strawberryeuphoria

The wounds of forbidden love

This is a beautiful piece of Japanese storytelling. I don’t think we have many works that focus on the effect of love scandals on the immediate family. It’s nice to see the focus on the family rather than the couple and see how their actions really affected those around them. The movie does a good job at showing how cheating is a lot more than two individuals in love, and how their action can affect their loved ones negatively.

Plot***
So the story follows Naotatsu, who moves in with his uncle to make it easier for his commute to high school. But as he moves on, he comes to find out that his uncle’s house has been transformed into a share house and he is sharing with other people. Among the group, he meets Sasaki, who is strikingly beautiful. In fact, Naotatsu falls in love with her, but Sasaki does not believe in love and has no intention of starting any relationship. What Naotatsu does know is that he and Sasaki are connected by events that unfolded many years back.

**Spoilers**

So the story is that Naotatsu's father and Sasaki's mother had an affair, and they ran away. Back when these events took place, Naotatsu was too young to remember, but Sasaki was 16 years old, and these events profoundly impacted her, especially knowing how her mother’s actions harmed another family. This movie is interesting in how the focus is not on cheating parents, but the effect on the kids, and the story is seen through the eyes of the victims; in this case, the kids. In the case of Sasaki, what her mother did scared her for life, destroying someone else’s life and made her afraid to love. While she struggles with these wounds, those who were actually involved in this case, her mother and her partner, have moved on in life like nothing else and are living their lives with no consequences. It’s interesting to see the extent of the damage. While one might think running away for love only concerns them, they fail to see how all of that affected those around them.

The movie dives into the scars and wounds and also shows the inèerfect and difficult journey into healing, letting go, and acceptance. There are also a lot of cooking scenes as Sasaki is presented as someone who enjoys cooking when she is struggling with her feelings, so it is such a treat for the eyes. It's a really beautiful movie, I do feel like this could have been great as a drama; it would have been interesting to see more of the characters’ and the parents’ backstory.

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A cycle of hell

First and foremost, I want to give a huge trigger warning: this film dives deeply into themes of abuse and domestic violence. If these topics are distressing or triggering for you, I highly recommend avoiding it.

The movie is adapted from a chilling horror novel, and while there is a Korean remake, this is the original Japanese version.

**Plot**
The story revolves around Mitsui, a man who has dealt with feelings of neglect and isolation since childhood. He was often overlooked by both his family and classmates, leaving him with a profound sense of abandonment. The only person who ever acknowledged him and called him by his name was Chihiro, a girl from his past. Despite the passage of many years since high school, he remains obsessively fixated on her. One rainy day, while riding in an elevator, Mitsui catches a whiff of a familiar fragrance that instantly transports him back to memories of Chihiro. This pushes him to seek her out, hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl he has been infatuated with for most of his life. However, to his surprise, the woman he encounters is far from the radiant girl he once knew. The smile that once lit up her face has vanished, replaced by a heaviness that deeply concerns him.

**Spoilers ahead****

Driven by worry, Mitsui decides to move into a nearby apartment, becoming increasingly fixated on Chihiro. This initial concern gradually spirals into an unhealthy obsession, leading him to engage in stalking and sinister behaviors like installing recording devices, and even hiding beneath her bed at times (and that's not all).

As the narrative unfolds, Mitsui uncovers the horrifying reality of Chihiro’s life. He learns that she is living in a cycle of abuse and sexual assault at the hands of her husband. Let me tell you; these scenes are raw and haunting, and they are really difficult to watch at times. Yet again, they are another testimony to the harsh realities that many women endure, often in plain sight. What is interesting is Mitsui’s obsessive perspective allows him to recognize the alarming signs of her abuse, while those directly involved in her life seem oblivious to the horror she experiences daily, although the signs are right in front of their eyes.

