Strawberry Night SP

Takeuchi Yuko is back in doramas! Unfortunately, its a cop show and its not made by NHK or Wowow so I pretty much expected all the usual quirks that irritate me about jdorama cop shows. Still, its Takeuchi Yuko and its got a good supporting cast so I just had to check it out. She plays Himekawa, a female detective who rose quickly through the ranks and became head of her own team and Strawberry Night is the name of the case that this dorama special is about.

Yabe Kenzo!!!!!!

Like 99% of the crap police jdoramas, the main character is of course hated and abused by a lot of people for no reason although the main character is of course good at her job. We have your usual superior who doesn't contribute anything to the investigation except to get angry and shout at our main protagonist Himekawa every time she speaks. There's also the fact that she is a woman in a man's world but non of the characters articulate why they think a woman shouldn't be a detective. They just call Himekawa ojousan although she got to her position with her abilities.

Once I got past the usual cliches and telling of Himekawa's past which I thought was revealed too early and too blatantly, the main case itself is actually pretty good. I felt the flashback was broke the writing rule that it is better to show than to tell. They should have hinted with snippets of her past instead of spelling it out in black and white for the audience. The Strawberry Night case had some nice twist and turns and I was enjoying this special.

Kinpachi sensei!!!!

Then we got the villain reveal and it was debate time! Yes, the usual hero debating with villain with the villain of course acting like a lunatic and the heroine shouting 'you are wrong' blah blah blah. Not to forget the killer getting a bit of redemption as well. No idea what the dorama series is going to be about since the case is closed but I'm guessing there are other people involved in Strawberry Night and this time its going to take a whole season to solve.

Strawberry Night has the usual flaws of the non-Furusawa Ryota cop shows but the case itself is not as idiotic as Boss or Tokyo Dogs. Its more towards the gritty and realistic side which is a plus. Hopefully the dorama series will concentrate on making the case itself exciting instead of generating boring and meaningless conflict among the cops.

Jmovie review: Norwegian Wood

I had read many good things about this movie long time ago but for some reason its taken me so long to get to watching it. Norwegian Wood tells the story about Toru (Matsuyama Kenichi) whose best friend commits suicide in high school. He changes school and while in university in Tokyo he runs into Naoko (Kikuchi Rinko), the girlfriend of Toru's deceased best friend and they start hanging out together. While Toru and Naoko are bound by the act of suicide, it seems like Naoka has yet to get over the past.

First of, the acting in Norwegian Wood is godlike. Kikuchi Rinko is awesome and should be the highest paid actress in Japan. There is a 5 minute one shot scene with her walking back and forth in the early morning which is one par with the hallway fight scene in Old Boy except there's no violence in it but heart wrenching emotional pain. Matsuyama Kenichi is good as well but he's not on that Abe Hiroshi able to elevate anything level. I'm not to hot on the story but the acting just kept me glued to the screen. Props to Hatsune Eriko as well as the suffering girlfriend of the playboy Nagasawa.

There was something about the directing that went above the usual jmovie stuff and surprise, it was directed by a French director of Vietnamese descent. What was shocking was it was the same director of 'I come with the rain', a pretentious arthouse style movie with some big names that tried to be something above convention but turned into a jumbled mess of nothing. Before I get to the spoiler stuff about why I didn't really get the story, I must reiterate that if you are a Jmovie fan, its worth watching for the acting alone.

SPOILERS DO NOT READ FURTHER ON

Norwegian Wood is basically guy (Toru) and girl (Naoko) have a traumatic experience, meet up later, fall in love but girl is mentally unstable from trauma. Guy is compelled to not abandon girl like his best friend did and at the same time is discovering sexuality. Guy meets another girl, Midori who like him has a lover she is unable to have sex with though for different reasons and they both hook up. Naoko reveals her guilt over Kizuki's suicide and in the end commits suicide herself. Toru in the end decides to hook up with Midori.

The storyline of course is not that simple. There are a lot of issues explored in the movie like what is love and what is devotion to a person to the point of disregarding self? The relationship between sex and love and all that stuff. Interesting stuff to be sure but somehow I felt that there was something missing in the narrative. Looked up the wiki for the novel it is based on and immediately saw what was missing.

According to the wiki, Midori is 'everything that Naoko is not — outgoing, vivacious, supremely self-confident.' Watching the movie, I never saw Midori as the opposite of Naoko. She was to me a distraction and a mirror image of Toru. Even more is missing from the movie: 'Reiko talks about her search for sexual identity, and Naoko talks about the unexpected suicide of her older sister several years ago.' WTF isn't this in the movie? I can think of lots of things to cut out or they could have added 10 minutes to the running time.

