Tsuki no Koibito 月の恋人 [series]

Yeah yeah yeah you hate the Chinese girl, we know we know.

I know everyone hates this one, everyone hates everything Kimu Taku has done since 2010 onwards but if you don't compare it with before, you might actually like this drama. 

His character is the bastard, not the actor. Just because he is not playing some smooth or funny or quirky likable guy, or love to hateable guy even, you cant blame him for this drama being boring. 

And actually I dont think it is, I think it is mature and slow paced and ...actually a little bit odd, like two dramas in one, but its not what I would call boring. 

I've read so many bad reviews of this show, and heard so many people say they dont like anything of Kimu Taku's work post CHANGE, which I loved too or MR BRAIN which I also adored with all the bananas in my heart. But why does those dramas being so good mean this one is automatically bad?

I don't really care, I'm not going to beat this drama down like everyone else, Im not going to sing high praises either but I liked it at the time, I don't want to be swayed by other people's weird opinions of Lin Chi Ling, and Kitagawa Keiko with her brilliant gyaru bitch whining. 

So many comments from Japanese viewers saying they were annoyed by Ling's broken Japanese language skills... when that was how the character was meant to be like.... I dont really understand how she was annoying but whatever. 

I thought she was a pretty strong character so I can only assume it was due to either racism or just rooting for Shinohara's character to steal her man. 

I cant really outline the plot too well because this was, what, 4 years ago now? Yeah 4 years ago this month in fact. I cant remember all that much but I will scrape together what I can from my withered old memory. 

Whatever way you look at it Hazuki Rensuke is a bastard you don't really want to be around, let a lone work for. Certainly not one you want to fall for. 

He is the president of Regolith, a furnishings company. 

He started off by making his own pieces by hand, building his cared for designs with attention to detail and always thinking of their function and users. 

The warm touch he once had is long gone and he only wishes to increase his market share in the world and expand as much as possible. 

To add to his unlikable traits he ends up finding himself a Chinese trophy wife who he took away from a bad situation and turned into a model - and isn't he oh so proud of himself for doing so. 

She rebels against him as much as she can eventually when he begins to treat her like less than a person, but its a long road out of the box she becomes trapped in. Throw in a transvestite brother in heaps of debt and you have yourself a sh*te situation nipping at your heals. 

I think one of the main reasons viewers did not Xiu Mei is that they didn't realise she was meant to be such a pivotal character as they started watching. She became highly important and not just a side story to Rensuke and Ninomiya's relationship. 

Ninomiya had known him since forever and watched him grow into the unlikable guy we meet at the beginning of this drama. We know she loves him, he is obviously oblivious and uses the friendship to his own ends. She is feisty though and doesn't take is crap like everyone else, well she takes it but she isn't quiet about it. 

We have a whole bunch of interesting characters come in and out... I just looked on drama wiki and it said there were only 8 episodes. I cant believe that. There's no way! So much happens; it really travels through time from one crazy situation and another. It cant be 8 episodes long... Apparently it is though. 

I like his ultimate downfall, but I think the journey to that point is also interesting. He becomes a much more likable person when it has all fallen to pieces ...but still a bit of a moron. 

Shinohara wins the whole show really, I thought at the time how she stole every scene. 

I think if you havent seen it already you should give it a fair chance. Its a great cast and a slightly unusual story, I don't think it deserves the slating it received. If nothing else but for Shinohara's frustrated face. 

I will end with a cast list as the cast was all anyone seemed to care about when this drama aired.

Main cast:

Kimura Takuya - Hazuki Rensuke 

Shinohara Ryoko - Ninomiya Maemi 

Lin Chi Ling - Liu Xiu Mei 

Matsuda Shota - Sai Kazami/Cai Feng Jian 

Kitagawa Keiko - Onuki Yuzuki 

Watanabe Ikkei - Kijihata Togo 

Hamada Gaku - Maehara Tsuguo 

Mikami Kensei - Koizumi Keiichi 

Nishiyama Maki - Eruka 

Mitsushima Hikari - Anzai Rina 

Nakamura Yuri - Kasahara Yuki 

Abe Tsuyoshi - Min 

Nagatsuka Kyozo - Onuki Shogen 

Nukumizu Youichi - Tokita Ikuzo 

Takenaka Naoto - Maruyama Tetsuji 

Kabira Jay - Mineoka Yasuyuki

I'm pretty sure that one set was the same place they shot some of Sailor moon. I noticed once when I was watching Kitagawa Keigo doing cartwheels to kill rubber suity bad guys. 