In a way, you feel like Mitsui is the better option, but the movie presents a complicated portrayal of Mitsui’s character. While he observes the torment Chihiro faces and wishes to intervene, his role as a stalker complicates any potential for him to be a genuine ally. His obsession undermines his intentions, presenting him as both a potential savior and an unsettling threat. The contrast between Mitsui's stalking and the reality of Chihiro's situation raises profound questions about the nature of her safety. While we are presented with two bad guys and pushed to recognize the better bad guy, we also realize how scary this situation is for Chihiro. On one side, she has an abusive husband, who gives her hell on earth; on the other side, there is a stalker whose obsession can spiral at any time, and we don’t know how far it can go. It makes me wonder if Chihiro can really be safe.

Overall, the film is nicely crafted but difficult to watch due to its brutal and realistic portrayal of abuse and sexual assault. It leaves viewers contemplating the complexities of human obsession and the desperation of those trapped in damaging relationships. The story serves as a reminder of the realities many face while exploring the darker aspects of human emotion and connection.

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Manga and anime is way superior

Orange is one of those manga to movie adaptations that really benefit from reading the manga before you watch this movie. I think most of the love toward this movie is a reflection of how loved this manga is. I found it a good movie; the casting is not always perfect and there is a bit of confusion, which is part of making a manga into a movie, which takes away a lot of the crucial elements only a manga can hold. Although the ending was a bit confusing and even though the cast is well-known, some instances I found it hard to feel the emotion in their acting. I was not impressed with the female lead's acting. But overall, it’s a nice movie, but the high rating is mostly because of the manga and anime.

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Love Me, Love Me Not felt surprisingly long for how little actually happens. The pacing is slow, but at the same time, the emotional development feels rushed, like everything is happening too fast without enough depth. Honestly, this story would have worked much better as a drama rather than a movie.

Plot*
The film follows Yuna and Akari, two high school girls with completely different views on love. Yuna is dreamy and idealistic, in love with the idea of romance, especially a prince-like character from a childhood book, while Akari is more grounded and realistic. When Yuna meets Rio, who looks just like the boy from her book, she immediately falls for him, only to discover he’s Akari’s stepbrother.


Spoilers ahead***


From there, the story turns into a complicated love square: Yuna loves Rio, Rio is in love with Akari, and Akari is trying to suppress her feelings for Rio while slowly opening herself up to Kazuomi. On paper, it’s a messy but interesting setup. In execution, though, it feels unrealistic.

The biggest issue is how quickly everything resolves. Characters confess, move on, and change feelings with very little buildup. Rio, in particular, goes from being deeply in love with Akari to suddenly accepting Yuna, which feels abrupt and unconvincing. The emotional weight just isn’t there to support these shifts.
Akari’s internal conflict and her feelings for Rio felt real. I can see how deeply in love they were but the fact that they were step siblings was like a death sentence to them. Honestly made no sense, and also the way she brushed off her feeling for Rio and moved on to Kazuomi, raised so many questions.

The way they were moving from one to another felt forced, unnatural, and not realistic. Maybe being a movie it played a big part by affecting the flow. One moment you see Rio's burning for Akari, In love with her and also suffering because he can't be with her but then the next minutes he just move on like it's nothing e. This make me feel like all their feelings lack validity and strength. Felt more like kids obsessed over toys than teenagers navigating love.

Because the story is adapted from a manga, it feels like too much was compressed into a short runtime. The result is a film that somehow feels both dragged out and incomplete at the same time. Scenes linger, but the characters themselves don’t grow enough. In the end, Love Me, Love Me Not just feels like a story that needed more time, more space, and more emotional buildup to truly work.

