Shasha

Pudding loving yakuza idiot boss

Well, I never expected to finish this since I almost dropped it 10min into the first episode. But my laziness got the better of me and I forced myself to finish the first episode. Before I knew it I was at episode 5, enjoying the drama a lot. And then suddenly, I was bored and annoyed....

The plot is original: a 27yr old yakuza heir, more brawn than brains, is forced back to high school. He has to pretend to be 17 and he has to graduate. I liked this premise and once the school started, it was fun and interesting to watch. The events moved forward very quickly, a bit too quickly sometimes. I found the pacing off. So much so, I lost interest in the second half because of the repetitiveness and the overacting.

The best part of this drama is the cast of secondary, support characters: the gardening aficionado school principal, the embroidery aficionado yakuza, the mysterious nurse uttering the words of wisdom and, of course, a whole classroom full of different types of characters.

The worst part of this drama is the main lead. I don't know if he was written like this or if this was the interpretation by the director and actor but he was just awfully overacting. I have to give it to the actor, he has incredible facial muscles and his jaw moves in mysterious ways. The mafia voice, the grimacing and the jumping around is worth of the best manga adaptation. Apparently this is not one of those. Still, they used many of the manga tropes. The actor, when he stops making faces, is so handsome, to die for. But those goggly eyes, twisted mouth, protruding jaw were weird. What I find the most incomprehensible, is that nobody found his jumpy, grimacing behaviour strange and weird!
The burgeoning romance was cringy at best, completely lacking any chemistry but it helped to confirm the main character's lack of maturity: he is basically an unruly child in an adult's body. And even though he matures through learning, he reverts to his primal state every time he dons his yakuza attire.

The drama stresses the importance of education and how Makio, reluctant at the start, realizes the advantages good education can bring him as a yakuza boss but mostly as a person. The representation of yakuzas does not seem very credible. They mostly look like comedy relief characters in a comedy: ridiculous and, again, over the top with their special salutations and costumes (black suits gang vs. hawaiian shirts gang). The most ordinary looking were finally the kids bringign a sort of balance to the outrageous comedy. Which I did not find funny. At all!

I liked the pudding though I was shocked that a school would not order enough for all who wanted it or allow its pupils to fight over it. Once they dropped the pudding from the plot, the drama somehow lost its flavour.

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Gritty, twisted and unapologetic!

I needed a drama for my Back To The Past challenge, and this one seemed interesting with the added bonus of being short.
Well, this was something different, definitely not what I expected to watch though when I found the first episode on a porn site, I should have started wondering.....

Thank you, ParkMin for the title: I borrowed it from your short and to the point comment!

Temptation of Eve is an OCN anthology series of four feature length (90min) independent erotic thrillers featuring stories about the fascination women provoke in men and the lengths the men are willing to go for them.

The Good Wife - a wheelchair bound man asks a friend to follow his wife, suspecting her of cheating.
Kiss - a photographer is intrigued by the strange behaviour of the new neighbours, suspecting abuse.
Her Own Technique - a plastic surgeon, valuing beauty above all, is fascinated by a woman with a perfect body and a butterfly tattoo.
Angel - a policeman investigates the murder of a plastic surgeon's husband.

The stories are all twisty, twisted, and nothing is what it seems at first glance. Each ends with an unexpected twist. Though after the shocking ending of the first episode, I was just waiting to see how they were going to bring the twist around in others. And it was a surprise every time. So the writing of the thriller element was definitely top notch.

