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J-dorama Battle Royale
I have nothing else to say in my defense of this except that I was bored. Very, very bored while ignoring homework. Yep, bored and geeky. Not that I could compete with Mikomi's geekiness but I can certainly try...
Opening roundThe Fruity Fight: Mikan vs. Momo
Or: who is the cutest character?
Mikan (Love Love Love/ Koi ga Shitai x3): Miho Kanno plays Nagashima Mikan. A shy, withdrawn girl who falls in love with a man after he gives her a pair of shoes she wanted for her birthday, but his act of kindness comes only because his girlfriend (ironically played by Koyuki) snubbed them. Her way of winning his affections include near-stalking instances of cleaning up after his apartment and car, while stuttering her thanks to any acts of kindness he obliviously doles out.
Momo (Kimi wa Petto): Matsumoto Jun (♥) plays Goda Takeshi, a boy who agrees to play the pet of Iwaya (Koyuki's second appearance) Sumire for free room and board. He has many dog like antics, including tumbling routines and frequent glomps. Besides, who could resist a young boy as eager to please as a happy puppy?
Winner: Mikan. If it was Matsumoto versus Miho he'd win hands down. But since Kimi wa Petto has more bad touching issues than its counterpart and the Goda personality is a bit of a dick, Mikan wins in utter genuine cuteness.
Round oneBody Suplex vs. Solar Plexus: Yankumi vs. Onizuka
Or: inspirational teachers with violence issues...great
Yankumi (Gokusen): Yamaguchi Kumiko (played by the awesome Nakama Yukie) is a fourth generation Yakuza boss who wants nothing more than to inspire young minds. Of course to do that she has to take on a rival school gang, robbers, irate parents, and the mullet man head teacher all while not beating the snot of her delinquent students.
Onizuka (GTO): Eiji Onizuka, biker boss, ruffian...school teacher? He's a letcher and a shallow punk, but his good hearted enthusiasm turns the class conspiracy around. Even though Miyabi totally deserved a good bitchslap after her stunts.
Winner: Yankumi. Onizuka wouldn't hit a girl (hit on her, hell yes) and in that time Yankumi would have pulled off her pigtails and glasses for the kickass almost magical girl-esque transformation into the yakuza crime-boss. If we were debating which series is better, GTO is overall superior, but Yankumi has minions and minions = win.
Round twoSing Me a Song: Can You Keep a Secret? vs. This Night’s Moon over the Hill vs. Moonlight
Or: best drama theme that makes you buy the super expensive soundtrack
“Can You Keep a Secret?” by Utada Hikaru (Hero): One of the most popular songs from a very popular idol. It’s catchy and seems to keep with the upbeat vibe of its drama.
“This Night’s Moon over the Hill”/“Konya Tsuki no Mieru Oka ni” by B'z (Beautiful Life): Beautiful and hopeful, this is by far the best song B'z ever made in my opinion, and since it fronts for one of the most popular dramas ever it certainly has strong reason for it.
“Moonlight”/“Gekkou” by Onitsuka Chihiro (TricK 1): My favorite Japanese ballad singer in my favorite series. Duh, this one is going to be included. Not just because the lyrics are depressing as all fuck and gorgeous.
Winner: “Konya Tsuki no Mieru Oka ni” by B’z. Despite my personal love for “Gekkou,” the fact that the instrumental version of the B’z song almost gets me to start crying when watching the drama makes it a knockout. “Gekkou” is prettier, “Can You Keep a Secret?” is catchier, but “Konya Tsuki...” compliments the drama series best and it is the one that would suck out thirty bucks for the soundtrack.
Round threeGanbatte~: Water Boys vs. L*I*V*E
Or: school dramas and why they’re better than the WB
Water Boys: Synopsis is basically guys who go to Tadano High and want to try out synchronized swimming, overcoming obstacles, ridicule, girls, and in-fighting while fulfilling their dream of…synchronized swimming. Hey, it’s guys in Speedos touching each other in camaraderie ways.
L*I*V*E: Another bias contender because it was the first drama I ever watched, this was the story about a girl who wanted to join the school band of her father’s old school only to find it in disrepair. Of course this means she goes on a holy recruitment war to gather up the loners of the school so they can try and win the national band competition while finding love and having their star saxophone player go to the hospital for a mysterious disease that effects her playing.