I like the settings and different areas they shot in for this series. Almost as gorgeous as Shinohara. Nothing quite beats Matsuda Shota's horrible hair style though - oh my god that was bad.

Just watching it back to get some screen shots I remembered the banter between Rensuke and Ninomiya, it was really bickery like siblings, I enjoyed that. It was different to other relationships in dramas I guess because he stayed a po faced moody git until the very end and didn't really change all that much. I still wanted them to end up together though. I think they worked well together but I think maybe people just didn't like Rensuke enough. He is hard to love lets face it. 

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Sexy Voice and Robo セクシーボイスアンドロボ [series]

Itadakimax!

I love about 8 or 9 episodes of this show, about 3 quarters of the way through it gets really serious and depressing and really out of character, but the first half is great. 

I don't know if I've said on here before, and I might get some serious hate for this but I don't really like Matsuyama Kenichi that much. 

I didn't really like him in Gantz, Norwegian Wood, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac and I really will get some hate for saying Death Note but I thought his L was the best out of a bad bunch. 

I tried to watch Zeni Geba but I just couldn't get into his character even though it sounded so interesting... So I never really liked him much, I'm sorry. 

But I realised as soon as he stepped on screen in this show that I had only seen one side of him, and I just hadn't gelled with that. The comic side however... I love. 

You know how there are some people you just love as a certain type of character, but not as another? Well I wish he could be Max Robo otaku nutter forever. I was singing his songs, saying his phrases... I still say Itadakimax when I eat sometimes if I dont say Hotaru's Itadakimambo. Its been firmly added to my list of stupid things I say that came from dramas.

Robo was the best. Until it all went serious like I said just now. What was that?? It got so boring even at one point. 

I was not happy with the last, maybe, 4 episodes I'm not sure when it all went weird... really I loved Robo so much before then. 

I wasn't so enamored with Niko as she just whinged all the time but I think that was inevitable as Robo was the comical side to the duo, but when he was serious as well... there was nothing left. 

I liked Okada Yoshinori as always, (Nobuta, Waraeru Koi wa Shitakunai, hana kimi, Ghost Friends, Yuusha Yoshihiko to Maou no Shiro, Kamikaze Girls, shabake, 1 Pound no Fukuin) his list of stuff Ive seen goes on and on. 

So for a bit of a plot outline I would say that its not a spy team as the description usually goes, its a reluctant pair of idiots with no money forced to work for another pair of idiots who have too much money. 

A middle schooler and an otaku come to haphazardly work for a lady with way too much make up on, solving mysteries and sometimes crimes that they become somehow involved in through the course of each episode. 

The girl has the power to mimic people's voices very unbelievably and Robo is ... well, just Robo. 

With money being held over their pauper heads they take on these cases and figure stuff out usually just in the nick of time. Or sometimes not. Someone got blown up remember? 

Well, anyway. Its pretty stupid but I would rather have stopped watching before it got all deep and meaningful and just played with Max Robo otaku freak some more. Oh and I hated his mum. So much. With rage. 

Thats all I have to say, pretty much, I think. MAX DASH!!! 

Oh lets do a quick cast list: 

Matsuyama Kenichi - Robo 

Ohgo Suzuka - Niko 

Murakawa Eri - Hayashi Kazumi 

Okada Yoshinori - Nanashi Hideyoshi 

Asaoka Ruriko - Makyona Maki 

Tsukamoto Shinya - Hayashi Takeo 

Katagiri Hairi - Hayashi Yukie

Murakami Jun - Goto

Nakamura Shino - Mikkabozu

Also briefly featuring Ryo, Naka Riisa, Kashii yu, Sasai Eisuke, Takahashi Issei, the wonky jaw woman samurai pastry chef love interest Tomosaka Rie and the gorgeous Kobayashi Satomi. She did ultimately destroy this drama, her character anyway, but I still think she is stunning.

I have a feeling that it isn't a patch on the manga. I think they should have made Niko way more animated and lively, I don't think she was enough to hold the drama together when Robo wasn't around.

She could have still been whiny and frustrated but just more expressively so. 

Maybe the actress was bad, maybe the writing just wasn't fun enough, I don't know. 

It was weird anyway. Sometimes in a great way, mostly in just a weird way. 

I guess it was never going to be a classy drama but I think it should have been a bit more of something else instead to make up for its lack of style. 

