Hamsapsukebe Jdorama Awards 2018

Apologies for the super long delay. It took me a while to catch up on 2018 shows after my trip and I was busy catching up on this year's shows after that.

MOST DISAPPOINTING ACTOR 2018

TAKEUCHI YUKO (Miss Sherlock and Innocent Days)

Once upon a time Takeuchi Yuko could do no wrong. Its not all her fault but both shows were so frustratingly meh.


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

ARATA (Unnatural)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

TOMITA MIU (Switched)

BEST ACTOR

KARASAWA TOSHIAKI (Harassment Game) 

BEST ACTRESS

HIROSE SUZU (Anone)

BIGGEST WASTE OF TALENT 2018

MISS SHERLOCK

GUILTY PLEASURE JDORAMA OF 2018

DAISY LUCK

I had way too much fun watching this show.

THE GOOD TRY AWARD

TAKANE NO HANA

This award is for the show that reached for the stars and truly tried to be great and that is Takane no Hana. The show did not impress me but I appreciated the effort and its ambitions. Maybe I might appreciate it more if I watch it again with English subs but I appreaciate what it was trying to be.

TOP 4 JDORAMAS OF 2018

4. Genkai Danchi

3. Champon Tabetaka

2. Unnatural

1. Harassment Game

The 8 Year Engagement Jmovie review

I find it pretty funny how within the same weekI ended up watching two jmovies with very similar stories but with very different levels of execution.

The 8 Year Engagement and 3D Kanojo both tell the same story of boy meets girl with rare and dangerous illness (what other illnesses are there in the jmovie world?), girl gets cured but loses memory of boy.

I know what you are thinking. This sounds exactly like a crying porn plotline. This is to create the saddest of situations so teenage girls can visit the cinema multiple times and cry to their heart's content.

What stops The 8 Year Engagement from being just another teenage crying porn movie with an absurd concept is that it is based on a real story.

Its a lot better than 3D Kanojo which everyone should avoid and I have to say considering all the crying porn jmovies, The 8 Year Engagement is as watchable as they are going to get. The too leads have chemistry and the sad moments don't feel unearned.

You can get the raw from nyaa. Just search for 8nengoshi no hanayome and I got the subs from avistaz.

3D Kanojo Real Girl Jmovie review

3D Kanojo Real Girl as can be surmised from the title is an otaku falls in love with real girl rom com. It starts of ok enough and you could tell where the story was heading when the main girl Iroha tells the guy Tsutui he would be her boyfriend for half a year.

Then cracks started appearing in 3D Kanojo. Their chemistry was lacking and as the main characters asked each other what they saw in each other, I as the audience was wondering the same.

Before the story had any time to build on the relationship between the characters, the story introduced a third girl and we had a triangle relationship that I did not care about.

There's this bit in the story where the doctor says Tsutsui was changed Iroha but we don't really get any elaboration on that. We can only surmise based on Tsutsui's ramblings about Iroha in the beginning that she was a bad girl but its not been elaborated upon. 

Then we get to the 6 month point and we have this Halloween dance sequence that feels out of place and then Iroha disappears to get the surgery and then we jump to five years.

Wait, what? The girl you have been dating for 6 months goes to surgery and the main character does not even try to contact the parents to find out what happened during the surgery? Maybe visit the freaking hospital after surgery? Who the fuck wrote this shit?

I think its completely impossible to f up a romcom but 3D Kanojo really did it when it tried to cram too many storylines with earning any of the payoffs. 3D Kanojo would have been better if it concentrated on the characters' personalities like how Iroha was changed by Tsutsui instead of shoehorning more romcom tropes. Also, the Halloween dance which they used for the ending is so freaking out of place. Avoid.

My 3 favourite episodes of Fruits Takuhaibin

1) Episode 10 (Goukon Episode)

In this episode we've got the Jimiyama reveal after hearing bits and pieces about this regular client, but the goukon story is the best.This episode was about the idea that there is no one who should be ashamed about one's job and we should not let other people put a value on our jobs based on their skewed values.

I love how the episode manages to express this without spelling it out through a goukon and drinking at a snack with the mama. We see this contrasted with the three selfish goukon women who just want a man with a job to guarantee their future and the mama who works hard for her child and is good at her job. One of my favourite episodes ever. This episode is almost enough to guarantee Fruits Takuhaibin a must watch.

2) Episode 9

Masakane falls in love and we have that musical number. I love how his child-like innocence can melt even the most hardened of criminals. The right mixture of fun and melancholy.

3) Episode 8 (Nakamura Yuri)

This episode is so sad but I'm glad they did not go with a fairytale ending. I love how things don't always work out like in the real world and Fruits does not pull its punches.

SUMMARY

Fruits Takuhaibin is good. Very good. The question is, is it Shinya Shokudo good? I'm so torn on this because if you look at the quality of the episodes, its right up there with Shinya yet something is stopping me from declaring Fruits a must watch. Maybe its because I wasn't that happy with the ending I guess........ I want to give it a must watch, but I can't. Very, very, very good show.

Papa Katsu is being subbed!

I wrote about Papakatsu way back in 2017 and happy to say the first 6 episodes have been subbed by rjgman56. Nojima Shinji's writing is so good, he can turn a run of the mill middle age man fantasy show is a very fun story about characters with plenty of issues.

Just keep your expectations in check and you'll have an enjoyable time. I'm slowly working my way through this show again and the dialogue is so fun. Very watchable. Raws are available from nyaa.

Perfect Crime Episodes 1-6

Trendl Reina is interior design firm and is having an affair with her boss. Some dude from New York Shinonome happens to see their affair. Shinonome treats Trendle Reina very coldly (the bastard!) and tells her he hates her.

Trendl Reina falls for this dude trying so hard to be cool and mysterious. The only hook Perfect Crime has is Reina as the narrator saying that her character did not know she was in a trap.

In episode, we finally find out this Shinonome's true movie and we get a rerun of the first 3 episodes again with all of Shinonome's thoughts thrown in. The problem is they replay every single thing that happened in the first episodes.

They could have easily compiled a couple of scenes together. I understand the intent but its just very inefficient story telling.

If you are not introducing anything of significance by replaying the same three episodes again, you're just wasting my time. Maybe the manga does it the same way, I don't know.

I only lasted 6 episodes because of Trendl Reina and wanting to find out whether she can act and carry a jdorama.

The only thing I've find is that she's good at pulling cute faces but I'm not going to keep watching to find out the rest. Very Meh. Not bad enough to get my crap rating, just very dull.

Good Wife Episodes 6-10

Good Wife turned out to be a pretty fun watch. Its got a lot of twists and turns.

I could not believe they went for the storyline in episode 10 because I thought it would be better served as the main story for the second season.

Good Wife is basically underdog female character with two very different and flawed love interests and the show is about making the audience and main character Hasumi Kyoko not be able to choose one over the other.

Personally I'm in team Hasumi. Karasawa Toshiaki does an excellent job underacting because the writers want to keep the audience guessing about his true motives but this just makes his character's ability to make complex decisions while his life is crumbling even more impressive.

Compare that with Jorah, I mean Koizumi Kotaro's schoolboy lawyer who can't even confess properly.

I impression I have of Good Wife, is while the twists are fun, I don't feel as invested in the characters as much.

Its that feeling that I would not mind skipping to the end of the episode to find out what happens and I did not feel the need to go on every second of the journey with the characters.

My favourite performance in Good Wife is Yoshida Kotaro's Wakisaka. He knows how to play a fun villain without going overboard.

Very watchable show. I like it better than Suits. Looking forward to season 2 as long as Hasumi and Wakisaka are in it.