Very fun two part dorama special about a girl who has not zest for life and is constantly bitching about her life who encounters a talking car from the future to teach her about facing life and other values that right wing politicians talk about when critisizing the youth. Oshaberi Kuruma has three things going for it; its very funny, its got Sakuraba Nanami who IMHO can act and its got tons of 80s English pop music. When I say English I mean the language not British.
I wonder how much they actually had to pay for the licensing fees cause there are a ton songs and Oshaberi Kuruma uses it very much like Moteki with twice the frequency. They even use the Knight Rider theme song though the scene which the use it has no cars in it but generally the songs fit the moment of a scene which just makes it funnier. Anyone who enjoyed Moteki's humour will find this funny as well.
This is one dorama that has a good ratio of comedy to moral preaching and I was sad that its on a two-parter. As good as you can get with a B-level budget comedy about a talking car. Tempted to give it a must watch but its kind of too short with only two episodes running at half an hour each. Very watchable. If I were the vice-president of common sense for Japan, I would pass a law giving all Takei Emi doramas to Sakuraba Nanami.
I thought this drama was pretty cute, although I haven't seen part two yet.
ReplyDeleteI heard that in Japan they have some sort of thing where they automatically buy most songs and can use them on air as much as they want but they CANNOT use them on the DVD release. Sort of like MTV's Daria did -- none of the songs on the show are on the DVD.
That would explain how they could afford all that music. Makes the DVD release useless though since the music is really important.
ReplyDeleteI found it!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/10sxdc/copyrighted_tv_appearing_on_variety_programs_not/
Yes, they do pay royalties, but under Japanese copyright law, the stations are only required to pay a pre-determined royalty for use of musical works in broadcasts which is not all that expensive. All TV stations have a blanket agreement with JASRAC for the performing rights and RIAJ for the actual recordings. In other words, the publishers cannot dictate what the royalties would be, as long as the usage is limited to broadcasts. This does not apply once the broadcast content is turned into media (i.e., DVDs, Blu-Rays). Then, synch rights would apply and synch fees would be dictated by the publishers (and it would be incredibly expensive). So if you watch a TV show using famous music, and that show becomes a DVD, chances are that the music will be different.
That was on reddit. I think the guy said he works in entertainment or something.
^ahahaha I guess we would never see this on DVD then. It wouldn't be the same without the songs, since they did a great job matching songs to situations, even though non-English speaking Japanese viewers may not realize it. I nearly lost it when the Dead Or Alive song came on in ep 1.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info Sona, and thanks for writing about this special. I missed it completely. I think highly of this girl. She does have some serious acting chop. Did a fantastic job in Akai Ito as a quiet fragile mess.