I think it should have been a bit more silly and fun really. Less existential crisis nightmare and more clumsy otaku fails.

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BORDER ボーダー [series]

Bullets in the brain will do strange things to a drama... 

Not so many tears this time though, its not the same bullet in the head story as Sorry I love you, this time not everyone you love dies, and we have the added bonus of ghosts. 

Yup, I thought it might be another Tokyo Dogs style drama when it first started, but then I thought Oguri's character looked pretty subdued and wasn't sure where it was going - I watched it while it was airing so didn't have a clue what it was about. 

After a short while the weird kicks in - I dont mean like Yuusha Yoshihiko weird, I just mean the ghost whisperer format begins. 

It felt unexpected, and I suddenly realised what kind of drama this would be. Everything else is pretty normal real life style, with this thrown in as his personal battle. 

There are some ghosts I really liked, and some moments can get a bit weepy as you might expect but over all not too depressing of a drama. Although anything involving the death of children obviously gets pretty upsetting.

I liked the relationship between the main characters, but I just wanted him to be honest about his ghost whispering with the forensics woman. They were an interesting pair and I think they could have made more of their connection with making them better friends from earlier. 

I like seeing people talking to ghosts and trying to be inconspicuous. Has no-one seriously thought of using hands free ear pieces to make it look like they are just on the phone??? People do indeed think you are mental. I mean, you are, but not for that reason. 

Basically Oguri's character gets shot, has a bullet lodged in his brain and it makes him see ghosts. He has to deal with the choice of whether to remove the bullet and if so when. Its a tricky situation for many reasons and he has a massive dilemma on his hands with that and eventually begins to feel himself pulled into a darker side of morality.

He uncovers underground criminal activity issues even within his own team - I don't think I actually mentioned he was a police detective yet did I? 

Well anyway, as he chases the bad guys who killed his newly formed ill fated friends with clues from the patchy memories of their own deaths, he discovers the intertwining nasties behind the scenes and the story becomes much bigger for him than he expected. 

He wonders if he will retain this power once he has the bullet removed, he wonders if he will even survive it. And he wonders if he can really give up this ability after saving the souls of the victims he encounters. 

Yeah it get s a bit deep and slightly existential but not so much as a Clone Baby style drama would. This has a more mature script and set of actors in the make up, so it is not all rammed down your throat at once with furrows of worry accompanied by a naff sound track of only one melodramatic song. 

But with the more mature take on these matters comes a more serious story line which can get pretty dark at times.

It is mature, but it has many light relief moments, some darker moments for sure but it doesn't really fit into the super intense psychological drama category, at least not until the savage ending. 

I'm not sure where it fits really but it was well received at the time, the ratings were good, and I think the cast had a lot to do with that. Oguri Shun's dramas do tend to be pretty high these days and at least the writing was good enough to keep a steady pace throughout. 

It wasn't the best drama I've ever seen, at times it was a little bit flat; it didn't grip me like more tense dramas of the mid to late 2000's like Maou and Orthros. But I dont think its meant to be that kind of show. To be honest I think it stands in its favour because those overly tense dramas can be a bit too much sometimes. 

It features some really good guest actors as the ghosts and side story characters such as Omori Nao (Hagetaka) who plays a child killer so unbelievably well in the most uncomfortable and disconcerting way, I thought he was fantastic at portraying the distant cold sense of a psychopath. I could watch a whole series of just him and Oguri Shun's character in a mind game battle chase drama.

And also Takito Kenichi (Hanzawa Naoki) as a reporter who sees everything a bit like a stalker would before it all becomes something even out of his remit. 

One of the other guests I noticed was Koyanagi Yuu who played Chiba in Yankii kun to Megane chan, but no-one has really done a proper complete cast list of the guest stars as far as I can see. 

Main cast list:

Oguri Shun - Ishikawa Ango 

Aoki Munetaka - Tachibana Yuma 

Haru - Higa Mika 

Endo Kenichi - Ichikura Takuji 

Furuta Arata - Akai 

Takito Kenichi - Suzuki Nomaguchi 

Haruki - Miyazato

Watanabe Saori - Hashizume

Yamaguchi Yoshiyuki - Kaiko

Toru Nomaguchi- Hacker Garfunkel 

Hamano Kenta - Hacker Simon

Well I think this was a pretty badly written review but as I'm at work right now I cant concentrate too hard on what I'm saying. Shirking with an hour and a half left still to go with nothing to do unless I do all of tomorrow's stuff too.... 