Here's more: 'Now back in Tokyo, Toru unintentionally alienates Midori through both his lack of consideration of her wants and needs, and his continuing thoughts about Naoko. He writes a letter to Reiko, asking for her advice about his conflicted affections for both Naoko and Midori. He doesn't want to hurt Naoko, but he doesn't want to lose Midori either. Reiko counsels him to seize this chance for happiness and see how his relationship with Midori turns out.'

WTF is the Toru alienating Midori bit. There's only this scene at a bar where he sort of rejects her request for sex. If anything, the movie is more about Toru trying to call Midori after that and she not answering the phone and ignoring him in public.

Reading the novel summary, I can see what the story was supposed to be about. Naoko vs Midori. Naoko the troubled girl that Toru is compelled/obligated to protect and Midori this confident girl who has problems of her own but she is able to face them head on. The movie gave me Naoko as a very nice but mentally damaged girl and Midori as someone who is doing to Toru what he is doing to Naoko. The Midori in the movie doesn't strike me as 'outgoing, vivacious, supremely self-confident'. She sort of is but not in a way that made me think, ah, she's the other side of coin compared to Naoko.

I'm bloody tempted to get the book and have a read. The summary in the wiki and the movie I saw are different in their points of emphasis. Perhaps this is one of those movies that I will never understand like No Country for Old Man. However, until I read the book I can never be sure.

Jmovie review: Scabbard Samurai

Scabbard Samurai starts off with this samurai, Nomi who only has a scabbard and no katana on the run with his daughter. My first thoughts were is this going to be a lone wolf and cub type movie? I quickly realised it was not when Nomi runs across his first assassin and gets slashed in the back before running off. The daughter, played by the little girl from Runaway nurses his wounds by grinding plants together and applying on his wound.

Nori the scabbard samurai runs into two other assassins and gets shot in the head and his neck snapped before once again running away. Ok, now I know for sure this not a realistic samurai movie. Comedy, perhaps? Nori gets captured and has 30 days to make the son of the lord laugh or else he has to commit seppuku. Ok, now we're getting into the gist of the movie.

Samurai without a sword and his daughter have 30 chances to make this comatose-like young lord laugh or else he's dead. Throw in two guards who get caught up with helping Nori and you have the makings of an interesting comedy. I like the humour in Scabbard Samurai. Of course there's a lot of slapstick with Nori's attempts but the funny thing is how they come up with the jokes and the guards blaming each other when they fail.

Nori attempts a lot of crazy stunts, some of which require turning off your brain but without realising it, this movie really endeared me to this silent samurai and his smart daughter. Behind the 30 attempts to make the young lord laugh is a father and daughter story where the daughter does all the talking. Thank goodness the daughter is not too smart like in Runaway or maybe its just the absense of idiots in this movie that makes her stick out like a sore thumb.

Scabbard Samurai is one of those rare crowd pleasing movies that touches the audience without being overly manipulative. Its been a while since I've watched a Japanese movie this good. I guarantee that you will laugh, you will cry and you will definitely remember this gem of a movie.

Arakawa under the Bridge eps 1-3

Arakawa is a very weird, fourth wall breaking dorama based on a manga. Riku, our main protagonist is a rich guy who's motto in life is to never be in debt to anyone. His life is saved by this girl Nino who claims to be from Venus and he has to live with her under the bridge.

This mysterious village is populate by strange characters lead by the kappa played by an unrecognisable Oguri Shun. Nacchi is in it playing an orange headed character and we've got a dudes dressed in nun outfits, bird costumes and starfish heads.

I like weird shows but the first 3 episodes of Arakawa are neither interesting nor funny. Its just weird for the sake of being weird. No interesting characters to latch on to. Characters doing activities that have no meaning like building rockets out of bottles. I just don't get this show.

Its clearly:

1) Not a comedy. I didn't even get one chuckle from 3 episodes.

2) A slice of life show in a commune filled with characters that don't make sense. If I'm not suppose to use my brain and its not funny, what am I watching for?

3) Has no main story to look forward to.

Possibly Arakawa could get better. Since the manga was made into an anime there has to be something worth watching for. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything enjoyable about the first 3 episodes and there's no compulsion for me to continue.

