doll faced terrorists and computer hackers, guns, back stabbing, an awesome sound track, AND a mother f*cking second series.
most of my screen shots are from the second season because SILVER HAIR and thats all you need to know.
Narimiya Hiroki, Miura Haruma, Kawashima Umika, Sato Takeru, Fujii Mina, Takashima Masahiro... you know what? i cant even be bothered, there are so many characters and amazing actors in this - i just cant even - with this - here is the link to the drama wiki, look them up if you want to know who else is in it. absolutely f*ck doing a cast listing.
this chick is so hot. my god. seriously.
first off, this will be a utterly pants review. im telling you now. i watched it a long time ago, so i dont have any details fresh to mind to spoil for you - so thats good, but also i cant remember sh*t about it so it might not make much sense.
also, i just so love this show. that sometimes doesnt help my reviews be particularly coherent. but nevermind! shoganai ne.
It is cheesy. yeah, i cant deny that one. but of course it is a bit over the top. proper tense computer hacker stuff always is - you know the plot - young kid hacker genius called in by police to help against terrorist, gets caught up in a load of stuff he shouldnt have to deal with, but does it brilliantly because he is Miura Haruma and awesome.
fantastic cast - you just couldnt ask for much better than these two, then along come the rest and it just spirals off into a whirlwind of - oh god its everyone i love from everything ive ever seen all at once in the same drama.
Sato Takeru plays his friend, Narimiya Hiroki plays a mastermind terrorist, the wonderful Kichise Michiko from liar game, hanawake, boss, pandora, nodame, bla bla bla... uh how did i start this sentence? well, her anyway, she plays a - uh - sort of - ... i dont really know. she's just badass.
Mitsushima Hikari comes into the second season *swoon* oh god i love that girl. christ i just want her a Narimiya to make a swarm of the most charismatic babies that ever lived. aside from all the fan girl fodder, it has a really solid story and is shot really well. yeah its cheesy but you know that sort of panic stricken story line kind of has to be. its always a race against time to stop the world from blowing up in an insane fight with code name: puff the magic dragon on crack, while the whole of the world watch, and only one small boy and his dog - i mean - laptop can save humanity... there are lots of camera shots close up of staring eyes and weird angles, dramatic music to accompany the countdown to explosions and death and such... and of course the obligatory changing of sides from baddie to goodie and goodie to badass mother trucker that you never expected or you kind of did but then thought it was someone else but then the music made you think it might be them again and then - bam! yep, they screwed everyone over and no-one ever saw it coming.
the second series is awesome. i watched it in about 4 days. it is too good to just say, oh i'll watch it later, seriously guys, if you havent watched it already make this your next one. if only for the silver hair. oh god. the silver hair. i died over and over again.
Stupidest movie title since Turtles Swim Faster Than Expected
Cast:
Seki Megumi - Eri
Ichihara Hayato - Yosuke (poodle hair alert!)
Asari Yosuke – Watanabe
Miura Haruma - Noto
This review might be kind of short as lately I haven’t got as much time as I usually do, this month I want to get a few things blogged but seem to watch stuff so much quicker than I can review them. This movie is by no means worth a short review but to be fair it hardly needs an epic rant either.
I love this movie. There are countless half assed opinions of this film online, most people just didn’t really understand it. I thought the point was clearly outlined from the very beginning with Ichihara’s phenomenal narrator voice (lord the boy can smooth out a piece of dialogue) this film is all about fighting demons. Most likely inner demons. In Eri’s case, dressed up in the form of an immortal chainsaw wielding mentalist from the sky.
Yosuke’s demons seem to be dressed up as his disregard for his own life, maybe not quite as fatal as Eri’s chainsaw wielding dude, but then again maybe so.
We first meet yosuke, being an idiot. Never feeling he could live up to the immortal presence of his dead friend Noto, Yosuke has lost his place and just acts out in a restless attempt to fill a void left open by Noto’s immense personality. He meets Eri one night who is battling her own demon in the form of said chainsaw wielding weirdo from the moon of planet mental. Her demon dude is also caused by grief and she has no choice but to battle him every single night in an attempt to keep her despair at bay.
The two haphazardly join forces and become unlikely friends and there is not much more to it than that. Until stuff goes wrong and, y’know, the rest of the story happens.
Ichiharanarrates this movie (NEVER a bad thing to have his lush Shige-twin voice drawl on for ages about nothing. Never gets old.) and obviously plays the main character troubled by the loss of his friend – who I should point out, is played by Miura HarumaAND we get to hear him sing in the movie AND the song is great AND his character is awesome which we see through lots of flash backs AND I know I’m biased but who cares we love Miuraany day of the week.
Seki Megumi has huge watery eyes, I swear I’ve never seen her in a happy role but she can do sad and tormented like no-one else so who cares. And should i mention Ichihara's poddle afro...? it kind of speaks for itself. That boy's hair seriously... how... i mean...
It isn’t meant to really be a big epic film, it is like a small section of the lives of the two main characters from a time when they were both grieving and feeling warped by their instability. Finding out who you are through hardships that happen, how you deal with your troubles, and who you cling to along the way, is the inevitable ebb and flow of life. That is kind of what this movie is about, though it doesn’t profess to be the most serious take on the whole thing. It is more like a wandering absent minded thought, than a meditation on a problem.