Winner: Water Boys by a margin. They’re basically the same story but with different genders, however Water Boys is probably the more appealing of the series. *cough*Fanservice sequences*cough* Even though deep in my heart I will always love my sugary sweet L*I*V*E series, if only for the anti-baseball jokes.
Round fourFalling Interests: Seven Stories from the Sea vs. A Million Stars Fall from the Sky vs. Strawberry on the Shortcake
Or: what series sucks the most
Seven Stories from the Sea: Seven stories about whiny, selfish people loosely tied together by each member finding a glass ball drifting along a river that has a face in it. A very poorly CGed face that should not encourage that amount of intrigue.
A Million Stars Fall from the Sky: Or Sora Kara Furu Ichioku no Hoshi . This story wouldn’t suck so much if it wasn’t considered a brilliant thriller. Dojima, the main character, is a cop whose very voice drives people crazy. He’s a whiner and when you find out Ryo (Takuya Kimura) wants to kill him you cheer and hope he succeeds. Of course the main problem is suspense, it plods along awkwardly until you figure out the supposedly important twist was something obvious from the second episode. It was actually a lot more obvious since the writer used the exact same plot twist in his older drama, A Sleeping Forest.
Strawberry on the Shortcake: I honestly haven’t seen it, and from popular opinion (and despite Mikomi’s sadism) I’m not going to, but it merits a mention. ^_^
Winner: A Million Stars. Because I wasted hours watching something that stunk so badly and I will never get back and it bothers me. Because the incest angle was so damn obvious since they had the same scar. Also, because that annoying cop still doesn’t die at the end and it desecrated Elvis Costello with its crap attempts at melodrama.
Round fiveHorror and Thrills: A Sleeping Forest vs. Hypnosis vs. Onmiyouji
Or: thriller series that wouldn’t scare anyone except the bunny
A Sleeping Forest/Nemuru Mori: Certainly starts out scary, with the old murder of a prominent family leading the only survivor, the younger sister, to try and rediscover why her childhood memories match the man currently stalking her, Ito Naoki (Kimura Takuya).
Hypnosis/Saimin: A sequel to the B-movie of the same name, Toshiya Saga (played by Goro-chan), is a hypnosis doctor who has to figure out who is behind a sudden rash of murders where people just seem to collapse and the only evidence is a purple bruise in the shape of a butterfly on their necks.
Onmiyouji: The love story between Seimei (Goro-chan again) and Hiromasa based on the popular movie. No, I’m serious. It’s all about the forbidden love between those two because the villains are sort of secondary once Hiromasa falls into Seimei’s arms and they stare at each other longingly. Other than that, Seimei is a total asshole.
Winner: Hypnosis. Even though you have a pretty good idea about who the main killer is in the series, it’s the unraveling of one murder after the other that leads to character growth and the real meat of a thriller, which is to have you screaming once the cliffhanger segues into the theme music and you had to wait a week to figure out what the hell was going to happen after that. A Sleeping Forest petered out once you got who the real villain was (oh, and the stupid incest angle). Onmiyouji was like watching better acted sentai. But the scene where Asahina starts whispering the purple butterfly curse in Hypnosis still makes me jumpy.
Round sixSudden Death: Beautiful Life vs. Koibumi vs. Until the Battery Runs Out vs. Please God, Give Me a Little More Time vs. Rich Man, Poor Man vs....
Or: seriously, how many of these terminal illness dramas are there?
Winner: Beautiful Life. Despite the popularity of the genre, Beautiful Life continues to reign supreme in the love story of boy meets girl, boy loves girl, one of them die of a terminal disease. Rich Man, Poor Man comes in second for at least moving off the romance angle for other aspects. Avoid Koibumi because it says all the same stuff and Watabe Asuro can’t act dramatic at all.
Round sevenKeepin’ it in the Family: Oyaji vs. Mukodono
Or: Japan can have dysfunctional families too!
Oyaji/Stubborn Dad: It’s like “All in the Family” but without the racism. Loudmouth father, neglected wife, three kids who all have screwed up lives. Somewhere after the eldest child’s breakdown and the youngest running off to marry a gay man (don’t ask) they have a heartfelt reunion.