Now that I finished the four stories, I am trying to decide whether the writers of these are women haters or if they admire them. Because here, the women are perfect gray characters, they have the upper hand they hide perfectly well, letting the men think they are being macho helpful and protective. Men on the other hand are the primal selves, out there doing everything they can to protect the woman, who is apparently weak, innocent and abused. Nothing is further from the truth, though! The women here are presented as smart, beautiful, independent, wilful and intriguing, manipulating the men by pretending to be weak females. Here, the men are stupid, comforted in their position as a dominant gender of the species and never doubting the women.
So, I'd say that the writers are in awe and admiration of women but are also afraid of them! Their writing skilfully balances on the thin line between misogyny and misandry. And we are all left feeling uncomfortable. Because the main male characters in each story are not bad or evil people, just stupid, gullible and who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Women in these stories use sex to dissipate men's suspicions so there is a lot of love making and nudity here, though no full-frontal! Everything is tastefully filmed and is necessary for the stories since it shows how the women get to control the men., who in their presence behave like brainless idiots.

I watched this in low quality on ok.ru so I cannot say much about the cinematography, though some camera angles and play with shadows were interesting. The costumes and make up looked outdated. It was weird seeing all those flip phones but I liked the retro feel of not relying on mobiles as much as we do today.

Temptation of Eve is not for the faint of heart, nor for today's young adults: I can see them screaming at how not PC it is. I liked it though, exactly because of that: it shows the human nature the way it is in all its greyness, and not the way these young utopians would like it to be. So I would say this is for the 40+ crowd: no one younger should watch this: because if I started listing trigger warnings for them, it would take me a couple of hours!

Hell hath no fury as the woman scorned!

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Forgettable cutness and fluff

Well, this was ....watchable? A cute school romance, nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately!

Maya is considered ugly in her school and when she confesses to her crush she is violently rejected. When the school heartthrob sees her unhappy, he offers to help her get over her crush by pretending to be in love with him. And it works better than they could have imagined!

First: Maya is not ugly. The actress is very pretty and I checked the manga as well, she is not ugly there either. So I guess my western eye cannot understand the japanese notions of beauty. Maya is rejected because she is considered ugly by a boy who is actually ugly: both inside and outside.
Second: it took me some time to understand the point of playing the unrequited love game with the school top popular boy. It was his a bit sneaky way to get her to know him better because he had already noticed her before and wanted to get closer to her. I found this very weird but then again teens are not known to have smart ideas when hormones are raging!
Third: it is a shame that japanese mangas do not do cross overs. Sometimes in the last third there was another possibility of romance was hinted but unfortunately it rested on the bromance level. That would have been a surprising twist giving this film an edge. But, well, maybe next time? In my dreams...

The film has no depth either of characters or the plot. As usual when based on a manga, these teens have no parents present. The school is not too harsh an environment and Maya seems to be coping well with repeated humiliations (as in she does not really care or she cares for about 5 seconds!). Some people complained about the lack of expressiveness in ML but I did not mind his unmoving, stony face: he was supposed to be high above others, a king on his throne, unreachable and difficult to get close to and understand.

This film is a cute and forgettable piece of fluff, a perfect Sunday watch!

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Curly hair mystery

As much as I was glad to watch Totono again, this film is a slight disappointment since it is missing everything that made the drama such an unmissable watch: Goro, curry and police! Well Goro does show up for 30sec at the beginning and the police are the extras in the last scene.... Still, definitely not enough! And the film is worse for it!

Totono is in Hiroshima (there is history there but we are not let on it! Yet!) and is dragged into a family inheritance mystery. Well, the mystery is unfortunately very predictable and the culprit is obvious the moment he shows up. Totono does his Sherlock Holmes thingy and the culprit is caught red handed and turned over to justice. THE END

The story behind the mystery involving "demons" and curly hair was quite interesting: showing the lengths the people are willing to go in order to gain and to keep the wealth over generations. There is another issue connected to the previous one and it concerns how the adults treat children who are, according to Totono like "wet cement": getting information from kids is like writing on wet cement, once it is dry, the marks remain and the kids are scarred for life! The young girl, who pulls Totono into this mess is an example of such damage having been done to.

Totono actually made this worth watching: with his quirks, his scarf and his dead pan revelations deliveries! I was also happy to see Machida Keita (Cherry Moon) being his understated extremely charming self and Higawara Riku (Utsukushii Kare) being a weirdly explosive self.