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Intense, burning, and magnetic

I found Bloody Heart to be exceptionally good and realistic; there’s something very real compared to other romanticized historical dramas. When you watch the drama, you can actually see how the story feels real, as if these things happened for real, if you know what I mean. The storyline, with the king on one corner, the minister in the other, and the queen in the middle, felt exciting but painfully realistic. What I loved about it was that I could not pinpoint who was the bad guy because you could actually look at each character's motives and understand why they were doing what they were doing, like they all had good reasons and bad reasons. It's similar to the usual chessboard we see in many historical dramas but yet so incredibly different. The acting really elevated this, and the intrigues felt so deep and personal as if it was happening to me. Oh gosh, the acting was painfully good. The intensity of the king's feelings and his rage, contained in regal posture but flooding out from him...and his longing for his queen...was so magnetic! Minister Park was both painfully right but also intensively wrong in his feelings. I don’t have the words to describe this, than it is brilliant drama.

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The original battle

I think I watched Battle Royale for the first time around 2003-2004, and I was very young and had no business watching this movie. However, I say this is definitely one of those movies that marked most of millennials' lives. Whether you are a Japanese movie fan or not, if you were a '90s kid, you would have watched this.

Watching now, after over 20 years, it feels crazy. The story is so crazy and needs a huge trigger warning to anyone who is planning to watch it. There are a number of scenes of death in the most brutal way, so definitely, if you can't watch these types of stuff, I would suggest skipping this movie. However, taking into consideration how gore some of Battle Royale's offspring, like Squid Game, is, I don't think it's as violent, but if you are sensitive, then it's a whole other argument.

There are a few things I want to say. For me, this was one of those movies that I remember from my childhood, and it's an experience, not just a movie. In fact, this movie was the inspiration for many other similar concepts you will find. If you are watching this now for the first time, you will find so many flaws in it, but I want you to remember that this was done in 2000, so there were no fancy filters and special effects with the most powerful software in the market. So, watch this with an open mind, remembering this took place years ago. Also, this movie is based on a manga, and undoubtedly, the manga is far superior and darker than the movie because I don't think you can really depict in a movie the horror and darkness the same way a book can.

Battle Royale is an experience; it's the original that led to many modern-day replicates, but yet its message never stops: a world where we are forced to fight against each other instead of the powers that be. Rather than being permitted to challenge the gatekeepers, we turn on each other in desperation to survive. And yet, communities continue regardless.

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A whole lot of nothing ....

I came across a little bit of a trailer before starting this drama, and I was quite eager to watch it; in fact, I waited for it to be over so I could binge-watch it. However, I was quite disappointed. There were so many things about the drama that did not just sit right. I felt very unenthusiastic to the point that it took me about 5 episodes to even get interested in the story. I watched the first episode, and I was not grabbed by the story or the acting, but sometimes you have to watch another episode before you judge it, so I watched another, then another, until I was about 5 or 6 episodes in, and I was still not liking what I was watching. There was something about the story that just did not work, and although there are quite a lot of series with rich CEOs and struggling employees, this felt like it lacked enthusiasm. Although the whole pregnancy could have made this more interesting, there was something about the way the actors executed that felt low energy. I have watched other work with the male lead, and I was pretty disappointed that this drama didn't work the way I expected. I honestly don't know if it was the acting, the story, or the chemistry; it lacked a lot and just was not driving enough. There were lots of scenes that felt connected just because, and there was no proper flow. For example, the fact that the male lead could not touch someone's hand yet he managed to get someone pregnant...like how? And also the revenge was lightely exciting, but once they revealed the reason behind it, it felt not strong enough.

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Easy skip

Kahogona Wakadanna-sama no Amayakashi Kon is a very short drama. It only has six episodes, and each episode is around 20 minutes long, so the whole story moves very quickly. Overall, if I had to give my honest opinion, I would say the drama lacked a lot. The story jumps from one event to another so quickly that it doesn’t give the audience much time to process what’s happening. Although there are some cute moments between the male and female leads, the overall story feels quite average.


Plot***

The story follows Someya Yukito, the young master of a long-established inn in Asakusa. When Yukito’s father becomes ill, he is called to take over the inn and become the new head of the family. In order to uphold family tradition, his relatives pressure him to get married before officially taking over the inn.
Because of this, Yukito decides to ask Tsuruoka Io to marry him. Io is training to become a chef and has basically grown up at the inn alongside Yukito. The drama then follows their life as a newly married couple.