Mukodono/My Husband: Sakuraba Yuichiro (Nagase Tomoya) is pop idol who is seriously hot and beloved amongst the young female set of Japan. Of course there’s only one woman for him, but the only way he can get to be in her life is to marry into her family and they all hate his guts. The series is full of quirky instances, like a yakuza wannabe manager, an older sister with aversion to handsome males and general antics that continually test the loving bonds.
Winner: Mukodono. Oyaji certainly has interesting characters, but they’re all unsympathetic except for the mother and older sister. I wanted to punch Suzu at the end of the series. And while Mukodono’s Arai family is also fucked up, they end up more endearing than anything else. Plus Tomoya’s geek persona when he’s not being a pop star is amusing to watch. This also counts in that I will never watch the re-make of this series and you shouldn’t either.
Round eightDoki doki: Kimi wa Petto vs. Love Love Love vs. Heaven’s Coins
Or: where the reviewer tries not to get mushy over romances
Kimi wa Petto/You are My Pet: A story of Iwaya Sumire who is emotionally unavailable except through a boy who decides he’d like to live as her pretend dog, Momo. She also has a fantastically sweet boyfriend, Hatsumi-sempai, but she’s too self-conscious to express her love. Many misunderstandings occur as she tries to explain she keeps the guy as a pet, but not that way.
Love Love Love: One of those ensemble cast stories where every character has some romantic hang up and is represented by one color of the rainbow by their name. It’s like a love pentagram, with everyone chasing after someone else and their happiness always three people away. Includes many memorable, human characters like Midorikawa, Mikan, and Ryuuchi.
Heaven’s Coins: Kuramoto Aya is a deaf/mute assistant who fell in love with Nagai Shuuichi in Hokkaido, but when he promised to return to marry her he was knocked unconscious and lost his memory. So when she travels to Tokyo to find him she’s caught in a hospital intrigue as she finds him falling in love with another woman and his own brother, Nagai Takumi, falling for her.
Winner: Heaven’s Coins. This comes from the fact that I have bad luck, because whenever I watch a romance without a set couple the couple I root for never gets together. Heaven’s Coins still ended without my OTP together, but it didn’t unravel like Love Love Love or leave me feeling disappointed with the other part of the love triangle like Kimi wa Petto.
Round nineBest of the Best: GTO vs. Heaven’s Coins vs. Hypnosis vs. Beautiful Life vs. Kimi wa Petto vs. Water Boys
Or: are you done yet you madwoman?
Winner: TricK series. Because I said so, and because I don’t care if it’s considered crass or tasteless and you can drive mac trucks through the plot holes. It’s the best series ever and you can’t change my mind.
But for the plebeians who can’t appreciate that watch Beautiful Life or something…
Opening round
Or: who is the cutest character?
Mikan (Love Love Love/ Koi ga Shitai x3): Miho Kanno plays Nagashima Mikan. A shy, withdrawn girl who falls in love with a man after he gives her a pair of shoes she wanted for her birthday, but his act of kindness comes only because his girlfriend (ironically played by Koyuki) snubbed them. Her way of winning his affections include near-stalking instances of cleaning up after his apartment and car, while stuttering her thanks to any acts of kindness he obliviously doles out.
Momo (Kimi wa Petto): Matsumoto Jun (♥) plays Goda Takeshi, a boy who agrees to play the pet of Iwaya (Koyuki's second appearance) Sumire for free room and board. He has many dog like antics, including tumbling routines and frequent glomps. Besides, who could resist a young boy as eager to please as a happy puppy?
Winner: Mikan. If it was Matsumoto versus Miho he'd win hands down. But since Kimi wa Petto has more bad touching issues than its counterpart and the Goda personality is a bit of a dick, Mikan wins in utter genuine cuteness.
Round one
Or: inspirational teachers with violence issues...great
Yankumi (Gokusen): Yamaguchi Kumiko (played by the awesome Nakama Yukie) is a fourth generation Yakuza boss who wants nothing more than to inspire young minds. Of course to do that she has to take on a rival school gang, robbers, irate parents, and the mullet man head teacher all while not beating the snot of her delinquent students.