As usual I find the background music (classical) out of place in this film, just as much as I disliked it in the drama. The songs are nice but why do japanese like using western classical music so much?

Overall, it is a watchable film, well produced and acted but poorly constructed plot of the mystery. I'd recommend it only for th e die hard fans of Totono.

And finally, I would like to thank the Machida Keita fan who brough this to us with some amazing subs! Thank you so much!

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Extreme love

Wikipedia says: "Limerence is a state of mind which results from romantic feelings for another person, and typically includes intrusive, melancholic thoughts, or tragic concerns for the object of one's affection as well as a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and to have one's feelings reciprocated."

Tawan and Tunn are a couple of students, dating. But increasingly, Tunn does not want Tawan to interact with anyone else but him. Until one day he chains him up in his bed, the reason being the word is a bad place and Tawan needs to be protected and taken care off.

This is definitely NOT a nice and fluffy BL but a serious drama about mental health where the main characters happen to be gay. The story is scary, difficult and tragic: Tunn has been so traumatized in his childhood, abandoned by people he loved that he does not want to take any chances of that happening withTawan therefore confining him, without realizing that he has gone completely bonkers and overboard.

The actors are surprisingly good for a school project: the one playing Tunn really gave me the creeps, so much so I FFW a lot for the first time ever. They are very much at ease with each other and the skinship scenes were rather smooth. The direction and the filming was rather correct and though it is obviously a low budget film, they tried hard. The sound recording is bad and the subs are awful!

I liked the twist in the end: the whole story was just a school project so we have the final clap and the discussion between the actors, now being themselves and the director about the mental health issues. I personally found those a bit unclear and strange. There is also a final unexpected twist in the last minutes which actually gave me a fright!

The film is a bit too long, it should have been shorter for my taste. But that is just me!

One final question: are there really groups of girls at universities in Thailand, screaming at men they ship together ? Maximum cringe!

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Water, water everywhere....

I decided to be generous and reward this short film with a correct rating. It was Ok and somehow it wasn't. I liked the quirkiness of the beginning but they just had to go and ruin a cute story with stalking. When kids stalk each other it is often cute, here we are talking about adults so even though her stalking is not threatening it is definitely creepy and immature and not romantic. Still, they gloss it over completely...

The story is simple: a young woman who cannot help but hear the pattern (BPM beats per minute) in every sound, longs for the underwater silence and has only one friends, falls for her friend's boyfriend's friend Mizu and starts stalking him trying to figure out why her own heartbeat accelerates when she's near him. She records everything in a notebook titles Beats for Mizu.

The acting is excellent, the cinematography pretty, watery, subtle and light. There is a lot of water in this film starting with the story of little mermaid up to the ML's name. The music is excellent and it delivers emotions when the main characters cannot. The friendship between two young women is precious. I almost wanted this to go the GL route! The first boufriend/kis scene was hilarious: the awkward youth!

Nice short watch!

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Pinky promises

I remember watching this as a drama a couple of years ago and not liking it very much: I found it messy, lacking chemistry and with low production value. Ever since then, I keep stumbling on occasional review and feeds post and they are all praising it highly. So I decided to rewatch it as a movie and to see if my original appreciation still holds!

Unfortunately it does! Even though I like this concept of red string of fate, it was nevertheless underwhelming. The motif of the red string is repeatedly used in different ways throughout the film which I found rather original: scarf, rope, pinky promise.... The characters are complete opposites: a cold debt collector and his fiery dancer debtor. Their relationship and bickering was nice, the actors were very much at ease with each other and yet still something was missing. They looked like they were not in synch while filming. The rest of the characters are just caricatures, barely sketched clichés: the cruel lady boss, the idiotic flamboyant sidekick, the mean rival (actually we never find out what happened to him after they spent so much time on him and when he left their last showdown with a cocky smirk!). And the sets? Pretty winter scenery but no heating inside: it was very cold on sets - that is very obvious!

