andoR

Even if I wouldn't know the anime, I'd think this was pretty half-assed. No explanations, they jump directly into the story, then they show a bit of struggle, 2 minutes of their success, two minutes of failure and the movie ends. They left out very important characters and made Eiji into a kind of antagonist and it seems like they were both orphans because they worked themselves to death while in high school and nobody intervened in the slightest.

TLDR; If you can't compress a story into a movie, don't try to.

Only my opinion, but I think so many Japanese movies, dramas, novels, mangas, you name it, are about high school because that's the time they are the most free and they enjoyed most in their lifes. Their schedule, their decisions, the people they associate with, everything's much less regulated than after you join the work force. If they graduate high school/college and get a job, they work all day long, they often only have time to associate with colleagues or clients, everything they do and decide needs to be consented by the company they work for, etc. Well, that's if you're male, if you're female, high school's probably the only time for many that they're "on the same level" with their male peers.

That depends on what you're looking for. Man, I'm getting bonus points for being super obvious today...
I didn't check how versed you are with JDramas, but if you have a favorite actress or one you really like that played an asadora heroine, I'd suggest you give that one a shot (if you're in luck and someone actually subbed it). If not, my overall favorite would be Natsuzora, it's rather light hearted overall, but has its serious moments and storylines, the acting is really good and the characters are (almost) all likeable. It's also realistic, seeing as it's based on Okuyama Reiko, one of the first female animators in Japan.
But if you want something with more comedy and a heroine and story that's a bit more "out there" and less realistic, I'd say Amachan. If you want something more serious that feels like it could be the life story of anyone, Hanbun Aoi, but this ones bound to give you whiplash because it has really funny moments. If you want something more historic, Asa ga Kita, which is also based on a real person. If you want something that's set in and deals with problems of our current times, then Okaeri Mone.

In the end it all depends on what you think is interesting. But even if it's a story you think won't interest you, the heroine's character and the actress who plays it can make a rather uninteresting topic into a really good story, like it was for me and Carnation, which is also why I suggested to watch an asadora with someone you like. I'm not the least bit interested in clothes or fashion, but with Ono Machiko, the character of the heroine and how she portrayed it, it could've probably been about rice planting and I would've rather liked it in the end.

This is the very epitome of a whiplash drama. I liked the comedy part and I liked the serious part, but I really didn't enjoy the swings, twists and turns basically every 2 minutes. I mean, why do they joke like they're doing a silly comedy routine in one scene and then show stuff like kidnapped teenage girls getting drugged and readied to be sold off as slaves in the immediately following about 10 times per episode.

Afaik = As far as I know. And there are no further subs than week 3 or so because there's no sign of life from the subber for about 6 months.

It's officially marked as dropped because there's no sign of life from the subber for 6 months or so. Another Asadora that'll probably never be completed because someone started it and nobody wants to finish something someone else started.

That's JDrama for you. The creators themselves don't give a shit about anything that's not domestic, so we need to rely on fans to do it for free in their own time. Which is kind of absolutely inadequate if you think about it in times of streaming and everything being globally available. That's why I never start a drama that's not fully subbed yet, regardless of how interesting I think it could be. Got about 5 or 6 of them from 2022/23 and a few Asadoras in my bookmarks with probably no hope of ever being completed because once it's started and abandoned, nobody will ever touch it again.

Unexpectedly really liked it. All the characters are really likable and well acted out and it's a rather unique take on handling a disability. Slightly different and more light-hearted role for Kiyohara Kaya who's usually the gloomy, traumatized, a-lot-of-baggage type character and probably the best actress U30 for that kind of role in Japan at the moment. But it had a lot of light-hearted moments and I'd really like to see her in more of those roles in the future aswell.
Just two things that bothered me: Why does she keep mentioning "I'm not feminine at all" and even needs to be reminded that she's a woman, especially in the beginning, when she always wears fashionably coordinated and feminine clothes and pretty pronounced makeup? Are we in a KDrama? It doesn't fit the character at all. And where did she get the money for all that when she just dropped out of college and doesn't have/just started a job? The other thing, there were way too many "look at me, I'm a super melancholic ikemen musician" shots of Mamiya Shotaro. It kind of got really annoying around the third or fourth episode and I often just skipped over them .