Its nice to try and remember these dramas first before getting screen shots, it makes me realise just how little I remember of some shows, sometimes not long after I've seen them. 

This one I do remember mostly though, so I guess that's a good sign. I liked the final big bastard show down near the end and then the shocking actual ending. 

And even though his character was utterly horrible I love seeing Omori Nao in anything at all these days so that was good for me. I really need to review Hagetaka and get some great shots of him in physio rehab. He was so cool.

But yeah anyway, this particular show I think they could have done a little bit more with, but never the less I don't think it was a loss by far. It certainly didn't feel like anything new but hey if they can make 3 series' of Gokusen with exactly the same stories, characters and even dialogue, then I think we can handle the endless churning out of detective dramas that all feel the same.

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Yamada-kun and the 7 witches 山田くんと7人の魔女 [series]

Boy on witch on girl on boy action...

Ok before you run away from my tagline, lets do a cast list:

Yamamoto Yusuke - Yamada Ryu
Nishiuchi Mariya - Shiraishi Urara
Triendl Reina - Ito Miyabi
Ide Takuya - Miyamura Toranosuke
Tokuyama Hidenori - Yamazaki Haruma
Ono Ito - Odagiri Nene
Kobayashi Ryoko - Asuka Mikoto
Miyama Karen - Otsuka Karen
Kojima Fujiko - Sarushima Maria
Matsui Airi - Takigawa Noa

What a great cast right? For a cheap drama you cant ask for much more than this awesome list. It got my attention when I saw it and was the key factor in my decision to watch. I'm sure it was the same for many other people.

So hopefully that cast list helps you not run a mile...but the rest of the review might. 

Stick with me here, its another stupid cheap almost yaoi stupid school drama, but its so funny and pointless, I think its worth watching.

This is how I described it to my friend:

Yamamoto Yusuke of Ouran high school host club, and Nishiuchi Mariya of Switch girl, and a whole bunch of others at school with witchy powers that they can use or swap by ...kissing each other. 

And they all do... 

All the time. 

All the boys with the boys, girls with the girls, and of course Yamamoto and Nishiuchi... Constantly.

Oh yeah and they swap bodies...

And kiss each other while in each other's bodies.

I watched because I love both the main actors, but after maybe episode 2 I was starting to wonder what the hell I had stumbled on. 

They have no shame, I wonder if the original manga was really super rude because it feels like maybe it was originally full of yaoi side stories or something, because it feels like they are bubbling under the surface in the drama. 

But I don't have the time in my life to read manga when I barely have time to watch the dramas as it is. My reading level is way to low and it would probably take me an age to get through one book even with dictionaries and Japanese friends in my arsenal. But anyway I heard its the same writer as Yankii kun to Megane chan so it probably was just that weird.

Anyway, tangenting. So yeah I was thinking, this was made 2013, does anyone really think Tokuyama Hidenori looks like a school boy anymore? Come on. I mean, I dont care, I'm happy to see him in anything but... come on. With that voice that sounds like he has been smoking and drinking for at least 10 years... and that look in his eyes that screams yaoi king since 2007...

Kobayashi Ryoko is so gorgeous as always. I would love to see this cast together in a serious drama too, I think we could see some genius. With all that great hair.

Just look at that gorgeous face in the picture below. She is so beautiful. 

I think she and Tokuyama would make fabulous babies ^^ Please make that happen. Ive seen Clone Babies and Bunshin I know they gots the tech to do this sh*t. :p

As if you need a plot for this stupid premise, but whatever, the story is following these two idiots, one a super book smart witch and one a yankii loner with the ability to copy a witch's power. 

They both love each other, but cant admit it, so take the opportunity to kiss each other when and wherever possible when they find out they can swap bodies that way... because they need to do that... for... reasons... of course.

Other witches start to be unearthed and they search for a way through the madness that is their school life, trying to seek out the remaining witches and discover their powers, mainly out of boredom, and all end up tangled in a mess of power struggles an stupidity. It is such a stupid drama. Really stupid. Just so ridiculous. But fun, and watchable. 



Its just Yamamoto's style, this is one of his dramas through and through. I wouldn't be surprised if he never stops making these. Doing his Joey from Friends acting until he dies purely out of the fun of it. 

I'm keeping this short as my laptop is so hot I think its going to explode any second. Go watch this stupid drama if you want to see some endless high school students who are way too old to really be high school students constantly kissing each other. Joys.

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