Again, we have a korean mother who abandons her child after getting him in debt and cutting all means of communication with him. Are korean parents really this cruel? This is something that keeps repeating in k dramas so there must be a sliver of truth there. And that truth is ugly and it paints korean parents in a very bad light!

But everything considered, it is an OK single watch!

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Between Love And Friendship

Never had a drama a more fitting title!
Never was there a drama for me where I did not want the main leads to end up together.
Never had I seen a couple of utterly dislikable characters with horrendous and extremely weak personalities.
Never were the truer words said than when the ML finally admits to his own shortcomings 5 min before the ending!

As the title says, this is a story of two friends who want to become more but they are just caught in a string of missed opportunities, lack of courage, misunderstandings, lack of courage, lies, lack of courage and of course, lack of courage. They are both so insecure behind the hard surface that they do not dare to speak the truth to each other. But the reason was never the obvious one: to keep the friendship intact because their friendship, even though they were close, was never really deep and sincere. They liked spending time together but both of them wanted to become more while neither of them dared to say it. It turned out to be an extremely frustrating watch.

What it proved, as if the proof was needed, is that the men are weak creatures, without spine or courage but who talk big. Women on the other hand are not afraid to talk and lie, to fight what they want, to abandon what they do not need anymore.

What I liked about this drama is the structure of it: the same story is told from the both main characters' point of view as each episode tells about the same events. What I did not like very much is the usual overuse of voiceover but that is such a j drama thing so we end up getting used to it! I loved the music : the final song was beautiful. But I did not like the ML: he is the most annoying, spineless, cowardly, stupid, idiotic ML I have ever watched. What I hated about this is the predictable ending: I did not want them to end up happily ever after! They had so many opportunities to be happy together but they let every one of those slip through their fingers so they can wallow in misery and pretend to be happy. They actually deserved to remain alone and really miserable while having huge regrets and never acting on them! It was never clear what they liked so much about each other: probably they recognized each other's flaws in themselves: they are both equally insincere!

The drama's 10 episodes, 5 from Rina's POV and 5 from Ren's, span a 7 year period: it took them over 7 years to finally realize what they wanted (especially Ren: he is an idiot when he needs his ex-wife to explain some truths to him!) and timidly try to do something about it. I really thought that Ren was going to run away again in the end when she said "No way!" to his proposal..

Interesting concept but annoying characters with an undeserving happy end! Watching suggestion: watch the two versions at the same time in this order: episodes: 1, 6, 2, 7, 3, 8, 4, 9, 5, 10.

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All smiles, no substance...

Lucky My Love definitely deserve A for the effort and some consideration because it is one of the rare GLs out there. If we were to compare it to similar length web dramas, it keeps up with them. But, objectively speaking this is a badly written, acted and overall produced drama.

It is an office romance. Napdao is so unsuccessful in love that she goes to tarot reader to get some insight into her future. At the same time a new team manager joins the office. Their boss and the new team manager start competing for Napdao's attention. Whom shell she choose?

This short web drama does not raise any issue (family and society acceptance needed?). They are both independent women and we do not know much about them or their background. The biggest problem here are the love triangle and misunderstanding, though due to the short duration, those problems were quickly solved. And of course there is the obligatory mildly screeching trans comic relief character. The drama is shallow, quick and forgettable.

The production is a low budget one but that is not important especially where these rare dramas are concerned. They should have concentrated more on writing and acting because they are both lacking. None of the actors could deliver the lines correctly (and the subs on youtube are really bad so it is not about the substance but the intonation). The actress playing Napdao has an infectious smile, she is very cute and when she smiles she lights up the room. Literally!

The producers of Lucky My Love need encouragement to continue to make better dramas: this one was a cute little romance but with no substance. Hopefully we'll see better things in the future.