It's a shame they made the last two episodes members only on the official Youtube channel, sounded like a short interesting plot

As my 22nd Asadora I think it's only fitting that I loved the first 22 weeks (with Ono Machiko), but it had the same problem Beppin-san had in the end: it ran way too long. Well, it's a biography, so the length was pre-determinded, but they either should have let Ono-san play the whole Asadora (she was still believable at age 60+) or condense the last 4 weeks into one or two. It's not that Natsuki Mari was bad or anything, but the sudden change in actresses really threw me off and I have to say that I didn't care as much for the last four weeks because of it. Ono Machiko's performance was one of the things why I really liked it as a whole, she played the character of the very headstrong and probably scariest Heroine of all time really well through the joys and struggles of the Shouwa era. I haven't seen much of Ono-san's work, but if Carnation is an indication of her talent, I definitely need to change that fact. But all of the actors and actresses did a good job. I wish they would have taken 3 weeks of Itoko's later life, after the actress change, and dedicated them one each to her daughters, to show their work and family life a bit more because we only see very little of them after they start their own careers, and then only when they interact with their mother. All in all I gave it a 8.5, Ono Machiko's part would be a solid 9, but because of the last weeks, which would have been 6.5 to 7 at most if they were standalone, I deducted half a score.

If you want a comparison, I think it's pretty fair to do that between Carnation and Beppin-san, seeing as both are biographies, play in the same time frame, in the same city and both are more or less about clothing. But I have to say I enjoyed Carnation a lot more. The biggest gap in enjoyment between those two are definitely the characters: I really didn't like most of them in Beppin-san, they were way to melancholic, weak and indecisive starting from the Heroine, all the way to the kids of the main ladies (except for the one played by Tanimura Mitsuki), while I really liked pretty much all of the characters in Carnation because they were relatable and were a lot more pronounced. You could get excited about what they will do next because they were in full control of their own will, while in Beppin-san you'd think "I hope they will take charge and not let the situation they're in dictate their actions again" all the time.

It's just a guess, but maybe they don't want to overload their server even more with new members streaming in daily. But it's definitely worth the wait if you plan to keep watching JDramas in the future.

This poster kind of looks like a voyeur spying on a lesbian couple about to kiss... or am I the only one? Giggles aside, from what I've seen on social media it seems to be quite fun, thanks to SARS-fansubs for subbing, looking forward to it.

Thanks a lot! Are you going to upload them on drama-otaku? Wish you luck that everything goes according to plan, because it's really a ton of work.

Thanks for the reply!

That's why I called it "immature preconception". I know that I only watched "the wrong examples to judge something by", which is why I don't want to give up on finding new stuff to enjoy. I completely agree with you, because it's basically the same thing I say to people who want to take a step into JDrama and are discouraged/frustrated after only one drama because it was a romance that has Idol actors and actresses and/or is a completely stereotypical story, which never ends well when it comes to Japanese stuff.
It's not that I definitely want a light hearted GL series (even if that would be a real positive change of pace), it's just that I'm kind of fed up with the recurring theme of, to exaggerate a bit, "they're women, they should just get a man, give birth and settle down", which is something I read a lot in the comments.
23,5 is something I found a few days ago, I'm just waiting for it to be finished airing and I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the suggestion!

So, this is with "normal gender roles"? I've seen two installments of Ooku so far, but both were set in a universe where even the Japanese needed to accept female leaders because most men died of an illness, but this looks like a normal (fictional) historic drama.

Somehow I have a feeling nobody noticed the 2023 version got a second season, even though it's stacked. At least there's no entry for it on drama-otaku and I don't think I've seen raws for it anywhere so far.

So, I see the comedy tag and want to watch it because there's really no light-hearted GL dramas and movies, but then I see the comments and all the "she'll be married off, if..." and "person X and Y think female character Z needs to be married to a man to be happy". So which is it, because I don't think those two scenarios can really co-exist in my head. I'm also not really a Thai drama fan because all I've seen so far (very little, sorry) was with characters that screamed stereotype (airheaded females and pompous wannabe cool male characters all around). I hate to ask this question because I want to make a picture for myself, but I don't want to completely ruin thai productions for me with another one I'm gonna be disappointed about... so, should I watch it even with all my immature preconceptions?

You can take the bar exam without law school qualification, but it's extremely hard and not even 5% pass it that way. I don't know if they still exist, but I think there were official special preparation courses that lasted for a few weeks, but they were extremely expensive. After that you need to be an apprentice lawyer, supervised by the supreme court for a few years, until you can become a real lawyer.

Because those sites steal their subs from fansubbers and remove the credits, and if there're no fansubbers for it or if those fansubbers hide their subs behind a paywall exactly because of those sites, there'll be nothing uploaded.