Mertseger

"How much did the writes changed his real story? In this story was he married, I think two times? Did he lived in New Orleans?"

I'm no expert, and have not read any of his works, but my Wikipedia understanding is that he married twice: once to the previously enslaved woman, Mattie Foley, and then as we see in this series Koizumi Setsuko (Toki here).

The writers abbreviated his time in Cincinnati and his marriage to Mattie in a particularly racist way. In 1875 he was indeed fired from his newspaper when his relationship to Mattie was discovered, but he then just went to the other paper in town. When his writing boosted the circulation at the other newspaper the first one tried to hire him back to which Hearn essentially reacted, "Fuck you and the horse you road in on." His marriage to Mattie dissolved some two years later: "Hearn and Foley separated, but attempted reconciliation several times before divorcing in 1877." It should be noted that the marriage was explicitly illegal under Ohio's laws at the time, but there is zero zip and nada evidence that the marriage fell apart because Mattie attacked her boss with a razor.

From Cincinnati he did indeed move to New Orleans after his marriage fell apart and worked there as a journalist for the next ten years. There is no evidence he left a flame there, and indeed he spent two years after that in the Caribbean working on a couple other books before he set off for Japan.

Back when I wrote the review it would have been on an unlicensed site which used the Dramacool databases. But Dramacool was thoroughly shut down well over a year ago now. Various sites have tried to preserve the old links and at least episode 1 is working right now at asiaflix dot net. If later episodes don't work, the best resource for finding unlicensed sites right now seems to be everythingmoe dot com: just scroll down and down to "Asian Dramas" for a list of sites with unlicensed content.

Pretty much a perfect headline there.

Excellent review. I'd encourage you to post it to the review section as well.

I used machine translation to create English subs for this special, and then thoroughly edited them. I chose to use she/her pronouns for Yone because I felt that those are what an English speaker of the time would have used. The subtitle file is available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zd0KF2pZzXfahytOVR9gevdjt3TEg7dZ/view?usp=drive_link.

It's a big country, and while the vast majority of schools are as you say, there are alternatives. The show appears to be depicting a "free school" which is a movement that started in the 80s (but had earlier roots). If Google's AI is to be believed (and I'm not going to dig through the references to confirm the number), approximately 200,000 children attend such schools in Japan these days. Here's a long overview: https://educationinjapan.wordpress.com/education-system-in-japan-general/alternative-education-in-japan-introduction/alternative-education-in-japan-the-context-and-the-challenges/alternative-education-in-japan-free-schools/.

It's Sakurashimeji「恋春日和」. There's an MV for it on YouTube in which Toyoshima Hana tries to win the love of a robot (and it's much better than this series, IMO).

Great review, as usual. It's hilarious that neither of our reviews mention Abe Sadawo and his character as the real anpan man.

Eh, pretty much both. But he's a twentysomething adult and a successful author, and she's a high school senior. Both have never had a romantic relationship before. Nevertheless, he has the social development and skills of a grade-schooler, and so is the least romantically ept of the two. It's probably worse than you are imagining given that, but it's all played for laughs and as if this were all sweet and harmless while all the characters around them constantly lampshade the creepiness as if that absolves everything. Your outrage may vary.

It went up on billibilli in September, and is still available.

Update: Irozuku subs reports that there will be a total of 5 of these shorts after Ep. 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7.

Heh: I'm looking forward to your review. I haven't seen Okaeri Mone, but I have encountered Imada before in a few best friend roles. Hopefully, you will be more enthused than I was by her performance.

Yes, we'll get special episodes most weeks for this (I doubt there will be one after the finale because these things usually are more promotional.) I've seen a few other series that have done this (Brush Up Life comes to mind), but they usually do not get subtitled. We are very lucky that IrozukuSubs has decided to do so.

I understand your concerns, but in the case of Because This Is My First Life it's a romcom that remains a romcom throughout. It actually covers three different couples and their romantic relationships. The elevator pitch for the main couple is that it's a romcom in which everything happens out of order. Let's see if I can remember this correctly: first they kiss, then they move in together, then they meet, then they get married, then they fall in love. And it all makes sense.

The series is also a commentary on exactly the kind of issues you seem to have with kdramas. The FL is a bit of a self-insert of the writer of the drama whose first drama https://kisskh.at/2963-flower-boy-ramen-shop is legendarily bad with all the things that people hate: a poor teacher becoming romantically involved a high school chaebol student, etc. But apparently the IRL writer's mentors and producers were forcing her to add those elements, and so that behind the scenes process of getting to be able to tell more genuine human stories is one of the plot arcs for the FL within BTIMFL. It's pretty brilliant.

I'm fairly sure you'll love it. One very minor note: it's on Netflix, and I sub to Netflix, but I still re-watch the series on unlicensed sites for one of the dumbest reasons ever. On the Netflix version they blur out shots of the movie poster for the movie The Graduate and all shots of Arsenal football games playing on various screens. That only effects a handful of shots total over the course of the series, but you have been warned .

I have only rarely dipped my toes into cdramas (mostly because they are so long). But my favorite kdrama romance might match your criteria well: https://kisskh.at/24678-because-this-is-my-first-life .

Oh, NHK. Always producing great things and then always screwing up the distribution and marketing outside of Japan. Whelp at least they haven't ruined the name of Kazoku Dakara Aishitan Janakute, Aishita no ga Kazoku Datta yet.

Thanks for the update!

I have no idea why the name changed here. It was previously listed on MDL using the romanji "Koisenu Futari" and there's no evidence that it's hit a legal source like a major streaming site using "The Aromantics" which is, indeed, a poor translation or description of the piece.

On Prime I'd go with Mother from 2010. On Netflix, Saving My Stupid Youth from 2014. And, of course, if you enjoyed Non's performance here, Amachan from 2013 from before she was royally screwed by the agency system in Japan and forced to disappear for 10 years. But this latter one is only available at unlicensed streaming sites and torrent sites, and like all asadoras of the time 156 episodes of 15 minutes length.

The best of jdramas are great, even if the bulk of Japanese productions are not as good as your average Korean productions (or those of the west).

It's best to not have any expectations going into this particular film. But I will say that from what I can tell by following responses to it over the years that even people who will find parts of it triggering based on their past personal experiences have generally been glad they watched it. Cathartic, perhaps, but generally not depressing, I would say for most people.