESE SUBS on that russian site with the j-drama subs!

Hanazakari no Kimitachi (2007) – I thought this show was gonna be s***from the ikemen paradise/picture but I was mistaken. It’s just fun to watch. It was really nice to see a huge cast be utilized. I loved most of the comedy (hated some of it? the fanservicey/dumb kind?), but some of the “fan-service” bothered me. Some of the comedy is cheap/forced/fan-service/the-obvious to the point I can’t stand it but they ALSO  have good/actual comedy too so I don’t know…. I want to forgive it… The background music is to die for. I was so amazed that a J-drama could have such good BGM that I didn’t get sick of by ep 5 if I’m lucky. Episode 1 was all right and then it just got better and better and so I got into it. It’s like a good teen movie for me and it’s not vulgar/crude like some american teen/parody movies because… it’s japanese. Usually cruder the worse the movie?

GOOD NEWS: japanese subs for ep 1-6 here!

watashitachi no kyoukasho (2007)–

I was recommended this drama by someone and it just has a really good story. I was just dying to find out more eevery episode. Acting is really good… I don’t think it’s melodramatic.. to me melodramatic are the the dramas i listed in the average/below average sections.. The only problem is that it’s sorta slow at times. Even though it’s slow I still watched 2/3 eps in a day (which is i still want to put it here even though it’s slow-paced). It won best scriptwriter and as expected there are twists and all that. I love the ending song / the scene they show with it….. In fact the BGM was REALY good  irregardless of the repetition because they were like classical songs/intense songs by rafmonaiv? lol (that composer shows up in nodame too but different song) with an orchestra or something. They chose the PERFECT songs for the sad/intense/etc type type scenes and I never got sick of the song… they really elevated any scene they were used in. I don’t recall hearing any of those songs before I watched the drama but I’m so glad I heard these songs…. especially that intense song… it works with the scene so well. Also Susumu from HYD is in this & his hairstyle is good so I was really pleasantly surprised. I love his voice. lol. and his role is quite diff from susumu to say the least (in a good way)

Love Shuffle Review

Like I did for gonzo i’m just gonna write an entry rather than add tothe reviews or create a new post with a bunch of reviews ( i have to watch a shitload of drama before i can do that lol)

my thoughts after ep 1:

love shuffle. episode 1 thoughts: it seems average. none of the characters seem that interesting. but people say this show is really good and somebody told me it was better than jin. jin has its flaws but it was so enjoyable and well-done in SO MANY ASPECTS. obviously love shuffle won’t beat jin in the costume or background music department… though i do like the english songs as bgm

=====================================
so i heard good stuff about this as in better tha JIN good as in top drama from 2009 but i don’t think so at all lol. from 2009 I believe I saw

arifureta kiseki, atashinchi no danshi, uta no onii-san, boss, mr. brain, buzzer beat – these are all like less than 1 ep or just clips. i can tell they’re just average/below average as in not worth watching DESPITE the lead actor and how i much like him or her.

samurai high schol

liar game 2

JIN

gyne gine?

mei chan no shitsuji

besides love shuffle

… so 2009 was awful lol from what i’ve seen so i can see why people would want to rave about love shuffle because there’s so much shit but comeo on!!  there’s a couple on my to watch list from 2009 so those might be the good ones. I guess love shuffle is better than some of the shit i saw but it’s still not special. for me from what i’ve seen it’s like #1 jin #2 gine #3 liar game 2 (yeah it’s not good compared to season 1 especially  since season 1 is 35min and season 2 is 44 min but i feel like i had more fun watching this than love shuffle though i definitely didn’t enjoy it as much as season 1 ) #4 love shuffle

So the cast is goooooooood. I like everyone and i especially am a fan of matsuda shouta and tanihara shousuke and yoshitaka yuriko. I feel like it’s one of those dramas with a really good cast but weak story/characters. example of why the characters are weak… there’s at least 2 characters that you don’t care about lol which is exemplified in the last episode. the unrealisticness of the show just killed it ie last episode (lame-o)… yeah that’s the premise… is there anyway a show with this premise be actually good???????

story is just weak……… and i could really feel it in the last episode with how they wrapped stuff around. it’s just very luke-warm. I’m not feeling it. i’m just not into it.  some of the tie-ups were just turn-offs (turn-off is a good way to translate the negative thoughts on the drama from japanese peple with the samui, itai and all that ) ie matsuda shouta’s, tamaki ‘s was weak, the mei was weak, so was daigo’s. i would say probably tanihara and the jukujo? lol is she too young to be jukujo had the best story lines/acting (the acting can only be so good if the storyline is lame…) compared to the other storylines…  there’s good parts and bad parts so i don’t want to make it sound like the show’s complete crap (there’s good lines and some cheesy/iffy lines/scenes)…. any drama does but… i just have these complaints about it and i’m so surprised people are reocmmending this drama.  I’d recommend jin and gyne before this and they have j-subs too and they’re timed to be honest before i heard the good stuff about this drama i was turned off by the concept love shuffle. I didn’t read any synopsis but it’s pretty obvious what that means and i imagined that a show that premise is gonna be very boring unless it’s extremely well-executed with twists and shit as in american-drama level. to some extent love shuffle did fulfill my expectations of  being boring. it did take me 5 months to finis hwatching it. what happened was i was watching iron leaguer and love shuffle and i was doing the “watch iron leaguer, watch love shuffle” thing but then iron leaguer GOT SO GOOD and love shuffle was just not drawing me in so i ended up just watching iron leaguer then i just forgot about love shuffle and then i finally finished watching it this week in parts as in watched 15 minutes of ep 9, watched the rest of ep 9 etc. not really because the show is awfual or unwatchable or anything i just don’t have much time lol and i just don’t have a burning desire to finish watching the episode. .