Onizuka (GTO): Eiji Onizuka, biker boss, ruffian...school teacher? He's a letcher and a shallow punk, but his good hearted enthusiasm turns the class conspiracy around. Even though Miyabi totally deserved a good bitchslap after her stunts.
Winner: Yankumi. Onizuka wouldn't hit a girl (hit on her, hell yes) and in that time Yankumi would have pulled off her pigtails and glasses for the kickass almost magical girl-esque transformation into the yakuza crime-boss. If we were debating which series is better, GTO is overall superior, but Yankumi has minions and minions = win.
Round two
Or: best drama theme that makes you buy the super expensive soundtrack
“Can You Keep a Secret?” by Utada Hikaru (Hero): One of the most popular songs from a very popular idol. It’s catchy and seems to keep with the upbeat vibe of its drama.
“This Night’s Moon over the Hill”/“Konya Tsuki no Mieru Oka ni” by B'z (Beautiful Life): Beautiful and hopeful, this is by far the best song B'z ever made in my opinion, and since it fronts for one of the most popular dramas ever it certainly has strong reason for it.
“Moonlight”/“Gekkou” by Onitsuka Chihiro (TricK 1): My favorite Japanese ballad singer in my favorite series. Duh, this one is going to be included. Not just because the lyrics are depressing as all fuck and gorgeous.
Winner: “Konya Tsuki no Mieru Oka ni” by B’z. Despite my personal love for “Gekkou,” the fact that the instrumental version of the B’z song almost gets me to start crying when watching the drama makes it a knockout. “Gekkou” is prettier, “Can You Keep a Secret?” is catchier, but “Konya Tsuki...” compliments the drama series best and it is the one that would suck out thirty bucks for the soundtrack.
Round three
Or: school dramas and why they’re better than the WB
Water Boys: Synopsis is basically guys who go to Tadano High and want to try out synchronized swimming, overcoming obstacles, ridicule, girls, and in-fighting while fulfilling their dream of…synchronized swimming. Hey, it’s guys in Speedos touching each other in camaraderie ways.
L*I*V*E: Another bias contender because it was the first drama I ever watched, this was the story about a girl who wanted to join the school band of her father’s old school only to find it in disrepair. Of course this means she goes on a holy recruitment war to gather up the loners of the school so they can try and win the national band competition while finding love and having their star saxophone player go to the hospital for a mysterious disease that effects her playing.
Winner: Water Boys by a margin. They’re basically the same story but with different genders, however Water Boys is probably the more appealing of the series. *cough*Fanservice sequences*cough* Even though deep in my heart I will always love my sugary sweet L*I*V*E series, if only for the anti-baseball jokes.
Round four
Or: what series sucks the most
Seven Stories from the Sea: Seven stories about whiny, selfish people loosely tied together by each member finding a glass ball drifting along a river that has a face in it. A very poorly CGed face that should not encourage that amount of intrigue.
A Million Stars Fall from the Sky: Or Sora Kara Furu Ichioku no Hoshi . This story wouldn’t suck so much if it wasn’t considered a brilliant thriller. Dojima, the main character, is a cop whose very voice drives people crazy. He’s a whiner and when you find out Ryo (Takuya Kimura) wants to kill him you cheer and hope he succeeds. Of course the main problem is suspense, it plods along awkwardly until you figure out the supposedly important twist was something obvious from the second episode. It was actually a lot more obvious since the writer used the exact same plot twist in his older drama, A Sleeping Forest.
Strawberry on the Shortcake: I honestly haven’t seen it, and from popular opinion (and despite Mikomi’s sadism) I’m not going to, but it merits a mention. ^_^
Winner: A Million Stars. Because I wasted hours watching something that stunk so badly and I will never get back and it bothers me. Because the incest angle was so damn obvious since they had the same scar. Also, because that annoying cop still doesn’t die at the end and it desecrated Elvis Costello with its crap attempts at melodrama.
Round five
Or: thriller series that wouldn’t scare anyone except the bunny
A Sleeping Forest/Nemuru Mori: Certainly starts out scary, with the old murder of a prominent family leading the only survivor, the younger sister, to try and rediscover why her childhood memories match the man currently stalking her, Ito Naoki (Kimura Takuya).