Jmovie review: Documentary of AKB48 to be continued

I remember reading about this movie showing in Japanese cinemas some time ago and I believe they've got a part 2 that's coming out soon. If you follow Japanese pop culture, there's no escaping AKB48. Somehow they've worked their way from a niche otaku idol group to exploding all over the country and showing up in everything. I don't think Morning Musume back in 99 was even that big.

My knowledge of AKB48 consisted of listening to their early very suggestive songs ,playing the two PSP games and watching them in doramas so I went into the movie withsome knowledge of who they are but not their personalities since I haven't watched Japanese variety shows since the good old days of Momusu on Utaban and Hello Morning. The PSP games did provide me with more information such as who liked anime and who had a famous father but its acting for a dating sim.

I was hoping to get the answer to why A-chan is the most popular girl of the group.

So Documentary of AKB48 starts of with the main girls eating around the table, having a conversation and the camera rotating around them. Tells me nothing about who they are and what they do and the too scripted nature of the introduction is boring. Then we get right to a short clip of the main girls miming, I mean performing before showing the girls very excited at the 2009 Kohaku and then distributing heat packs to fans lined outside the AKB theatre a happy new year on new years day. That's interesting because what makes them different is that they're a more accessible idoru group.

Then the documentary takes a turn for the worse by doing various interviews with certain cast members talking about nothing. There's plenty of crying and stuff about members changing groups but I was just fucking bored because they is no good damn narrative. Whoever made this documentary had no fucking idea how to make one. If someone who had no idea WTF AKB48 was they would be even more lost than me and would probably fall asleep thinking why should are care about these girls when it doesn't introduce them to me and tell me what they do?

Not that there's no introduction. The documentary shows their names, which generation they are from but asks them fluffy questions that fans probably know the answers for. Why not bloody start with the main girls talking about how they started and how they worked for years as an indy group? How the group is different in that the fans get to interact with them a lot and how often they have to perform. Documentary of AKB48 lacks a starting point to hook the viewer in and then meanders around having no idea what to impart of the audience.

As can be seen from the screencaps, Documentary of AKB48 looks bloody gorgeous but someone forgot to spend money and hire an editor who could make sense of the footage. Avoid it like the plague. Documentary of AKB48 is a marketing tool that for some reason only markets itself to the most hardcore of fans.

Doctors Saikyou no Meii ep 4

I love Moriyama's expression going from wtf are they all greeting me to this is bloody troublesome.

Writing about bad doramas is easy, just make fun of how bad it is but there's always that strong feeling of anger and frustration that lingers cause you sort of have to experience it twice. Writing about pedestrian doramas is hard because you can never be sure what's missing, only what you had hoped to see. Writing about well written doramas is a joy because the thoughts come to you when you're watching. Its just a matter of organising it.

After the events of ep 3, we can see the effects of the operation on Moriyama-sensei. People think him a great doctor and the nurses all greet him and he begrudgingly greets them back. A great change from ep 1 when the doctors would not greet the nurses. The theme for this episode is pride, specifically Moriyama's pride. He may be a childish but he has skills and pride and for once Moriyama has actually done something to be proud of. Manipulation of Moriyama's pride is the key to motivate him or use him like the sales rep.

Moriyama and gang reveling in their 'victory'.

I love the scene where Sagara gets into an argument with Moriyama and lets him win. His rational is that winning an argument will not change people's minds. His method is to make people change their own minds not be winning them to his side but by letting them experience what they could be. Moriyama is becoming a better doctor after episode 3. He takes his young patient seriously and even does some reading the night before the operation.

Success and praise has made Moriyama feel more responsible. Its gives him a feeling that he can make a difference. We also get another funny scene with Minagawa sensei appealing to his pride to help him connect with the patient. The whole team thing in episode 3 was also a message to Minagawa to trust that the other doctors would respond to the trust. I hope Moriyama never goes to the 'good side'. His character of being childish and vindictive towards Sagara should not change. He can become a good doctor while still being himself.

This episode really shows the purpose of Moriyama sensei and that he is a cartoon character not because jdoramas always like their villains to be non-threatening, overacting caricatures but because it makes Sagara sensei's manipulations more fun and makes Moriyama sensei great comedy relief. I can't believe he has turned into an enjoyable character! I dare say that Moriyama probably knows he is being manipulated but his pride will never let him admit it.

The other element of episode 4 is the story of the two patients, a middle school student from an elite school and a homeless man and how they are connected. I like how the story addresses two things that we don't see often in jdoramas; firstly that no one wants to be homeless and the pressure of living life as a Todai graduate/elite. Episode 4 doesn't go into the issues great detail but I thought the script deals with it very succinctly and beautifully.

