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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.

I absolutely with you. These subbers really need to be paid handsomely, they do it in their own free time, often by themselves, for hours on end. Sorry I made you misunderstand, the "people" I meant in my original comment were those subbers who start a 150+ episodes drama, or in this case 4 almost at the same time, and seemingly don't know how much work it is and then drop it without notice, some even so they can move on to regular shows a few days later.

Well, it's the same with Scarlet and Warotenka. And once a drama was started to get subbed by someone the chance of it being completed are slim to none. I wish people would be aware of how much work it is to sub 150+ episodes, even if it's just 15 mins per.

I love JDramas, but romance is probably not really the best representation because they are very rarely in the top half of "well made" in my opinion. Silent is one of the exceptions, because usually they either involve cheating, a naive/dumb FL, a sadistic/abusive ML, a plot that doesn't make an ounce of sense, a love triangle or the "I'm getting transferred" angle after the pairing gets together in episode 9 of 10 so they can have one last obstacle. Or everything mixed together. Romance JDramas can get really frustrating after you've seen a few if you ask me.

I think he broke up with her because he knew he was just a stand-in. I don't really believe in all those "I'm breaking up with someone because my best friend (still) loves them/they still love my best friend" scenarios, so in my opinion it was just because he didn't want to be her second choice. Also, it's a Jdrama, so the audience would've probably expected her to cheat on him with the ML and the screenwriters didn't want to include that kind of storyline ;)

And don't forget their fantasy building entertainment businesses. Especially idols play their roles in a way that they are the "perfect potential girlfriends", so there are more and more young, especially male, people who don't even want a relationship if they can have a fictional one with someone on a stage/behind a screen. And of course, for me the biggest one, Japanese men are intimidated by women who want to build their own careers... and because those are increasing, the "perfect family" of working husband and stay-at-home housewife isn't really feasible anymore, especially with the cost of living in Japan.

I can see what all the comments are about that it's a great human drama, but this "hospital villain vibe" from 50% of the characters is extremely annoying and totally overshadows the good parts of the drama for me. They should've stuck with the human aspect and not get into "unrational reputation and career saving" mode. I don't know what's going on in Japanese hospitals or hospitals in general, but what's all this crap about "you think you can break hospital policy just to save a life?" and the dude who saved the life gets suspended just because he broke a rule that says "don't operate on premature babies because they could die during it, even though they'll definitely die if we don't operate"; "we can't operate, if she dies the hospital's reputation will be damaged" or "let's cut off pediatrics because it doesn't generate profit"? And that wass only until episode 3.

If someone goes through this comment section they'll probably be pretty tired reading about the same thing over and over again, but all I can do is repeat that this was pretty mediocre at best, except for the two leads. Even they weren't especially well written, but their chemistry was really good and I liked how natural their acting was. Their colleagues also get a passing grade, they were at least entertaining a few times, but everything and everyone else is pretty badly written. In which parallel universe does this take place where foreign people come into a country, just ignore every (labor) law and handle everything according to what's "normal" in their own country? Also, their decisions in the last episode didn't make any sense to me, especially because of how it ended.

It's still the same in every industry in Japan. Seniority is the best trait anyone can have if they want to be successful and as long as the Japanese market makes enough profit and growth, probably nobody cares or even notices that their methods are outdated.
And that's the same for dramas and movies. I don't know if it's producers, directors, screenwriters or who, but some of these scripts are so horribly archaic they make me cringe even reading the synopsis, especially if it's the 28436th rendition or variation of "Woman wants to be successful in job but meets Dude X and somehow her biggest goal in life is to marry him, so she loses all interested in said job because she only wants to swoon over X even though he verbally abuses her every time he opens his mouth".

Absolutely agree with the translation and actor/actress comparison. There are a lot of those examples in JDrama, too. Mostly, at least in my opinion, "does he look cool and handsome" when it comes to actors and "how big are her boobs and is she willing to shove them into the camera everytime it's on her" if it's actresses. If those are the case, no producer cares if they can act if it's not some sort of super serious prime time drama on a conservative channel. And it's the same with subs, only "the faster they are uploaded the better and we don't even care if the translation makes sense".

To the drop thing (sorry for the upcoming rant ;)): I don't know if you know Asadora, but those are the best examples of what I wrote. Since fall 2019 (that's 8 completely aired Asadoras) every Asadora has been started by someone and only the spring 2020 edition, Yell, and spring 2021, Okaeri Mone, were finished. Yell even with luck because it was dropped halfway aswell. Two of those 8, plus Yell and the fall 2017 one, were started by the same subber, almost at the same time, and all 4 were dropped without notice around 40 episodes in. The other 3 were all dropped with even less episodes subbed by other individual subbers. It's the "too much" against "too old" when it comes to JDrama vs KDrama it seems. Because the subbers who started didn't know that beforehand I guess....

(At least) in Japan, if someone gets raped, it's still seen as shameful. Now, I didn't see the drama yet (just about to start actually), so I can't speak for what's going on there, but a lot of women in Japan still get blamed and/or blame themselves when they get sexually assaulted. This is often even transferred to the family of the victim, so there's a high number of unreported sexual assault cases just because the women don't want to live with the shame added to the mental and physical wounds and some even get pressured by family and/or friends not to report it.
It's also pretty hard to make a case that you actually were raped in the first place, because, at least until mid-2023, if you didn't visibly fight back, it was seen as consent. Even if you were drugged or unconscious, if you can't prove it. But if you fought back and the assailant was injured, there's a chance the victim could get reported/sued for assault. When it comes to women's rights and sexual crime laws, Japan's way behind all the other G8 states. Actually, they're way behind in everything concerning women and sexual minorities in that list of countries.