On paper, the story sounds very cute and promising. However, the pacing is extremely rushed. For example, in one episode Yukito asks Io to marry him, and by the next episode they are already married and navigating married life. The story moves so fast that you barely have time to digest any of the developments.

Everything feels like it’s happening at 5x speed, and that really affected the flow of the drama for me. If the show had taken more time to develop the characters and their relationship, it could have been much more enjoyable.

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overly used plot but a cute version

Honestly, it’s not a bad movie. It’s actually quite enjoyable, but the biggest issue for me is that the plot is very overused. After a while, it kind of loses its charm because the story feels very familiar.
That being said, it’s still a nice movie, and I think people who haven’t seen this type of story before might enjoy it much more than I did.
Overall, it was fun to watch, and one thing that really stood out to me was the theme around curly hair. That part actually resonated with me a lot.

As a millennial who grew up seeing ads on TV constantly telling us that curly hair was messy or dry and that was it was a " problem" that we needed silky straight hair to look pretty, this movie brought back a lot of memories. The way it touched on that insecurity felt very real and relatable, and I enjoyed how the movie brought back something that so strongly defined beauty back in the day.

The reason I say the plot isn’t very original is because it’s the kind of storyline you’ve probably seen before. The movie follows a girl who has a crush on a guy, and her friends help her build the courage to confess her feelings. During a school trip, she’s about to confess to him, but in that moment she realizes she’s actually in love with her best friend instead. They start dating, but things don’t stay simple. The best friend has serious family issues that force him to leave and disappear from her life. Years later, she still hasn’t moved on, and then he suddenly reappears, and their love story continues.

It’s one of those plots where you can pretty much predict what’s going to happen because we’ve seen similar stories many times before.
Even so, the movie is still a light and enjoyable watch. It may not be the most original story, but it has some relatable moments and a nostalgic feeling that makes it worth watching if you’re in the mood for something simple and sweet.

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You started off really strong

I went into Extraordinary You without knowing anything about it, and I was honestly pleasantly surprised by how original and interesting the concept was. I don’t think I’ve ever watched another drama with a similar setup, so it immediately caught my attention. I ended up binge-watching the first six or seven episodes because the premise was so intriguing.

However, after that point, I started to feel like the drama lost some of its momentum. I’m not entirely sure if it was just the initial excitement wearing off or if the story itself started becoming messy and confusing. The drama introduced a lot of interesting ideas with the whole stage versus non-stage concept, but I felt like the storytelling didn’t always provide enough clarity for what was happening.

One part that really confused me was the Joseon Dynasty storyline. Instead of adding depth, it felt dragged out and made the plot harder to follow. I think it might have worked better if it had been introduced earlier and explained more clearly, because by the time it appeared, the main purpose of the drama already felt like it was starting to fade.

Another thing I noticed was how the focus of the story shifted. At the beginning, it felt like many of the characters had important roles in the narrative, which made the world feel more interesting. But as the drama went on, the attention moved mostly to the main three characters, and I think that took away some of the charm the drama had at the start.

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The 100th version of rich CEO and poor girl

Business marriage is a common theme and is often overused. If this is your first time watching a Japanese drama that features a relationship between a wealthy CEO and a lower-class employee, you might enjoy it. However, after watching many similar stories and some impressive adaptations, I found this version lacking. The storyline is acceptable but not particularly remarkable. While there are some charming scenes, they aren't strong enough to make this drama memorable. Nonetheless, if you're having a slow week and want something light to watch, this could be a good option.

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Fans Who Go Too Far

I watched Gachi Koi Nenchakujuu during a time when there were major discussions online about extreme fan behaviour and sasaeng situations in the Asian entertainment industry. Because of that, watching this drama gave me a completely new perspective on the reality of how celebrities often live.

