Meari21

Btw, I am looking forward to that Shinsengumi drama. It stars Yamada Yuki and it also has an all-star cast. It's under U-NEXT but it's crucial that they partner with a major international streaming platform for distribution if they want it to gain traction globally. If they don't, it's just going to be available outside Japan through illegal means. I used to watch J-dramas through fan-subber sites because they were not available anywhere and I had no means to watch them if I didn't resort to pirate sites. Unfortunately, there are still J-dramas that cannot be watched legally outside Japan because they don't have international distribution.

I don't think so. Shogun was a massive success. Granted that it was an FX production that was distributed by Disney, it was still a Japanese creation as it was executively produced by Sanada Hiroyuki and the crew were all Japanese. And Japanese movies that are promoted heavily outside of Japan like Godzilla Minus One become blockbuster hits. It's just that they (including their goverment) don't make a concerted effort to promote their content outside Japan. Even Japanese music artists say that themselves. That's why bands like One OK Rock learned English and consistently toured outside of Japan with the intention to promote their music worldwide. After years of touring, it paid off. Not many Japanese rock bands do this unfortunately. Sure, most popular local Japanese artists don't need it if they're not thinking in a global scale and are just content being popular at home. The popularity of Japanese music worldwide in comparison to K-pop is just a trickle of water next to a rushing stream. You don't hear J-pop on the radio every hour every single day on mainstream radio outside Japan. It's only recently that Japanese productions are making the effort to go global. TBS for example recently signed a deal with Netflix for distribution of their dramas. Fuji TV followed suit, if I'm not mistaken. I believe NHK is trying this with Amazon too. But TvN signed a deal with Netflix as early as 2017. They also partnered with streaming services like Viu and Viki. I believe MBC did the same. They've been at this almost a decade before and it has reaped benefits. I'm betting Japanese companies saw this and said, we want some of that success.

He did. He produced it himself and partnered with Netflix. Kaku Kento did the same for House of Ninjas. These are their pet projects but they couldn't get sufficient funding and support from local production companies and networks so they pitched them to Netflix. Junichi said that many Japanese actors are now doing this to bring Japanese content to the global stage because their own production companies are not making the effort. This is the difference between J-ent and K-ent. Korean productions, with the full support of their government, had been trying to become global for 2 decades and now they are. K-dramas and K-pop didn't become popular simply because they're good, everything was planned out and carefully curated. This is the soft power that their government has always wanted all along.

Btw, guys. If you want to increase the rating on this drama, you have to register your account and rate each episode.

Most MDL users might be sleeping on this but the fact that it’s the number 1 most watched show on Netflix right now means it’s gaining traction worldwide. This is a certified hit. Okada Junichi left a message on his official X (formerly Twitter) account to thank the fans for its surprising viewership numbers. https://x.com/j_okada_aiston/status/1989942313259594077?s=46

Yes. Yang Yang + Song Wei Long = another annoyingly good looking actor with the acting chops to boot. lol

Oh! So I guess I'll have to wait until December. Thank you for answering.

The cast in this is perfection! They made Ito Hideaki grossly unattractive and terrifying when that man used to be one of the hottest heartthrobs in Japan and still is at 50 years of age. They did the same to Abe Hiroshi. He was barely unrecognizable as Gentosai. In fact, a lot of the cast are highly popular actors who were either idols or teen hearthrobs back in the day. Well, I like everyone except Higashide Masahiro. lol

Does it end on a cliffhanger? Because if it does, I will just wait until part 2 is released and then binge the whole thing.

Probably because he’s supposed to be a surprise and a teaser for season 2.

Yep. And they say that they knew exactly who was going to die. I wonder if they knew that a character that was built up to be a serious contender would die. I sure as hell didn’t. I thought he’d last a few more episodes at least. I’m beginning to think this reviewer watched a different drama.

According to FlixPatrol, Last Samurai Standing is currently (as of November 15) the most watched show on Netflix globally. Clearly, this will get a second season. We just don’t know when we’ll get it. 😅 https://flixpatrol.com/top10/netflix/

Some of the best Japanese movies in cinematic history have relatively low ratings on this site. Kurosawa films, for example, aren’t rated higher than 8.6 when they should’ve gotten at least 9. These are masterpieces. Many of them are critically acclaimed. Even the popular Rurouni Kenshin movies only get as high as 8.6. But Korean and Chinese movies, especially those with actors that have huge fanbases, get higher ratings even though they’re nowhere near as good. Another example is the recent Romantics Anonymous series. It has become quite popular but the highest it got was an 8.1. Positive reviews of this drama were downvoted too. So I don’t wonder anymore when Japanese movies/dramas get low ratings or are review bombed. I just don’t believe the ratings on this site, especially when it comes to J-content.

I also saw a 6 rating and negative review on this site from a known Koreaboo reviewer. To be fair, they gave decent ratings for other Japanese works. It’s just that the review doesn’t quite match the drama. According to the review, the lead is painted as a kind of righteous selfless hero when in fact he’s a coward and a selfish bastard who only wanted to save his family until he meets a young girl who reminds him of his daughter. I’m not convinced this reviewer actually saw the drama.

The fight choreography in this is pretty cool. It’s not as stylistic as the one in Kenshin but very well-executed. Shujiro is nowhere near as idealistic as Kenshin. He’s flawed and have done things he’s not proud of. But like Kenshin he was a retainer for one of the clans that supported the Meiji restoration. Futaba is indeed like Rin from Blade of the Immortal and also the child in Lone Wolf and Cub. The story is closer to Harakiri than Rurouni Kenshin.

They're talking about the movie Azumi. It has similarities to this drama.

MDL has predominantly teens to early 20-somethings for its users and they prefer mostly Korean and Chinese content. This is why most Japanese dramas and movies are rated low or not fully appreciated.

I understood you completely.

I understand where you're coming from but ancient Japan was one big death game battle. During the feudal era, people practically killed each other for sport and power. This gave birth to the samurai, the military class of feudal Japan who worked for bloodthirsty warlords (daimyo) that fought to usurp each other's territories. The Sengoku period was the bloodiest era in Japan that led to the unification of the country under one shogun. But despite this unification, civil wars still kept erupting until the Boshin War, the war that restored the rule to the Meiji heir. This restoration brought about the downfall of the samurai with the current regime practically killing them off one by one. That is the main story of this drama. The death game aspect is just used as a tool to show how the regime wanted the samurai completely eliminated. I don't think this is any different from what transpired in most of their history. Japan was basically a large battlefield up until the end of the shogunate and the samurai class.

I guess it's the same for people who say it's Rurouni Kenshin or Alice in Borderland. This is far more grounded than RK, the fight choreography, for one, is less stylized. It's more similar to the fighting style in Blade of the Immortal, same feels too. It's set in the same era as RK, though. The difference is RK didn't really show how the samurai were shunned and were practically dying because of the lack of options. Kenshin, who was a retainer for the Choshu clan, was even offered a government position that he turned down, while Shujiro was discarded like a piece of old rag despite leading the charge for the Satsuma clan. He was even allowed to carry a sword around even though katanas were banned.