Hypnosis/Saimin: A sequel to the B-movie of the same name, Toshiya Saga (played by Goro-chan), is a hypnosis doctor who has to figure out who is behind a sudden rash of murders where people just seem to collapse and the only evidence is a purple bruise in the shape of a butterfly on their necks.
Onmiyouji: The love story between Seimei (Goro-chan again) and Hiromasa based on the popular movie. No, I’m serious. It’s all about the forbidden love between those two because the villains are sort of secondary once Hiromasa falls into Seimei’s arms and they stare at each other longingly. Other than that, Seimei is a total asshole.
Winner: Hypnosis. Even though you have a pretty good idea about who the main killer is in the series, it’s the unraveling of one murder after the other that leads to character growth and the real meat of a thriller, which is to have you screaming once the cliffhanger segues into the theme music and you had to wait a week to figure out what the hell was going to happen after that. A Sleeping Forest petered out once you got who the real villain was (oh, and the stupid incest angle). Onmiyouji was like watching better acted sentai. But the scene where Asahina starts whispering the purple butterfly curse in Hypnosis still makes me jumpy.
Round six
Or: seriously, how many of these terminal illness dramas are there?
Winner: Beautiful Life. Despite the popularity of the genre, Beautiful Life continues to reign supreme in the love story of boy meets girl, boy loves girl, one of them die of a terminal disease. Rich Man, Poor Man comes in second for at least moving off the romance angle for other aspects. Avoid Koibumi because it says all the same stuff and Watabe Asuro can’t act dramatic at all.
Round seven
Or: Japan can have dysfunctional families too!
Oyaji/Stubborn Dad: It’s like “All in the Family” but without the racism. Loudmouth father, neglected wife, three kids who all have screwed up lives. Somewhere after the eldest child’s breakdown and the youngest running off to marry a gay man (don’t ask) they have a heartfelt reunion.
Mukodono/My Husband: Sakuraba Yuichiro (Nagase Tomoya) is pop idol who is seriously hot and beloved amongst the young female set of Japan. Of course there’s only one woman for him, but the only way he can get to be in her life is to marry into her family and they all hate his guts. The series is full of quirky instances, like a yakuza wannabe manager, an older sister with aversion to handsome males and general antics that continually test the loving bonds.
Winner: Mukodono. Oyaji certainly has interesting characters, but they’re all unsympathetic except for the mother and older sister. I wanted to punch Suzu at the end of the series. And while Mukodono’s Arai family is also fucked up, they end up more endearing than anything else. Plus Tomoya’s geek persona when he’s not being a pop star is amusing to watch. This also counts in that I will never watch the re-make of this series and you shouldn’t either.
Round eight
Or: where the reviewer tries not to get mushy over romances
Kimi wa Petto/You are My Pet: A story of Iwaya Sumire who is emotionally unavailable except through a boy who decides he’d like to live as her pretend dog, Momo. She also has a fantastically sweet boyfriend, Hatsumi-sempai, but she’s too self-conscious to express her love. Many misunderstandings occur as she tries to explain she keeps the guy as a pet, but not that way.
Love Love Love: One of those ensemble cast stories where every character has some romantic hang up and is represented by one color of the rainbow by their name. It’s like a love pentagram, with everyone chasing after someone else and their happiness always three people away. Includes many memorable, human characters like Midorikawa, Mikan, and Ryuuchi.
Heaven’s Coins: Kuramoto Aya is a deaf/mute assistant who fell in love with Nagai Shuuichi in Hokkaido, but when he promised to return to marry her he was knocked unconscious and lost his memory. So when she travels to Tokyo to find him she’s caught in a hospital intrigue as she finds him falling in love with another woman and his own brother, Nagai Takumi, falling for her.
Winner: Heaven’s Coins. This comes from the fact that I have bad luck, because whenever I watch a romance without a set couple the couple I root for never gets together. Heaven’s Coins still ended without my OTP together, but it didn’t unravel like Love Love Love or leave me feeling disappointed with the other part of the love triangle like Kimi wa Petto.
Round nine
Or: are you done yet you madwoman?
Winner: TricK series. Because I said so, and because I don’t care if it’s considered crass or tasteless and you can drive mac trucks through the plot holes. It’s the best series ever and you can’t change my mind.
But for the plebeians who can’t appreciate that watch Beautiful Life or something…