it has comedy in it and sad parts in it and romance parts in it. i think the worst part was probably the romance???????which is really bad since the show is called love shuffle. it wasn’t the romance was awful … i just wouldn’t call it good. it didn’t draw me in. it connects back to the cahracters that they’re weak and there’s 2 throw-away characters. i never cared about mei EVERRRRRRRRRRr. I could never get myself to care. i just find that character that boring and there’s not enough depth. not sure if it’s the actress or the character since i’ve only seen the actress in this drama. i’ve heard that karina dos the same acting in every drama/movie lol. that’s how she’s criticized for her acting the comedy was weak to me… the jo and the panda was just whatev but they kept repeating it… so i was like wtf?  sad parts are like … they could be better. like i said with the romance it all connects back to the story and the characters… if they delved deeper or had more something or a twist or anything. there’s just nothing special about this drama. it’s just another unfortunate drama where the cast is amazing but the meat is so lacking. I’m so surprised people put this on top of JIN> jin is ON A COMPLETELY different level for me. If I were to rank love shuffle in my rankings with the must-see/masterpiece good/average etc I would put it at average?  because my enojyment was eh.

since a lot of people seemed to have enjoyed it and even like it better than jin i guess it wouldn’t hut for you to try watching it but in case you’re like me… i advise that you gauge the quality of the show with 1 ep or 2 eps because it will grow on you a slightly more after ep 1/2…. so you can tell if you’re one of those people whose hearts resonate with this show or not with just a few eps. I personally would’ve just watched stopped watching it after ep 1 because it didn’t impress me at all but since people were saying good stuff i thought maybe it’s one of those dramas that get really good or build or get amazing all of a sudden or has some twists later down the line but it doesn’t do ANY OF THAT. let me just say that. you might think oh they did have a twist with that character or whatever and to that “I say no that’s not a twist… a twist has to be something a little more severe/interesting.”

i totally agree with the negative reviews on ch-review, accessup, amazon…. it’s so unfortunate because the cast is good but then there’s throw-away characters and the script is just like ugh… japanese people used the word 寒い　さぶい　鳥肌

http://www.ch-review.net/contents/%E3%83%A9%E3%83%96%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A3%E3%83%83%E3%83%95%E3%83%AB

basically i do not recommend this show and i don’t know why people recommend this or regard it so highly or love it more than JIN… by all means if you want to try one ep is plenty to decide.

plus side is there’s japanese subs that are untimed  + dramanote + other japanese blogs tat transcribed stuff but there’s timed subs for the korean ones that you can translate to japanese.  like isaid before if you don’t like the drama, there’s no point!

Intriguing korean drama

I ran across this Korean drama: 닥치고 꽃미남밴드 (flower band something something) on youtube because of the videos they have on the side that’s supposedly related to videos you’ve watched. It’s quite interesting. I was watching/ignoring it while i was doing my anki reviews. Before I was watching some other korean drama while doing my anki reviews.

I like the show because the people are good looking (everyone looks unique && and no one has that dreaded dreaded japanese haircuts that japanese ikemen have. god those haircuts are terrible… their hair is too dman long damn it!) but not in the plastic surgery way ie… chang gun soku but does anyone think he’s good-looking anyhoo? he looked so much better before the plastic surgery. it’s quite a waste.  I tried to find reviews for this show but I only found a couple which only praised the show. one of the things they praised was the BROMANCE. I WILL BE LOOKING FORWARD to that! the show works for me because repetition is important for learning languages and i don’t mind repeating scenes. this show is just fun.. i don’t care about blahblah that might be unrealistic or whatever… IN FACT the first episode i watched was lke episode 14 … but i don’t care about korean dramas so i can watch it backwards for all i care and i’ll get the same amount of enjoyment lol. So what i did was watch episode 14 then started on episode 1. Apparently this shown isn’t that well-known because dream high2 is/was airing at the same time though from the clips of dream high 2 i’ve seen on yt and the bad stuff i heard about dream high 1… this show is probably better?

only found scripts for the first 3 eps. & 4. I learned a couple words before i found the script anyway but the script makes it easier. Maybe i’ll write a review if and when i finish watching it. OH AND there’s a white guy in it! yay! lol. I’m used to seeing foreigners on japanese tv but not much on korean tv notthat i watch that much korean tv.

SPEAKING Of k-dramas i’m still stuck on episode 11 of secret garden just because  have a shitload of other crap i want to watch/watching and then…. for going through the script to see if there’s anything iwant to leran… i’m at episode 6. so it’s almost been a year since i tried to watch this drama and my understanding of it has of course gone up since that’s inevitably going to happen over this long period of time. i wonder how many years it’ll take for me to finish watching this drama. i just got sick of the drama really quick… a insulting b or a arguing with b… or a and b insulting each other in this long-winded way which is apparently witty and well-written or something but the fact it’s long-winded makes me bored since it is only the 20th or 10th time this kind of scene is happening. like i said, i do fastforward anything with old people etc etc but… i don’t know… it’s not enough to make me watch it as of right now. You can try to make the argument oh well if you’re fluent in korean then you know what they’re saying and you’d find it funny and entertaining and all that… but if i was fluent in korean i would’ve heard so much more bitching and whining up (immersion = fluency rights) to now compared to if i wasn’t … i think i would like the show even less/be less tolerant in all honesty lol… in fact if i was that fluent i would be bored with the writing… probably?   I really think k-dramas can possibly be on-par with american dramas if they made them 10 or 15 minute shorter and cut out the melodrama and and and made the season less than 22 eps, characteres bitched/whined like 90% less, make shit 90% less long-winded, etc etc.

you know long-winded thing reminds me of the downfall of that show house MD. they try to be witty and to be witty SOOOO shit always has to be dragged out and become long-winded when they have conversations where they go back and forth.  but rather than the viewers being amused by this wittieness they just feel irritated and honestly it’s just tiring trying to follow that… and it’s not worth following.. because it’s not that witty. it’s just unnecessarily tiring.