What surprised me most was how well the drama explores the psychology of fan obsession. I honestly wish it had more episodes, because the stories were so interesting, and definitely there was even more that could have been explored.

The drama shows different sides of how admiration for an idol can slowly turn into something unhealthy; they are not blaming the fan, but showing how it all plays out. At first,t it may look like admiration and support, but over time it can become something much more dangerous; a kind of delusion where fans begin to lose their connection with reality.

Through Hinaki’s character, you can clearly see how that obsession grows. Her feelings for Subaru go far beyond normal fandom. In some ways, you could blame Subaru as well, because his actions and the way he interacts with her make things even more complicated. It feels like he takes advantage of her feelings. But at the same time, Hinaki already seems like someone standing right on the edge, like a bomb waiting to explode.
She represents a type of fan who believes every word and every glance from their idol is meant specifically for them. Through a screen, they build a personal fantasy that slowly replaces reality.

Then there’s Kotono. At first, she seems like the opposite kind of fan; someone who simply supports from a distance and understands the boundaries between idol and fan. She looks like the “normal” fan who knows not to cross the line.
But as the story unfolds, you begin to realise that even Kotono isn’t as detached as she believes. In her own way, she also carries a form of obsession, just quieter and more controlled.
That’s what makes the drama so interesting. It doesn’t present obsession in only one form. Instead, it shows how different kinds of fans relate to idols, and how easily admiration can turn into something darker.

I found Gachi Koi Nenchakujuu to be a very clever exploration of fandom culture, especially if you have been in this world. It shows how love and support for an idol can slowly twist into obsession, delusion, and even madness; it's not just the fruit of cinematic storytelling, but a reality.
.

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Great drama but bit rushed towards the end

I really enjoyed Would You Marry Me. It’s a light-hearted drama that was easy to watch, and the casting worked very well. The actors fit their roles naturally, which made the story feel warm and enjoyable from beginning to end.

My only real issue with the drama is that I wish it had a few more episodes. Toward the end, everything started to feel a bit rushed. The story had built up some interesting conflicts, but the resolution came too quickly, which took out the fun.

What I actually found interesting was the way the antagonists were written. They weren’t obviously evil from the beginning, which made their actions more surprising. They managed to fool everyone for quite a while, and that made the tension in the story more engaging. However, when the confrontation finally happened, I felt it ended too easily. After all the damage they caused, their arrest felt too quick and almost too simple. I think an extra episode or two could have added more suspense, maybe a bit of a chase or a stronger buildup to their downfall.

Another reason I enjoyed the drama so much is that I’m a big fan of Jung So‑min. I’ve always liked her as an actress. She has this natural way of acting that makes her characters feel very believable and genuine. Nothing ever feels forced when she performs.
So far, I’ve enjoyed many of her projects, and since watching her in Love Next Door, I’ve been even more excited to see her in new roles and new pairings. She always brings a certain charm and sincerity to her characters that makes the story more enjoyable to watch.

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It’s not meant to make you feel good. It’s meant to make you feel everything.

All About Lily Chou-Chou is the kind of movie that was often made in the early 2000s;the type that completely messes with your brain and leaves you thinking, *“That was crazy… but also genius.”*
It’s not an easy watch. The film dives into different layers of human nature in very raw and unfiltered ways. At times it’s shocking, uncomfortable, and even difficult to sit through. But that intensity is exactly what makes it powerful.

Trying to explain the plot is actually pretty complicated. There are many characters, many events, and a lot of “why” behind what happens. The story moves through different perspectives and moments, but somehow everything connects through Lily Chou-Chou and the music that surrounds her.

Honestly, it’s the kind of film you just have to experience for yourself. Watching it felt like going on a strange and emotional journey. It’s not a happy story at all in fact, it can feel quite heavy and overwhelming. But at the same time, it’s brilliant.
It’s one of those movies that you admire for its creativity and boldness, even though it leaves you feeling a little horrible afterward. And maybe that’s exactly the point.

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