mjf314

Which season of Ultraman is your favorite?

Some J-dramas are very dramatic, for example the illness dramas e.g. 1 Litre of Tears.

There are also J-dramas that deal with societal problems in a serious and realistic way, for example Life (2007) and Last Friends (2008).

I think a drama like Tokyo Love Story could be considered dramatic as well, because of the strong emotions, even though nothing really tragic happens.

I wrote an article about C-dramas a few months ago, in case you're interested: https://kisskh.at/article/a-brief-history-of-chinese-dramas

I wish I could write an article about Thai dramas, but it's hard to find good sources.

That's my goal. I wish more people would write articles about J-dramas. They deserve much more attention.

Actually there are quite a lot of adaptations of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. You can see a list of them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Leapt_Through_Time#Adaptations

The 1983 movie directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi is good.

If you want to get into HK dramas, I recommend The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1983). If you like martial arts movies, you'll probably like LOCH.

The Legend of the Condor Heroes. I haven't seen the other two parts of the Condor trilogy, but I'm planning to watch them in the future.

There's a good quality version of Kita no Kuni Kara (1981).

I haven't seen any of them, but I checked the Douban ratings of each version.

1998: 9.0
1984: 7.6
2000: 7.4
2014: 6.6
2008: 5.8
2020: 3.2

Unfortunately the 1998 version hasn't been subbed, but I think most of the other versions have been subbed.

Have you seen Kita no Kuni Kara (1981)? I'm in the middle of watching it right now with English subtitles, and it's great.

I watched the first episode of Sukeban Deka and it was good, but I haven't gotten around to finishing it yet.

From the 1970s, some Kamen Rider dramas have been subbed. There's also an English dubbed version of Monkey (1978). I haven't watched them, so I don't know how good they are.

I just noticed, for the 2000s and the 2010s, the "top ranked dramas" and "most popular dramas" have no overlap at all. Not a single drama appears in both top 10s! It makes me wonder, why aren't the top ranked dramas more popular?

On the other hand, 5 dramas from the 1990s appear in both top 10s, quite a big overlap (Princess Pearl, GTO, Long Vacation, Ikebukuro West Gate Park, and Beautiful Life).

Which 80s TVB drama is your favorite?

I think you have the wrong poster for Tree With Deep Roots (1983). You used the poster from Tree With Deep Roots (2011).

The Bund (1980) is on Youtube with English subs. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL43RO8BMV0qKgCtGRwcLNFCqlgNAMgwq-

Edit: I just noticed, only the 1st episode of The Bund is subbed on Youtube, but you can get the rest of the subs from Subscene.

The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1983) is on Youtube without subs. You can get the English subs from Subscene, and then use the "Subtitles for Youtube" Chrome extension to watch the Youtube video with subs. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLooD8l3FSd6lr4nY5yquV4xrbp1_Ju0xP

Journey to the West (1986) is on Youtube with English subs, but unfortunately it's the edited version (some scenes were removed). https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIj4BzSwQ-_sfc7l2xm1wQswAd5jqrrDS

Princess Pearl (1998) is on Youtube with English subs. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4P1OCiJ7Wk-HRWvN5UBdsWp38-NU7Idn

Yongzheng Dynasty (1999) is on Youtube with English subs. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIj4BzSwQ-_vnA2iup_gWK0hdYKrT_AuW

I don't think any J-dramas from the 80s or 90s have official streams, but if you're willing to watch unofficial streams, a lot of the popular ones are available.

Thanks for the article! A few comments:

"Top ranked dramas of the 1980s" is a strange list, because each drama is only rated by 3 or 4 users. If you ignore dramas with fewer than 30 ratings, here are the top 10 dramas of the 1980s:
The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1983) - 8.4
The New Adventures of Chor Lau Heung (1984) - 8.4
Oshin (1983) - 8.3
Journey to the West (1986) - 8.2
Choujinki Metalder (1987) - 8.2
Kita no Kuni Kara (1981) - 8.2
The New Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre (1986) - 8.1
The Return of the Condor Heroes (1983) - 8.0
The Bund (1980) - 8.0
Two Most Honorable Knights (1988) - 8.0

I highly recommend The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1983) and Journey to the West (1986). I'm in the middle of watching Kita no Kuni Kara (1981), and so far it's very good. I haven't watched the other parts of the Condor trilogy yet, but I'll definitely watch them in the future. I wish you had made a poll for the 1980s, but I guess not many people would've voted.

My favorites of the 1990s are Long Vacation, GTO, Princess Pearl, and Furuhata Ninzaburo. I'm glad to see Long Vacation at #1 in the 1990s poll. My favorites of the 2000s are Suika, The Great White Tower, Ming Dynasty in 1566, Nodame Cantabile, and 1 Litre of Tears.

"Do you know that Korean dramas started to gain international prominence in the mid 2000s?"
Later in the article you mention that Winter Sonata (2002) launched the Korean Wave worldwide, so doesn't that make it the early 2000s?

"The Japanese drama boom was short-lived as there was a lack of desire to expand to reach out to global viewers, and global viewers had difficulties accessing subbed or dubbed Japanese dramas."
It's unfortunate that Japan doesn't put more effort into marketing their dramas worldwide, or making them available on official streaming platforms, because Japan continued to make a lot of great dramas in the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s.

The "distorting history" rule is worse than it sounds, because the Chinese government gets to decide what counts as distorting history, and the Chinese government's version of history isn't necessarily correct.

In some cases, the Chinese government intentionally falsifies history to avoid making themselves look bad. For example, the Chinese government lies about what happened at the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

In other cases we don't know exactly what happened, so there might be multiple reasonable interpretations, and the ban makes it difficult to have a debate about what happened. For example, the historical drama Towards the Republic was banned from being shown on TV because it portrayed historical figures as complex human beings, unlike the government's black-and-white version of history, where everyone is either praised or denounced. If you want to know about Towards the Republic, I recommend reading Television in Post-Reform China, chapter 3.

Romance of Our Parents is on Youtube without English subtitles. You can download the subtitles from Subscene, and then use an extension like "Subtitles for Youtube" to add the subtitles to the video (or alternatively, you can use VLC). The subtitles aren't synced perfectly, so you'll have to adjust the timing.

A lot of the older dramas mentioned in the article are available on streaming websites.

Journey to the West (1986), Princess Pearl (1998), Water Margin (1998), Yongzheng Dynasty (1999), Palace of Desire (2000), Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (2003), and Ming Dynasty in 1566 (2007) are on Youtube with English subtitles. Chinese Paladin (2005) is on Viki with English subtitles.

According to Wikipedia the Chinese word is 仙侠.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianxia_(genre)

I found one article about Thai dramas, "An Analysis of the Popularity of Thai Television Drama in China, 2014-2019", but I'll need a lot more sources before I can write an article about Thai dramas.

For comparison, I found more than 30 sources about Japanese dramas.