I just don’t like k-dramas. I can’t make myself care. but anyways this k-drama is intriguing to me so hopefulllllllly it’ll be a good 16 ep ride..

Um Music Review. Let’s say disappointment!!!!!!!! But i’ll also include the tracks ireally liked.

I really was looking forward to it since like I said  I haven’t listened/downloaded to” new” music in a  while.

Makino yui’s 3rd album
Her first 2 albums are at least 4/5 stars… you can tell she is going beyond just being a seiyuu. You know there are those cookie-cut-out songs that seiyuu sing that nobody listens to incessently to except for otaku. She is a music student (or maybe WAS at this point.. graduted) and so you could tell that and whatnot on her albums. because of that ONE SONG I give the 3rd album like 1.5/5 stars. it’s really horrid…. I’m doing this because I loved her first 2 albms s omuch and this is a huge disappointment. I know she can do better than this.

this 3rd album is absolutely boring. it stops at seiyuu or something. it’s not enough (i’m sure the anime of the anime songs tha tare included are probably not that goood… judging from the songs cause the songs from NHK were pretty kickass right?). the only song that intrigues is the jazzy song merry go round. then again I listened to it a bunch of times and it’s wearing down…I dled the single to see the difference and i like the album version better. the single version is more cookie-cutter/boring.

edit: Now i’m feeling crepuscular rays too😉

omgs no wonder I like it. so makino wrote and composed the song and henkyoku which i think means producer is by none other than saitou neko.

and if you want to know what crepuscular means… go to google image!

I also like saki e nows!

Tokyo Jihen  – OkAY IT WAS TOO SOON. It is the worst tokyo jihen album… I personally don’t feel it. Yes it does have sore ha natteiru and onna no ko wa dare demo which are great but like they already released a single for those so i’m sure fans feel ripped off if they bought the single and the album.

I am a… i don’t know what kind of otkyo jihen fan i am but i don’t like the noisy side/screechy side (know what i mean right..

I Like dopmainto. && denki no nai toshi a lot….

Also I figured out that tenkoku e youkoso is in japanese. the other is tenkoku e youkoso is english. I like this song too and I have no idea what genre it is. somebody tell me.

the rest are in english and i like it when shiina sings in japanese…  I mean shiina’ english isn’t bad BAD (when she sang if you kiss-ED me now for onna no ko wa daredemo… tat killed it for me. like it would’ve been near perfection if she just pronounced that as kissed me now… though i couldn’t understand her other english that clearly either… LIke I had to read the japanese subs on the sides in MV to be like oh she’s saying ___) but i just prefer her singing in japnaese cause you know the lyrics are really interestin g but you know her english lyrics are pretty damn good too…. it’s so much better than any mainstream american top 40 song. and she doesn’t even speak english? (right?). The crappy mainstream song that I’m thinking of as i write this is obviously the black eyed peas losers. they’re so lazzy and shitty and talentles and fuckin ruinin music. they make noise let’s say let’s do it a million times and it’s gonna be good night a million times. f’in retarded much? . and you know how japanese song lyrics can be really boring.

SCHOOL FOOD PUNISHMENT. alrighty this is BORING> I like RPG and that’s it? and even so that’s a single so i already heard it. I loved them during the indie and I personally felt they hit their peak with that album that had the song KILLER but as of now they are boring as hell and the album before the one released this year had bad lyrics (it was really boring lyrics)… I was listening and i was like wow these lyrics are boring are they 100% jpop now?

I really doubt I like ay song besides RPG but perhaps with more listneing i’ll find other songs I like??

EDIT:

I LOVE LOVE LOVE 1:48 part. of  free quiet

oh wiat up, I like free quiet and the not equal sign song  ≠  loll.  I love the 1:48 part of free quiet It’s like they put some effect on it and I love how it betrays how I think that part’ll play out.

how does one type out not equal sign with japanese ime keyboard thing. . I would imagine it might be possible.

息吹【イブキ】 = from that akb48 song lool.

Lamp’s NEWEST ALBUM I love love love love 君が泣くなら。I love the part where the girl sings kiete shimau (that rhytm or whatever or how that rhytm is off? I love THAT). as far as the other songs are concerned i wouldn’t know yet I only heard them once and I hear kimi ga nakuara at least 100 times now. I love it. But I’ll figure out if i like the rest later. EDIT: I did and I do like it. Not sure if i like them as much as i liked the previous albums though.

EDIT: I was in some mood today while iwas listening to the album but for some reason all the songs sounded amazing…. so yes I love LAMP as always!

I LOVE the instrumental/sounds they arranged in the last minute of the song that has the word madobe in it. it’s  A LONG song title. I love it when subtlte crap grabs me

KURIYAMA CHIAKI – CIRCUS I loved the shiina ringo produced songs from the singles. I wasn’t sure if tehre was going to be any songs worth listening to on the album but I loved the first track. The lyrics are interesting and it’s just reallllly goood. It makes me interested in the band that wrote the song for chiaki but I remembe trying that band out before and it was just noisy?

rin to shite shigure– newest album by them. so before I didn’t like them that much before because they were just screamy and all that but then I loved LOVED one song which is f kanshoku. Like it is screamy but it’s nice… I feel it. It was one of those eye-opening moments that wow screamy stuff can be good. I like several songs but one that particularly stands out for me at this point in time is replica this song is PURE catharsis. I don’t know how to explain it but I relaly like it and I hope the band releases new albums in the future.