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Weird & funny!

The synopsis says it all. I just wondered about the LGBT tag: apparently the two women living together are a couple? I think?

The story is told from the point of view of the fan: immobile(just swivelling its fan regularly from let to right and back again) and silent witness to the goings-on in the flat.

An original idea of putting a camera on the fan combines with the actors' perfect timing makes for a funny and a smart watch. The characters are all coolly (blasé) reacting to surprising presences: nobody shouts or jumps. It is more of a vaudeville show with people hiding in closets and behind coat-hangers!

It is a comedy, there is really no deeper meaning or message. A child's voice recites lines from Veda which is supposed to be about the fan, who, Godlike, bestows its silent presence onto the inhabitants of that flat.

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BFF? Maybe...

I am finding it difficult to write about this drama: I liked it a lot but it stressed and angered me very much. The story follows five lonely young adults who meet through twitter and decide to meet in real life as well. They hit it off immediately, even though all of them lied about themselves. Slowly the truth comes out but instead of tearing them apart, they bond even more. They help each other and love blossoms amongst them. But the timing is never right and everything is just a string of missed opportunities and white lies.
The drama showed us how each of them grew and matured through their friendship. The drama left a lot of unanswered questions, issues touched upon and just left unsolved. Why did Doctor come to Japan with his little sister when his parents are perfectly all right and wealthy in Korea? Why does he always speak in japanese with his sister (I know a japanese drama etc.etc....)? Haru, the teacher had a lot of problems in school: with students and other teachers and then what happened, all is forgotten? Drug dealing student is arrested, she promises to help him and then...what happened next? Sexual harassment at work? Barely mentioned when Kaoru is being molested by his female boss? Kaoru's difficult affirmation of his own sexuality? How did they solve this? Kaoru commits suicide! Very "nice" solution to a huge problem! Probably realistic solution for japanese society but still...he had friends who supported him and were there for him!
The music was very nice, rocky and it fit the drama really well. I liked the cinematography and the way they edited thansitions between scenes: rather original and pretty to see! What was not pretty to see was the male actors' hair: the three of them had awful hairstyles.... But the acting was excellent, they had an amazing group chemistry though the centre of it, like the Sun, was Nakaji, the photographer, kind, sweet and helpful, everyone was drawn towards.
As I said, things made me angry, most of all Kaoru's fate, which felt very wrong. The rest is a sweet drama about young people finding their own way in life, which is easier when you have good friends to listen to you...

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Crush in the open 2

I don't know what it says about this drama but I accidentally watched the second episode of this first and only realized it when the episode finished that I must have missed something but also that what I missed was not that important!

So Bam and Mike are dating now. One day, Bam's junior from schools shows up in the cafe and we find out he has a crush on him. He keeps coming back and confesses both to Bam and to Mike who is shaken by this. Mike sees that Bam and Pee get swimmingly along and feels not deserving. But Bam notices it and puts Pee back in his place.

Oh the usual trope of a love triangle! Quickly resolved but still... The acting is still just as lacklustre, but I must say the actor playing Pee takes the flower with his overacting and mannerisms! He does manage to make his character unlikeable so I guess that is a success!

The production seems to have had a bit more money in the budget so they managed to go and film a few scenes on the beach, which is always nice to see!

I often feel bad when I do not appreciate these small productions much: it is usually a labour of love! But unfortunately I have seen better labours of love .... Still, I would like to encourage them to continue: there are originalities in their work (breaking the 4th wall!) that make it worth watching !

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Crush in the open!

Not bad but not good either. It is obviously made on a shoestring budget so the production is lacking. Acting as well, unfortunately! The only originality this short drama has is breaking the fourth wall by the actors instead of voiceover explaining situations and revealing emotions.

