rje1

Based on a manga which is evidently written for yowamushi (weakling) geeks with fantasies of sporting prowess, mateship, and being admired by girls. The singular girl character is there to serve the boys, which could be seen as representing Japanese culture, or just as the female-phobia inexperienced boys. It's presented as a sports manga/movie, but Onoda's implausible feats on his mamachari are deserving of a superhero origin story.

Us hoarders... Time for a cleanup?

Yet another drama about single women working in Shanghai/ Beijing. With only 12 episodes this one is focussed and not sprawling. The four women - three survivors, who somehow are best friends despite varying in age and status, and who each grows and matures in the course of this series, and their dear friend who takes her life at the beginning of the first episode, and who features in many flashbacks as they try to make sense of her suicide, are each individual and vivid characters, engagingly acted, and with fantastic chemistry that jerks tears and belly laughs. They suffer the expected hardships - work pressures, romance, provincial relatives, and urging to get married. The three survivors stand up for the right of a single woman to make her own decisions, to live independently and singly, or if in a relationship to on equal terms and not lose her individuality. There are no villains; everyone who does wrong later takes the offered chance to redeem themselves. The finale manages to be a paean to life in Beijing and at the same time a celebration of the alternative choice of returning to the hometown and creating a rewarding future there.

If you're up for downloading it, you can get torrents for good video files, and and good subtitles.

With nothing likeable nor interesting in the main characters, a story composed of insincerity, deceit, greed, and the soulless thrill of gambling, this movie couldn't hold me all the way through.

After chasing this for about a year with various torrents and looking for English subtitles, I finally downloaded this from Avistaz, and fixed some of the English subs, so I now have a fully and properly subtitled series. I haven't watched it yet.

When there's gore and off-screen violence from the first scene, we know it can't be a happy ending, even though the movie plays in an almost comedic way with the juxtaposition of a child playing while witnessing more violence and its cleanup. But there is a redemption of sorts brought about by the spunky child heroine and the circumstances that bring her into the supervision of the evidently deeply traumatized mute played expertly by Yoo Ah In, who like any good actor has succeeded in a range of roles, rather than being typecast.
Doesn't get high marks from me, mainly because I abhor violence in movies.

The acting was exaggerated; the story was a contrived tear-jerker. It felt like it was produced for children. I couldn't finish it.

Well, that's one way to break out of the wholesome Girls' Generation image.

Eight episodes and I think I'll give up. I just don't like any of the characters. I can't follow the convoluted plot and it's not giving me a reason to persist.

Haven't watched this, but took a quick look at the manga. The issue of consent is a problem. He is fetishizing her and seeing her as an object, rather than as a person, and she is looking distinctly uncomfortable at this, as well as his intrusion on her personal space.

Entertaining if sentimental story of a young man and woman, each carrying guilt from childhood traumas, who help each other to find healing.
Somehow the story felt contrived, carefully constructed of the usual cliches, no matter how implausible, which doesn't help Nagasawa Masami who looks like she's acting, rather than becoming a convincing character.
Lots of fine scenery of the Seto Inland Sea (why is the FL also called Seto?) and the traditional coastal towns.

There are english subs for all 16 episodes on subscene, but they don't match with the videos available on youtube. Not just timing, but there seem to be two different edits of this drama. Can anyone cast any light on this?
Those subtitles do match another set of video files which is available as a torrent.
BTW what language are they speaking? (I haven't watched it yet, but while checking the subtitles I noticed that some of the time, in the village, they're not speaking Mandarin).

A G-rated heist movie with all the requisite ingredients: laughs, thrills, and tears; in which a little homeless girl, her younger brother, and her loyal school friend, are more cynical than teens and smarter than the adults.

This drama depicts why you shouldn't work in as a firefighter in Taipei:
Your spouse hates you. The parents and relatives of the people you save, hate you. Your parents hate you. The politicians hate you. The media hate you. The community hate you.
What a demanding, unappreciative, and litigious community these poor professionals have to serve.
The ONLY people who like you are - you guessed it - your work buddies.
I don't know if our characters are going to make it to the final episode, what with equipment breakdowns, communication breakdowns, marital breakdowns, nervous breakdowns...

You'll need to take crack to keep up with the frenetic pace of this movie, and although the plot is the same as every other high school dance competition movie, you can't beat this one for sheer exuberance. You'll have to suspend disbelief that Natalie Hsu's character is bullied at her dance high school, even though she shows her very fine dance chops. There are many excellent dancers here, but the rapid-cut MTV-style editing obscures much of their performances. There are several imaginative scenes and set pieces, many of them relying on summer downpour. Natalie Hsu has personality and cuteness and I look forward to seeing her further work.

For me this could have been a chance to study formal Japanese, and learn about ryoukan life, but each plot development is so obvious and repeatedly telegraphed, contrived rather than believable, signaled by overloud music that doesn't quite fit the apparent mood, the acting is one-dimensional and exaggerated, like in a children's pantomime, that I couldn't stand it for more than a few episodes.

Amidst soothing mountain and forest scenery, each episode in this minimalist drama (maybe there's a better word) mainly consists of conversations between the owner and each one of various friends, about other times and places. There's no real action, and strangely no other actual guests staying there. If you want this mood but with more substance, I highly recommend the Japanese pair of Little Forest movies (the Korean one is similar, but there's drama included in the form of bantering friends).

I know this drama is a classic favorite, but for me it has all the key features of the worst of Japanese series: over-acted and cliched characters, loud music at climactic scences that even drowns out the speech of the characters, predictable and repetitive plots, frequent sexism and objectification of women's bodies, etc. Onizuka may tell his female colleague to stop being the tea lady for the principal, but he still takes any chance to look up the skirts of the teenage female students. A scene where the vice principal, who thought a female student was propositioning him, was played as a satire of his delusions, rather than totally unethical behaviour by a teacher. I tried to tell myself that when this series was made, behaviour standards were different, but it didn't stop the revulsion I felt.
The core of this drama is the series of transformations brought about by the titular character, yet this doesn't occur through him deliberately using whatever are his powers, but rather as unexpected outcomes of his impulsive, aggressive, and often self-centred actions. What is that supposed to tell us? Or if it's just being played as comedy, it didn't make me laugh.
Japanese teachers must feel so discouraged seeing yet another school staffroom depicted as a den of misogynist males and self-righteous fawning females led by a stupid cowardly principal sucking up to arrogant indulgent parents, and accompanied by his sycophantic parastic vice-principal.

Such an irony, that the police in this drama are so dedicated to obtaining sufficient evidence in search of the truth and upholding the law. In a democracy, nobody is above the law, but in China, the survival of the CCP trumps all other principles. Hopefully this is not lost on the Chinese audience.
The backstory of domination and abuse is so harrowing that there needed to be a fantasy sequence at the end, an impossible happy ending to provide some pain relief. However there are also a set of stories of steadfast love, amongst siblings, friends, and adopted family . In this complex interlocking story, the obfuscation and lies are gradually peeled back until the truth is eventually revealed. Each of the large set of characters is flawed and complex , and each superbly acted. A deeply satisfying drama.