ALI PROJECT – newest album QUEENDOM is really really boring and tired and all that. I don’t have a single song that I feel. It just feels tired. That’s all. I’m sure I haven’t heard all the tracks yet but I just have a feeling there is none that will resonate with me. but we’ll see. Wait just a minute…. checked out the songs this person recommended and i no longer think what i wrote

ジルデコ4~ugly Beauty jill decoy association – hmm I LOVE squall. I don’t think I like this album as much as the  other ones. I have to listen more and figure out if there’s any other songs I really like.  and I don’t like it when they sing in english cause i can’t undertand her lol. I also like doresu wo kiru mae ni.

KARASU’s new album hmmm  – kanshou keisei kibun wa ikagadesuka? so far one song sorta stands out to me. couple songs ar eboring. I guess i’ll have to listen to it and find out. Right now there’s one song but I don’t know the title.

EDIT So I got around listening to all the tracks and I must say I like all the songs.I liked kumorinaki watashi the most at first, then i realized the amazingsness that is koko ni aru and haru. and then i gensochou grew on me. lastly, ressha… I skipped this song many many times because I didn’t like the beginning of the song. I listened to it all the finally after I found out this song was used a theme song for some japanese rdama. (it’s not primetime drama though) and it’s actually quite nice but it’s the probably the song I like the least but by all means I LOVE 5 out of 6 songs so this album is like a 5 stars out of 5 or 4.9 out of 5 or something. this is why i feel distraught when i see 5 stars reviews over shit that should not evevn be called music. .;

totally recommend this band to everyone  just because I LOVE ’em and he’s good at singing/screaming and his voice is unique… you know those japanese bands that are typical have those vocalists that voice you don’t really like. Their music composition? whatever you call it is nice and it’s a lot of catharsis with the screaming. I just love how they set up each song with the hook and that other shit. Lyrics are good too. Yeah if you hate those japanese bands that are mad typical and boring espcially with the lyrics ie the major bands ie ikimono gakari!😦 they sold outttttttttt. but i’m sure they made enough to cover up the suffering they had during the indie days cause i don’t know how much $ people make during the indie days but i’m sure it’s not much. It’s SUCH A SHAME. I finally got to listen to one of their indie albums because people uploaded it after they got popular so in that way i’m glad that they got popular but i’m sad because they’ll nver make anything near that level ever again. for example, karakuri is just amazzing… the emotion and the lyrics are just soo goood. now a days their songs have super boring/recycled feel to them and i don’t feel that much emotion in her voice, the melody is either really predictable throughout the whole song or it’s just so boring I can’t even keep listening. ANYWAYS I noticed that on one of the albums they released after they sold out/jumped the shark etc there actually were good songs like kuchizuke... but I found out that’s because they wrote/released that song on their indie album (maybe their first one?)…. SO I’m just gonna cmpare the two when i get the chance. Im sure the second version, the newer one, is better with the sound quality and the editing or the producing or whatever. but what will be different will be the way she sings like emotion. They also have another amazing song that they redid and somebody wrote somewhere the original is so much version but Idisagree with the person. the original version was not as well as mixed or recorded…. like the instruments are too loud to the point that it’s hard to hear her voice so I like the newer version better but maybe the emotion is better on the first one just because that was before they made it and they were really struggling/working hard.

BIRD- I got 2 of their albums which was like interesting. I only listened to one album but it’s so good and I LOVE the girl’s voice. I espcaally love track 3 which is called sora no hitomi or the other way around. Also love track 2. I hate track 4 because it’s a rap in like english or something.

OFF-TOPIC: immortal song! Sad that hyorin won’t be on anymore but she did a gooood job for her last perfomance. From the way they did it  ithink it’s just hyorin and not the show ending (the season).　i ONLY WACHED comments for the performances that were good as always. you knowthat’s how AKATT works… you do what you LIKE.  from watching the show up to now… I learned a bunch of words (made cards for them) and it was good reviewing the verb conjugation that is in luke park.  It doesn’t take too much effort. I’m just aware of verb conjugations and i just recognize when i see it and then i get more and more familiarized like verbs that have ㄹ have differnt conjugation as opposed to other stuff but when I See it I understand what they’re saying and i see what conjugation they did so… it’s just passive yet not yet passive since I’m being conscious of the fact that they just used a word with r and they conjugated like _. it seems more efficient and less  effort-ending in the long run  as opposed practicing conjugations by myself for no reason except to learn conjugating myself…… sorta like learningt o write hirgana and katakna. you really don’t need to drill this crap. what’s the point? just read. and if you still cna’t write it from just memory after reading a lot then read MORE. by all means stroke order but don’t waste time rdilling to be able to write hiragana/katkaana unless you live in japan and you have to know NOW. cause in the overall look of things. it’s a waste of time… you’re better off dedicating that to reading… like singing along to lyrcs etc etc. it’s mroe fun and efficient right?

EDIT: I saw more clips of the episode and basically that was everyone’s last episode lol. techinically it’s not thohgh cause later on they had the ep where all the people who won at 1 point came back.

