andoR

Isn't this literally "Watashi no Oyome-kun" + kid? Seems like Japanese writers are really out of ideas. It's almost always either "if female has a career she's not able to do anything else in her life" (there's another one this season with that topic), "naive female meets verbally abusive scumbag and falls deeper in love the more abusive his words become" or "female falls in love with perfect guy, but he's a habitual cheater". No wonder the Japanese don't want to start families anymore if those are the only examples they get from media.

Indeed. Thanks. Must've been a Freudian slip ;)

I think none of the biggest 50 (it's probably more) corporations in Japan have a female CEO. Most of them probably don't even have a single female board member... but I digress. Real story: a Japanese friend of my best friend who lived in Japan for a few years was told to be on top of the list for promotion in a big corporation, then her superior got wind that she was in a long lasting relationship and somehow a same-age male colleague of hers was promoted. When she asked her superior why, he said (I'm not making this up) "it's ok to not work so hard and concentrate more on your relationship, you probably want to get married in the not so distant future anyways and he needs to provide for his soon-to-be-family, so you understand, right?". I found it so archaic and discriminating that it was almost funny again. Well, she quit a few months later, after her complaint got denied by HR and now works in a smaller company as section chief.
But of course it's not all the men's fault, because a lot of women still only work for those corporations to fish for successful men, but I think it's just stupid to generalize everything and everyone like these "working women JDramas" always do. If you're interested in these kind of topics, I recommend watching "Waru: Hataraku no ga Kakko Warui Nante Dare ga Itta?" with Imada Mio. It's a comedy, but it pretty realistically shows a lot of the generalizations and problems ingrained in a Japanese corporation.

Because in Japan it's no problem for men to pursue work and a career and have a life outside of it, but if a woman does it she needs to sacrifice anything else in her life, her home, relationships (platonic and romantic), etc because she needs to work twice as hard and achieve twice as much as men her age if she wants to get promoted. If she'd be in a relationship, nobody would promote her because "she'll quit anyways if she gets married and/or pregnant". That's still the actual mindset of corporate Japan and one of the reasons why they're in the bottom 2 or 3 of "1st world countries" in every statistic about working women.

7.8 is pretty good for a JDrama. If you compare it to KDramas, you probably need to add 0.7 oder 0.8 if it's a good story. I think some people deduct 0.5 or 1 rating because the production quality isn't as high as Netflix dramas or sometimes I even think people just rate JDramas a 1 although they never watched a single episode.

Please, someone slap some sense and rational thinking into them. I'm talking about the people who produce and write these dramas by the way.

Is it because it's a GL or because it's very low budget that people are praising this? I've seen a few dramas from this YT channel and they were all pretty borderline, especially when it comes to acting, but I think "Little Cupid" is just cringey. It's like two sisters lost a bet and had to act like lovers for a certain period of time. And that's also exactly how their interactions look like, from their conversations to their skinship, including kisses. They don't even try to make it look like a real kiss, even if it's just on the cheek or the forehead, it's just like they'd bump faces.

I enjoyed the hell out of this one. Their chemistry was off the charts, as friends as well as as a couple. Ongsa's smug looks when she was praised and her awkwardness when was smiled at by Sun aswell as Sun's mad jealousy are definitely pure gold. They should make a 2nd season about their time in university. But I guess the topic wouldn't matter because everything with and about these characters would be super fun. Also, the second couple was extremely funny together because they were polar opposites and played perfectly off of each other.

But there's one thing I think they should've done different/better, which is why I deducted half a point. It really bothered me that Sun couldn't (or didn't want to) put the puzzle pieces about Earth together bit by bit. She's quite intelligent and there were way too many hints to not notice anything. I absolutely waited for Sun to ask Ongsa questions because she's getting suspicious, but it never came. I know this had a purpose (if you like the person, you like the person), but I think it would've been way better than finding out all at once and it wouldn't have taken away anything from the message it tried to send. It would've also lessened the blow considerably and I thought Sun's behavior after she found out was a bit too dramatic and artificial because, like I said, it was pretty obvious if she would've put one and one together.

This could also be called "Welcome to the shitshow called idol business, where men in their 20s/30s/40s/etc get enabled to glorify 16 year olds as their pure and innocent fantasy girlfriends and everybody around them is totally ok with that".
Pretty good drama, with, in my opinion, a pretty realistic showing of a mentally not quite healthy and drained semi chika Idol. I wish there would be more stories like this one or Oshi no Ko that show the "darker" side of the show and especially the idol business without always pitting two performers against each other.