The short drama takes place in an always completely empty coffee shop where Bam gets to work with his crush, Mike who is a writer. In order to break the writing block, Mike asks Bam to help him enact love scenes for his next novel. These make Bam very confused so he confesses. Now it is Mike's turn to be confused. But Bam does everything in his power to help Mike see things (his own feelings!) clearly.

There is absolutely no chemistry between the actors who definitely need a few more acting lessons to make us believe they are at ease while acting: they were rather rigid and the line delivery was monotonous!

Still, point for the effort, the writing was solid and original. The music was too loud and cheerful and just underlined the (bad) acting.

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Milady, are you daft?

This was so good until...it was not any more!

The story about a ditzy heiress/police detective and her butler was original and fun at the beginning. But then the story stayed put: no character development, no change, immobile. And that ruined it for me. I enjoyed the first half, slept through the second.

The world building is rather fun and colourful. She is kind and living in her bubble since she has no idea how ordinary (i.e. not obscenely rich!) people live. Her reactions are funny. The butler is stoic, cold-blooded and direct. Their relationship is fun.
Her boss is another rich man, completely self-centred and incompetent as a detective. So the butler solves the cases for the heiress and her boss takes the credit.

The drama is based on a manga and maybe this static characters work there but in a drama I need to see the results of the interactions between these characters. Nothing! Everyone remains in their place and while the initial cases hid this lack of development, once I was used to the format, I completely lost interest.

The heiress puts her glasses on and goes to the crime scene in a limo. Her butler follows her hidden from sight while she investigates (nobody knows that she's a heiress!) with her incompetent boss. In the evening, she tells her butler what she learned during the investigation. He insults her politely because she did not figure out who the culprit is even though it was crystal clear to him. So, over desert (hence the title of the drama!), he explains everything to her. They confront the culprit who is then arrested by her ignorant boss.

The characters are fun in small doses: you cannot binge this, it becomes quickly unwatchable! The subs made it also fun to watch because the subber made an extra effort to translate everything that was shown on the screen (there were a lot of manga like graphics!). Except for the last two episodes (one story in two parts!) which lacked those extras in english and suddenly the drama was much worse for it!

Key word here is: FUN!

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First love forever....

I wonder if one day we are going to be lucky enough and have a drama in which the first love main couple does not remain together, happily ever after, but the second lead wins the girl ..... Sometimes I am really fed up with this trope. And in this drama, more than ever!

The story continues on from the first season: Futaba and Kou have sort of admitted to having feelings for each other and then he goes away on vacation and upon his return, he keeps seeing a friend from his old school and ignoring Futaba. That friend actually wants Kou for herself and makes him believe she's so unhappy and so misunderstood and so alone and so...Kou falls for it and neglects to explain it to Futaba. When she starts seeing Kikuchi and moving on, he gets too clingy, needy and jealous.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was a story about teens. But, while Futaba's words and actions reveal maturity beyond her age, Kou is the opposite. he sulks, does not talk, behaves as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders and nobody understands how brave and responsible he is. So he goes around with a sad, desperate expression on his face. And he takes it up with the whole world instead of himself. He blows hot and cold with her, sacrificing himself and not being with her but not wanting her to be with anyone else: so selfish and self-centred. On the opposite side, Futaba is the epitome of reason and generosity.

I wanted the FL to stay with the SML but I knew from the beginning that that was never going to happen. Heart wants what heart wants and the reason is abandoned! The SML acted too quickly in wanting to replace Kou but all his kindness was not enough to delete the first love, no matter how bad and unkind, from her mind.

This was an extremely frustrating slow watch. The side couples were more interesting but they were given the minimum time . Every minute was devoted to Kou and his tergiversations. One question, though: where are these kids' parents? So we have a couple of dead ones but not all of them? Do they work so much that the kids practically raise themselves? Are kids really abandoned to this extent in Japan? This made me very sad....Very often in dramas based on mangas, we never see parents! I wonder why?

Everything considered, this was an unnecessary watch they could have done away with by condensing the plot in two episodes and finished it with one season!

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