Got a problem with that? you got a problem with that? come-back type of remark

何か問題でも

kuirhara rui being hilarious as always… though unintentionally?  he’s gonna be on merengue no kimochi or that ep already aired. lookin’ forward to it!!! i think he’s gonna get big. he’s interesting to me and i like having negative people on tv representing negative peeps not on tv. also i love how the shows try to make him as happy as possible ie letting him meet perfume (do the introduction with perfume, talk to perfume about his favorite song etc etc) but he doesn’t smile no matter what!!! (an almost smile at most and it’s not even almost!!!) I hope to see his beautiful, pure smile one day. Of course this isn’t the only hilarious remark during his encounter/interaction with perfume.

he also said oh i’m glad i met you this year before next year at which time i’ll be gone (来年消える芸人などなど） but i hope he doesn’t show up on the shinro soudan thing. I don’t think he will but then again i liked joy but then i heard ariyoshi’s evaluation of him ad then i understood why he & the other geinin hate joy so much (I was sorta sad and disappointed in myself that i couldn’t figure this out on my own). But as faras i can tell joy is disappeared ? lol. I don’t think he deserves be on that ep but i could be wrong here.  and if he was it would be hilarious.

im so curious if he speaks english… i’ve wrote my hypothesis before anyways he seems to have goooooood music taste. listening to this 2012/08/14 栗原類 ラジオ【恋する夏曲】 ＆ アプリ告知and recommended ben kweller – walk on me  and it sounds like awesome, chill american indie or is it british? he sounds american?  I reall yhate some of the american indie because i just hate the singer’s voice and it just sonds noisy but like any genre there is shitty and the top 10% of that genre that is pure awesome.

oooh they mentioned in the radio show that he’s doing a chakushin thing!!! i want it but i don’t want to spend money lol. he is so negative and i think the negativeness makes him so realistic and humble or at least he appears/seems that way.  please don’t commit suicide~ lol . wihch reminds me i hope the geinin people stop smoking because I don’t want them to die on me. they’re so interesting . htere’s an ame talk episode about the difficulties of quitting smoking  and i plan to watch it! though i have a billion crap on my que.

http://bowwowmywmyw.blog106.fc2.com/blog-date-20101114.html

http://aozora.jugem.cc/?eid=810

はるこ from 派遣の品格: 　それが何か

WRote about this drama in my jdrama reviews!

i GOOGLED it and it also says 口癖は「＊＊ですがそれが何か？」 I thought she only said それが何か (saw the drama a few years ago) but it definitely makes sense that she uses in other ways toooooooooo.

So Haruko’s catchphrase from haken no hinkaku really stood out to me because it just shows the awesomeness of japanese with its short ( you dont have to make full-almost full sentences like in english & get the point across), vague nature (love that about it how you don’t have to say anything directly, you can pussy foot around almost anything that’s difficult to say in Japanese)  yet it’s effective (even though she’s technically like asking if there’s an issue you know no one’s gonna say anything back from the way she says it and just this phrase itself in general… it just feels cutthroat in my opinion.).

何か問題でも

それが何か

「＊＊ですがそれが何か？」

I suppose you could make it into less formal version with　だけどそれが何か BUT something about des is more firm and strong… which reminds me of when joshi kousei (high school girls) say ___desukedo to another to sound more firm and strong in asserting whatever point they have as opposed to sounding polite.

So anyways these two phrases are totally useful and very japanese when you need a come-back to say to someone after they question/doubt you or they’re about to ~~~ you etc etc. and if you say it in the right tone (very strong/firm and your personality/aura is not push-over I’m sure they’ll just be like alrighty i won’t question you or if they reallly do have a problem with something  they’ll tell you).　or it might piss them off and make them want to kick your ass lol ( this is more for the second phrase sore ga nanika. i don’t think nanika mondai demo would piss anyone off like the way sore ga nanika would). it’s so funny how funny in japanese you don’t have to say profanity or anything specific to piss someone off, it could be wrong keigo or like here you just say ~~~ nanika.  besides what i mentioned there might be other nuances with it depending on blahblahblah  but as long you get the general idea and then come across it in the wild (fun/native material)  then you should be able to grasp ittttttttttttttttttt

ALSO as far as a comeback to this comeback is concerned, i don’t know of any. I think most people would respond with naides.

====

here’s kurihara’s 5 song picks!

■Ben Kweller「Walk On Me」

夏にはロックの曲はひとつくらいあっても良いと言う人向けの選曲です。
このアーティストさんは日本ではあまり知られていない人なんですが、たまに日本でもライブをやったりしています。
僕的にはもっと評価されるべき海外アーティストの１人です。

■カジヒデキ「君のハートにナチュラル」

歌詞と曲が夏のムードにあっていて、朝、昼、夜、いつ聞いても夏な気分になれる曲です。

■スピッツ「ハチミツ」

曲名も可愛いですが、歌詞が「カブトムシ」など、夏の昆虫が好む甘～い密のように、曲と歌詞にカップルもそうでない人も惹かれると思います。
意地っ張り　シャイな女の子」という歌詞が大好きです。

■ASH「Walking Barefoot」

夏の涼しげな風景が目に浮かんでくる歌詞とハーモニー、そして外に出かけたくなるように活動的な場面にピッタリで、ASHの中でも僕が特に好きな１曲です。

■Fountains Of Wayne「It Must Be Summer 」

スキップしたくなるようなビートと、口ずさみたくなるようなメロディ、この曲を聴くと、夏休みのワクワク感をいつでも感じられます。

http://www.tfm.co.jp/love80/summersong/index.html#ikemen02

PARADE 2010 – another Japanese Movie.