Really seems like you were lucky or you've only seen night dramas that air after 11pm and have some real young actresses/actors in it ;). But the vast majority of 30 minute romance Jdramas that air before 11pm are completely hands off except for clothed shoulders or hips and they look like fish when they kiss.
Sorry, this one's going to be a bit longer and from the females perspective only, but let me explain what I meant in my op (I hope I didn't completely misunderstand your post and you think "what's this guy even on about with his rant, I don't give a crap about that"). In those dramas I mentioned the lead roles are often played by Idols or models, basically just to promote them and their "real jobs", and those have a strong tendency to be prohibited from doing more than what I described above, if you even really see them put their lips together. The reason for that, in most cases, is that they get promoted by their agencies/management as a pure, innocent, naive and available girl next door that never kissed someone (in an idol's case) or the "I'm having so much fun posing in this way too small bikini that I want people to only look at me and my big boobs" character (in case of the model, sorry for being a bit crude). They rely on fan support and popularity rather than success of the product (music, drama, magazines, whatever), which in turn means their career takes a massive hit if the "fans'" fantasies get ruined and they actually show that they're not 100% pure, naive and available but actually know what they're doing in scenes with skinship. I wish they would behave like actresses if they want to be in dramas and not play pretend just so their face gets seen by more people. To give you an example of the (mostly male) Japanese fan base: Even an actual actress, Tsunematsu Yuri, needed to justify herself in a pretty long letter because she received some real harsh backlash for showing herself nude and in some racy scenes in The Naked Director 2. Those "fans" insulted her as a w*ore, that she's cheap and that they'll stop being her fans because of the role, basically just for being an actress and not some character her agency set up for her.

Well, I don't know how much you know about the Japanese entertainment business, but young tarento (talent), basically jacks-of-all-trade in the industry like the two leads here (both are probably model first, actor/actress second), are often prohibited by their agencies/management to really kiss or be shown too intimate with the opposite gender. I think 80 - 85% of JDrama "romance series" don't have "real actors/actresses" in it, especially the 30 minute ones. You can thank the Idol business and their stupid enabling of obsessive fans for that.

I don't know why there's a nudity tag. The only nudity in the movie is a naked back and a doll. The fact that we don't see any results in a lot of static and weird camera angles that made me chuckle a few times and a lot of unnecessary zoom-ins. Not to mention the "overly conscious" and unnatural movements/actions to hide any nudity. The movie itself was ok, but the above mentioned really messed up some vital scenes in my opinion and either the director's/producer's need to keep the age restriction low or Aoi Yu and/or her agency really dropped the ball here. I think if people act in/film/produce an erotically inclined movie they should rather forego any nude scenes at all if the actors/actresses aren't willing/allowed to be nude before they half-ass those scenes and make them look pretty stupid with that.

Why do JDrama career women "don't have time for romance because they use it all for work" while every working man with a career miraculously doesn't have any problems with having relationships and even getting married. I know women need to work twice as hard as their male counterparts to have a chance of getting the same recognition... but I'll probably never be able to make sense of the concept of those dramas.

This is just my (more or less sarcastic) opinion, but my answer would be: a very male dominated society dominated by very insecure men. If you look at these, as you called it, queerbaiting dramas and movies, in the end the girl always has to choose the guy because Japanese society still clings to the archaic viewpoint of "marriage is the ultimate happiness for a woman" and "women need to rely on a man because they can't provide for themselves". I think that's also why there are about at least 3 new BL dramas every few months and 3 GL dramas ever in Japan. The real problem with this is that mothers are mostly the ones to still teach this to their daughters and they're the ones to pressure their daughters into "find a man and settle down" when they're in their mid-20s. And a lot of them don't really have a choice because the percentage of women able to build a career in Japan isn't really high.

Thanks for the warning, will definitely not watch it. I'm pretty sick of those dramas. If you believe Dramas/Movies and Anime then there's no friendship in the world except for between men. If women would prioritize a friendship, then men would think they aren't the absolute #1 and the person the woman's life revolves around, which would be a nightmare for Japanese men. That's of course half sarcasm, but I really start to believe it the more Japanese media I watch. The worst part about it? A lot of the screenwriters for these dramas are women themselves.

The only three GL dramas (with actual romance or relationship) from Japan are "Transit Girls", "Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna" and "Chaser Game W", but the last one is of questionable quality except for the chemistry between the main characters. Everything else is just, let's call it "pretend play" (like this one), unrequited or a single character is LGBTQ.

Thanks for the link! Unfortunately I don't speak Korean or Russian and the English subtitles are under the YT membership aswell.

I get you. It's like the only thing Japan cares about to export is anime, anime, anime. It's like they're afraid to make their movies and dramas available "overseas" because a lot of content is acceptable when it's 2D characters but would be pretty much a no-go if it was live-action. Music has the same issues. Not only missing subtitles, but merchandise and even availabilty of content on video sites is sometimes limited to Japan only. Perfect example because it's Aina the End's movie, her former group BiSH was moderately successful when it comes to Youtube and Spotify outside of Japan, but you couldn't even register on their site if you wanted to buy merch because you needed a valid written Japanese name to do it.

Such a shame that nobody seems to be interested in subbing this. Love the manga, anime and the drama.

As far as I know it takes longer because WOWOW doesn't provide Japanese captions or at least the people who rip those don't include them. It's a lot more work to sub something by hearing than by translating subs.