Looks like episode 5 is going to be about the nurses vs doctors and there's a bit of foreshadowing with one of the doctors saying that the nurses are complaining their workload has increased since the hospital started taking emergency patients. I for one cannot wait for Nutcase's subs for the next episode.

Jmovie review: Hana no Ato/After the Flowers

Hana no Ato is a film in the same vein as the three movies in the Yamada Yoji trilogy; a study of the lives and customs in feudal Japan with a slow build up to a fight in the end. The only difference is that the main protagonist this time is a female, Ito played by Kitagawa Keiko. Ito is the daughter of someone of high rank and has been trained in swordplay by her father. Ito is so good that she managed to beat the best fighters from Hagai dojo.

While sakura-watching, Ito meets a samurai from Hagai dojo, Eguchi who recognises her as a swordfighter and proposes a practice match. After the match, the movie is basically about the situations that Ito and Eguchi  finds themselves in and the clan politics that influence their lives. Its an examination of feudal life and how everyday behaviour is regulated from closing and opening shoji doors to how people speak and never say anything directly.

The story is enlivened by Ito's fiancee, Katagiri a glutton who is not as carefree and ignorant as he seems. Komoto Masahiro always plays sad characters who experience tragedies in doramas so this smiling fiancee who is a lot smarter than he looks fits him perfectly. Eguchi has a fiancee as well, played by Ito Ayumi and the two loverbirds can only look at each other from afar knowing that life decisions had already been made for them.

Being the female version of Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade, Hana no Ato is not as gritty. The two fight scenes are more fanciful and not as desperate. There's a more sanitised feel with less blood. Enjoyment of the movie will depend on how much the viewer buys into Ito's motivation for the final fight.

Hana no Ato has all the elements that made me love Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade but I just didn't enjoy as much. I think it has much to do with the lack of chemistry between Ito and Eguchi, especially with their relationship being based on one fight. Still, the script has gives the viewers more reason why he is important to her. I wouldn't call Hana no Ato must watch but its definitely a pretty decent movie and is definitely better than Love and Honour.

Kmovie review: Blind

Haven't done a kmovie review in a long while, not that I haven't been watching Kmovies but that they have been pretty meh. No one does black comedy like Koreans especially Park Chang Wook but what I have been watching usually has a lot of gore (usually involving serial killers and violence against women), slick production but ultimately not emotionally engaging. I avoid Korean rom-coms like the plague.

Blind is about this former police cadet Min Soo-Ah who gets involved in an accident with her foster brother where he dies and she loses her sight. Soo-Ah is expelled from the police academy and in the beginning of the show we have her wallowing in her guilt and we find out that she and her brother were actually from an orphanage.

One night, Soo-Ah gets in a taxi which gets involved in a hit and run. Soo-Ah makes a police report but the police are reluctant to entertain her. They assign Detective Jo to interview Soo-Ah and she shows him that although she is blind, she is able to discern clues about the hit and run taxi driver through her other senses. What follows is the best part of the show, cop and blind former cadet trying to chase leads and find the taxi driver. Someone should make a tv series out of this concept because it is an interesting hook. How does one locate a person when all the clues are non visual?

We  are then introduced to the third main character, a young kid who claims to have seen the hit and run. I won't spoil any more but suffice to say, there is a very awesome chase sequence in the middle of the movie involving mobile phones that is so gripping. The writer really used the blindness of the main character to create great suspense like the villain being able to get close to Soo-Ah without her realising it.

What I don't like about Blind is that it is very uneven. There is the sentimental sob story about Soo-Ah, her brother and the kid. There is the fun investigation part leading up to serial killer suspense. Guess which part doesn't really fit? I'm not against the story of Soo-Ah's tragedy and the kid. My complaint is that its done in such a way that its like a completely different movie to the point of marginalising the character of Detective Jo.

The climax has this sort of flashback that tries so hard to tie it back to Soo-Ah's tragedy that it completely destroys the suspense. I understand that it is the give Soo-Ah a character arch but there are more subtle ways to go about it. Its like I'm watching two movies view for screen time; a suspense movie and a movie about grief. Problem is both get equal time and the script doesn't feel as tight as it should be.

Blind is not must watch but is certainly watchable. I mostly recommend Blind for the subway chase sequence which had such a awesome ending that it was obvious the final ending would never match it. Whoever thought the Koreans would do a movie about a blind girl that is not an overly sentimental love drama.