 

<- funny scene!

http://youtu.be/VJg5Bc3JJuk the movie will definitely be more boring if you watch the trailer before watching the movie.. I saw the trailer a long time ago so I forgot and so I wasn’t extra bored! from what I remembered I thought it was gonna be an exciting thriller mystery movie with the setting of roommates who don’t really know each other that well and whodunnit blahblah. That’s sorta part of the movie but its not the main point and its not A triller except for the very end. I still find the message of the movie interesting and I can relate a lot

So last time I recommended CONFESSIONS because it’s a japanese movie that’s actually good. this one I would say is not. I waited mad long to watch this too lol. I was bored by this movie but I was intrigued by it too because there were interesting scenes and intersting informatoin divulged. here were also parts that made go wtf and I got NO EXPLANATION. there’s no way anyone can deduce the explanation from the movie. ithink that’s a huge problem. parts of this mvoie or actually a majority of it is ordinary daily living like “you watch people sitting in the living room chit chat about nothing” ordinary. that was boring and it must be even more boring for japanese people because i’m sure that situation is even more familiar to them. one oft he positive reviews liked the scenes I just described because it was really natural and fun to be watching it… but I don’t feel that way for the most part. I remember reading one of the yahoo movie reviews that said only people in their 20s can relate and get somethin out of it and anyone else will be really bored. I agree with that and that’s another weakpoint of this movie imo. people I ntheir 20s is MAD limiting…. and definitely not a sign of a good movie. somebody also was saying that maybe the source of the lack of quality acting was karina. the reasoning is that the other actors sorta had to level themselves to her level which held them back from giving a really good performance. I wish the acting was better not saying the acting was terrible. I don’t solely blame karina. I felt like none of the characters truly understood and acted the out the characters they were assigned. I got the impression they all did when I watched the trailer or the cast intereviews or the kaiken. that’s why I wanted to watch it and had expectations (this was a while ago though)… I get fooled by the interviews and kishakaikens lol… the MOVIE ALWAYS seems good when I watch those lol.. You can tell from the interviews and making and whatnot that they worked hard making it and seem like they konw what they’re doing but then it’s so disappointing when I see that the movie doesn’t really measure up to what I expect.. and another complaint: for the last scene with fujiwara I thought it was a little melodramatic/overacting. he wasn’t that bad in this movie becuase for the mots part he’s just talking like a normal person and I like deep voice he is AWFUL in kaiji. but by all means I think the #1 SOURCE OF THE MOVIE FAILING IS THE SCRIPT. when it comes it down it IT’S THE SCRIPT. some poeple get dissapointed with the movie because they heard it’s scary and then when they watch it they go THAT’S IT? IT’S A LITTLE scary but THAT’S IT? I sorta agree with that. I didn’t hear about that so I didn’t have those expectations but all in all the movie is just ordinary daily things and the ending is scary but don’t expect too much like some super twist or twists. the ending intrigued me alot and the whole message about living in a situation like that. I sorta wanted to read the book but i’m not that interested… maybe if it’s a dollar lol. cinematography is nothign special. it’s not POOR which is often the case with japanese anything lol. camera work that makes me go IT LOOKS CHEAP/fake, ZOOM IN, ZOOM IN lol. I did not apreciate the SEX SCENE. it’s not necessary and it’s awkward…. and I am a fan of that actor but i’m not a hardcore fan or anything. that whole scene leading up to it was unnatural and illogical to me lol. another complaint. because of the questions I had about the movie I googled it and di find something. it HAS SPOILERS obviously. http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1437994724 I agree with what this review points out. it has spoilers in it though lol so don’t read if you don’t… want to know spoikers http://info.movies.yahoo.co.jp/userreview/tyem/id334659/rid54/p1/s2/c4/ all in all I only recommend this movie to the people who are interested in watching it. if you’re not interested, then don’t watch it.

Also the  part when the thunder struck the ground at the exact point that something said or realized was a little… cheesy? Like I would never expect that from a movie that came out in 2010… the rain was like whatever everybody does it, it fits, whatever, i’ll let it go but the thunder is just…. nooooooo. how do you do fake thunder anyway? lol… do you do the lighting and the sound effect later?

Confessions KOKUHAKU 2010 movie~ finally a good japanese movie!

 

Finally as in my first japanese movie that’s not anime that’s good. I found it enjoyable and i can definitely it recommend it to normal people (people who don’t watch asian movies etc etc ) GOOD.

So I was going through lines and i googled a line then I found the whole script online (japanese subtitles almost…) like towards the end of my process lol. It wasn’t like I had mad trouble with the lines in the movie so I wasn’t really bummed out. I only added a few things to my anki deck in the end.

http://blog.yeshj.com/zozl/articles/1667654.html

I saved it as a text and uploaded it

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/7omupi13ez549/confessions

in case the site disappears, dies,etc. I also put in the korean subs, the korean subs translated to japaense, the english ssubs that came with the movie, and txt of the lines i was writing down before i found it lol (there’s a couple really minor lines that’s in mine that’s in that. or maybe it was 1 line. just sharin’ ) .  I watched it with the ghetto-pseudo japanese subs so i can easily keep track of parts that i want to rewatch or figure out what was said that i couldn’t catch etc.

AS FAR AS the movie is concerned it’s dark, disturbing, interesting, artsy, mv-esque at times. It has good ost (radiohead <3) and cinematography. speaking of which, the hunger games will never be any of that lol. i was thinking since this movie is about revenge and has disturbing content and all that maybe some people wouldn’t want to watch it which is perfectly reasonable and fine. but then i realized that the number one movie in the US for many weeks? it made a shitload of money in short…. that that movie is about kids killing each other. I’ve seen both hg movies without my volition lol (no im’ actually crying becuase its almost 5 hrs + 20 $  i will never get back! and GODDAMN jennifer lawrence’s nose is UNNATURAL. i was looking at her face going wtf is wrong with her face ) . I would never watch those of my own accord because of the content and the fact that i can tell it’s boring as hell and poorly made, ridiculously long, and shallow and all that. as much as the movie is disturbing with the concept i don’t feel that at all when i watch the movie. i’m just bored. jeez how pathetic are hollywood movies?  But anyways since i thought of the hunger games after watching confessions after thinking about random things i just wanted to say go watch confessions instead if you’re going to watch thehunger games lol. hunger games to me is like 1/10 or 1/20… so awful.  Don’t worry I think battle royale sucks too lol… for god’s sakes fujiwara’s in it: the worst actor in japanese cinema j/k but seriously he’s AWFUL. IF YOU SEARCH 過剰演技 i’m sure he’ll pop up lol

When I think of japanee movies I think of crappy acting (overacting,bad acting,etc), crappy script, crappy cinematography, crappy pacing as in slow as hell, crappy audio (not the audio file but the actual recording and after-processing or lack there of etc), NOTHING HAPPENS (the only thing it has going on for it is the “atmosphere” fuinki which is complete BS)  or something happens but it’s so trivial you might as well say nothing happened. I haven’t seen many japanese movies but that’s just my general thoughts which I am open to changing as  I watch good quality movies.  My thoughts regarding j-dramas have changed too since i had the opportunity to see some really amazing ones which i’ve reviewed. i’ve also seen really crappy ones which happened to be praised somewhere like its popularity or the japanese people or the american bloggers etc etc which made me realize it’s probably just best to watch whatever interests me and ignore whatever it priased or hyped if the drama itself doesn’t interest me ( there is a little chance i’m missing something amazing but 99% of the time u really should listen to your guts)

For the acting the 2 main kids are both in suzuki-sensei i tihnk . i didn’t look it up but i’m pretty sure. I must say that one kid is really blessed with his roles. he has such awesome unusual roles. it’s really good experience for him.  Confessions is a lot more interesting than suzuki-sensei with better pay-off and not as slow-paced btw. i have yet to finish suzuki-sensei though.  all in all the acting was amazing. usually with jaapnesemovies or dramas i have to sorta prepare myself ( mentally? ) for the crappy acting that may ensue just because it is a japanesemovie/drama… but this one my worries were completely unnecessary. y’all know what i’m talking about right?

This is a definitely i will recommend to anyone else who wants to obviate their preconceptions of Japanese movies like me.  I have no idea why i waited so long to watch this movie . i tihnk i just have no enthusiasm towards japanese movies becaues they just disappointed me in the past lol (the movies i checked out weren’t obscure… they were popular or praised or something but they all sucked so i was like wtf? ) . one of the reasons of my disappointment is they have the kishakaiken for the omvie ( I HAVE TO CHECK IT OUT for this movie to hear the director and the actors… SO CURIOUS!! ) and everyone talks about how much they thought about x and the little things they fixated on and how this movie is really good with the themes of xyz and blahblah and want everyone to check it out. but then you watch the movie and you’re like irritated at the shitatistic script that is not salvageable by anything…. and you wonder did i watch the correct kishakaiken or did i watch another kishakaiken with the same cast but different movie. the script is so so bad. so in that way sometimes the kishakaiken sorta makes me feel the potential of the movie and the movie just makes me go wtf is wrong with japanese movies and that the kishakaiken is more interesting and stimulating than the movie in the content and the quality/minute ratio.

Imma read fthe book toooooooooooooooooooo. I got the book but then i was like i want to watch the movie first. i like finding out about interesting information like twists or whatever through video than reading… that’s just my preference. I’m glad i did that because  i was surprised many times when i watched the movie. I suggest watching this movie without reading summaries, trailers etc. I saw the trailer a long time ago and forgot/misunderstood stuff lol so i wasn’t “bored” from knowing too much…  and i thought hey what was the significance of the last line in th emovie so i googled in japaense and i will side with the pessimistic group… it’s the most logical ending you know.

at this point I’m thinking of watching mtasuko no isshou since it’s the same director, i lvoe the actress and i distinctly remember her saying ～言ってみたり about kiraware matsuko no isshou  on shabekuri which was hilarious. it’s a definitely a shabekuri ep i recommend~

copy + paste

有田さんは嫌われ松子が大好きで特典映像なども観てその中で「この役をやるために女優になったのかもしれない」と言っていたのを観て感動したが、中谷さん自身はそういうことを言ってみたかもしれないと有田さんの思いを一蹴

だがこの役は苦しんで苦しんで悩んで悩んで作り上げた中島哲也監督作品で、出演者の魅力を存分に引き出してくれるが非常に厳しくて、監督とも言い合 いになって「中島監督と付き合っていると胃が痛くなります」と言ったこともあったが、それぐらい自分を追い詰めていい映画を作り上げる素晴らしい監督だと 評していました。

===

oh and I also did the opposite pattern  of reading the book vs  drama becuase the drama looks mad tedious to watch especially while i was reading the book. himitsu by higashino keigo.  I didn’ tknow there was a drama when i bought the book. then i got to the main story and then i remembred shida mirai was in a creepy jdrama and i realized that this was the gensaku. so i’ve avoided higashino keigo all this time. i think there’s been many movies and dramas based on his works all these years. the reasons for avoiding include the fact that he has many crime books (there’s a bunch of authors in the $1 section of book-off that have a bunch of books about crimes especially murders and i just thought he was one of them but then i heard his name on japanese tv a few times since he is famous) and… i just tried other authors. so one day i was like let’s try him just to ge tit over with to see if i’m missing out or if my gut prediction is correct that it’s not for me. so i chose a book that won an award which was this.  so first of all his writing does nothing for me…. reaidng around people say it’s “easy” to read or something but to me it’s not easy to read because i do not have compatibility with his writing. sometimes for me 読みやすい is 読みにくい　or 読み進めない not because my japanese sucks but becaseu the writing style doesn’t do shit for me. i agree techinically it’s easy to read and i barely looked up anything ( as in take pictures with my iphone) but the actual action of reading is borderline torturous? lol… it’s just not enjoyable as with other authors who make me realize how how much fun reading can be… how much fun reading japanese can be for japanese authors.  of course i’ve come across worse writing styles than him that are considered yomiyasui but are painful for me to read. so reading to the page when i find out the plot was tedioussssssss. this writing style is just not for me… 万人受け。。。doesn’t me it’s for me.for example shit like hunger games is mad popular… just means there’s lots of idiots in the world… doesn’t mean i’m one of them.  of course higashino is better than hunger games but just to give an example.  so anyways i started my tobashi yomi , naname-yomi which is what i do with books in english with writing styles that just dont’ do anything for me which is only read the dialogue. the only problem is sometimes i don’t know what’s going on so if i care enough etc i read the other text too. but for certain scenes, before i even read it i know it’s going to be tedious and who gives a shit (だから何？感　IN Japanese) ie when the characters interact with family members or go to the jikka.. lol. so that works really well for that or maybe i should skip that whole part. BUT SURPRISINGLy the last 100 pages were more interesting  and i did less tobashi yomi because i catually cared and for some reason the byousha didn’t feel as tedious and soulless and tiredsome as in most of the first 300 pages. the ending was sad…. not sure how i feel about it. so i wanted to watch parts of the drama for the sceness that interest me ESPECIALLY the ending.

I wrote what i wrote here for the most part on dokusho meter and surprisingly people niced it… and i read the kansou by the people who niced me and they were the ones who liked the book or cried after reading it.. which i find strange. this has happened in the past too where i basically talk shit about the book bc i did’nt like it for whatever reason but people still nice it lol. i was sorta scared people may “attack” “flame” me or something but japanese people aren’t like that i guess~ NAISU!

http://book.akahoshitakuya.com/b/4167110067

Battle Athletes Victory COMPLETE

 

     

   

☃UPDATE ☆: link to lines/transcript/script from episode 1-26!　台本　セリフ　台詞　全台詞　全台詞 バトルアスリーテス 大運動会 名言　名台詞　名セリフ on mediafire  | EVERNOTE  | .rar of gif and screenshots|  tumblr posts && | link to my post about what to do if you ain’t got no j-subs

i like watching longer anime with at least 26 episodes…. since it makes me go “wow i can’t believe that hapepened” or it just feels like so much “time” has passed. There were some surprises in the story development. I wouldn’t want to say twist because i did notice foreshadowing after the FACT. but i must say the last episode was unpredictable. at the same time I can say that the creators went BALLS TO THE WALLS with this show. The last arc is very controversial let’s just say. I undersatnd both sides but i’ll side with　賛　of　賛否両論 more than the 否. I think if it just ended before that arc it would’ve just been whateve ranime but because they went BALLS TO THE WALLS and made something happen… there’s a completeness about it (there’s the foreshadowing again…). I think if I were to re-watch it i would really “understand” some of the lines and why they were said and why to that person lol….  not to mention there were some hilarious moments.  i almost want to say that this show is  very representative of anime. i’m not saying all anime should be ridiculous and bizarre and whatnot but at the same time if any of the media is able to pull that off it would be anime out of dramas and movies and whatnot. that’s what anime excels at. it almost makes no sense to make a slice of life anime ( I really enjoyed ichigo mashimaro and minami-ke so there are exceptions) or nodame cnatabile into an anime (I think i talked about this in my iron leaguer post) or the satoshi kon movies (sorry they are boring and i feel nothing. the animation may be pretty but that’s about it) since it’s boring and there’s no point making it into an anime. anime can be really wacky and bizarre and battle athletes victory is no exception to that. it’s a good example of that. I’m sure this anime won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but i immensely enjoyed it and it’s not very well-known so for that reason i really want to recommend it. I enjoyed some of the themes involving sports (even if you don’t like sports you can still relate it to other things… life is life. everything is relatable ) and the character development/chemistry.

I also appreciated the side-characters. sometimes with anime that are not as well-done the side-characters are very throw-away and unmemorable… just a waste of space. or they try to do something with them but there’s no point or at least it feels that way.

comedy – sometimes it’s subtle  as in subtle but still funny. for some of the comedy i had to rewind because it was  thatso funny. for example that joke with mylandaaaaa and her  strategy for thwarting her opponent was hilarious! it’s subtle but very funny.

   
For me, this anime is what anime should be or can be. anime can pull-off (my definition of pull-off is that i enjoy watching it. it’s stupid to criticize an anime for being “unrealistic” imo. but at the same time some anime are just so sucky that i actually do criticize for being unrealistic beucase it pissed me off for so many reasons… ie love hina http://myanimelist.net/profile/midori-/reviews) ridiculous things that other media just may not be able to.

   

   

happy holidays! happy Japanese learning!  I had lots of fun  watching/learning from this anime. Like I said before, for the people who say “you can’t learn shit from anime you can suck it!” lol. For example I learned this phrase that I heard for the first time in this show and hopefully not the last. the same thing happened with iron leaguer. even though it’s for “children” there’s still japanese to be learned (and it’s useful and I wonder why I don’t hear it more) from it that for some reason i haven’t from anywhere else or at least I think I didn’t.  one example is 造作も無い　It’s not　ぞうさくもない you know japanese sucks like this lol..

ONE EXAMPLE from iron leaguer is その行方はようとして、知れなかった

I like learning new phrases and expressions seeing as there is sort of an epidemic jaapn with lack of vocabulary/expression that i feel sometimes lol… it depends on the person and what generation they’re in etc etc… sometimes I’m like you’re japanese speak japanese or why do you suck at expressing yourself in jaapnese when you only know japanese!

P>S> OVA Is boring/sucky😦

http://www.mediafire.com/view/7r6c115o4l2ab3v/ba1-26.txt