Well I’ve run out of time so that will have to do. Hopefully the screen shots help sum up whatever I couldn’t find the words to say. Don’t try to take the movie to seriously and read a whole bunch into it – you won’t get it if you do that. It really isn’t so complicated. It’s just a sweet film. And buy MiuraHaruma’s single for this movie. (^_^)
duuuh duh nuh nuuuuh! dun dun duh da duuuuh! (that was yankumi turning up in your smokey warehouse to beat you down!)
where on earth do i start... how do i review the almighty gok? there is no way to not love gokusen. even if you dont like it you actually do you just dont realise it. this has the potential to be the longest review with the most pictures im not even gonna bother putting all the main characters names in it would take me forever. look it up on dramawiki.
ok, we first meet yankumi on her very very first teaching job. she is heir to a yakuza gang but wanted to be a teacher so off she went. hiding her yakuzaryness from eveyone was a little bit hard as she was put in charge of the rowdiest bunch of delinquent yankiis ever seen this side of the second series. kekeke
sawada (matsumoto jun) leads the group he's all moody ass and pouty (though its hard not to pout with that mouth youre never sure what's acting and what's just his face) also featuring in the main group are fantastic actors oguri shun and narimiya hiroki.
one by one the class comes to love yankumi as she sticks her nose (and fists) into their fights and disasterious attempts to stay in school her job becomes to just get them all to graduate without dying or getting expelled first.
yankumi storms into the abandoned warehouses (that apparantly japan has millions of) to save the beaten sh*tless boys when theyre in trouble she beats up any thugs that even sneeze near the tv program and all the guys come to kinda know she's a bit special.
the second series is exactly the same format just a new class. this time with kamenashi kazuya from kat-tun and his bandmate bakanishi jingrish samaakanishi jin. its got a great cast this time round too. the stories are exactly the same - but you just dont care!
they always get mixed up in stuff they shouldnt, nearly get expelled, all hell breaks loose every five minutes and yankumi must lose her job like three times every season.
the third series i have to admit i have a soft spot for. although really its too hard to have a favourite series for me as its all like one big epic movie (i lost a good few weeks just watching series 1 and 2 back to back while waiting for the 3rd one to come out)
this (supposed) final series has miura haruma (samurai high school, bloody monday) and lots of other lovely faces that once again get into the same old sh*t as the other previous classes. but hey - thats what teacher see right? kids go through a lot of the same stuff as their peers. just maybe not some of this sh*t. in reality.
if i say its far fetched, stupid, relentless, repetative, righteous, violent, farsical, unbelievable, corny, predictable, etc etc i may get slapped by the god of brilliant manga adaptation drama but i say it with love! i swear!
its jammed full of moral messages about not being a d*ck and standing up for your friends and all that sorta stuff - but in the nice way japanese tv does it not in the vomit inducing disney type way. yankumi talks the guys down while smacking them in the face. yay!
ok so i should mention yankumi and the other teachers for a minute. she is played by nakama yukie(she really has been in so many things i thought id just put in her dramawiki linkhttp://wiki.d-addicts.com/Nakama_Yukieinstead of bother to explain who she is if you dont already know her greatness)
the head teacher she butts heads with constantly in each series sawatari is played by namase katsuhisa. his character gets better and better with each series. the other reoccuring teacher is baba played by azuma mikihisa (he has the hots for yankumi from the moment they met but she only has eyes for unattainable prince on a horse type out of her bumbling clumsy league guys) also yankumi's yakuza family feature in all three series' playing a big part in the story lines. all those guys are great. and also bumbling clumsy idiots.
ok, so on to the movie.
this was supposed to finish off the lot. but im still hoping they do a final series and bring back sawada from the very first series to marry yankumi - lots of gok fans really wish for this.
the movie features a new class and also many of the guys from the third series as main characters in the film. it also has countless short appearances from past characters from all of the series'. (even nakamura yuichi is in there - yes i noticed that one you little scamp! - he was in series 2 if you didnt notice him)
there he is ^
and like the three previous series kuma (waki tomohiro) is also around to be generally great and smiley. i really like that he comes back each time we get a new gok.
the best thing about this film? well along side yankumi who should come to work in this school but kamenashi kazuya! i mean his character from series two. aish he couldnt have been more cool. that jacket and the trousers tucked into his boots (^_^) the ever moody pout and quiet mumbling sarcastic remarks and getting beaten up all over again! just like old times right?
for me it works so well as i feel that out of all the students he got to know yankumi the most somehow. having him there to remind her of what an idiot she is is just genius.
and for the hardcore fans of the drama (and there are almost as many as fans of the manga) we have gokathons where we just watch it all over again over a short period of time and walk around for the few weeks afterwards picking fights with randomers in the street who looked like they might shake us down for small change or pick on our comrade
but we dont back down from any fights do we?!
for this is the blood, sweat and tears of youth!
its also called psychosis caused by the over exposure to gokusen righteous violence.
it doesnt help when you have yankumi's big entrance theme as your ringtone.
if it goes off when you walk into a room... minutes later you realise youve just trashed the place by throwing everyone around and beaten the living sh*t out of them with steel poles that just happened to be laying there all around you.
and god forbid you go anywhere near the beach or a park or a long street you'll end up running or fighting or running and fighting. aish it never ends.
yeah thats right. gokusen psychosis. there was ahelpline. but the'on hold'music was yankumi's theme. there were riots. those dockyard warehouses never fully recovered.
...
kattun gok skit:
becky doing yankumi impressions on cartoon kattun:
i really want a clip of the bit right after when nakamaru does the impression too
its the funniest thing in the universe. aish nakamaru rocks.
also, i just so love this show. that sometimes doesnt help my reviews be particularly coherent. but nevermind! shoganai ne.
Sato Takeru plays his friend, Narimiya Hiroki plays a mastermind terrorist, the wonderful Kichise Michiko from liar game, hanawake, boss, pandora, nodame, bla bla bla... uh how did i start this sentence? well, her anyway, she plays a - uh - sort of - ... i dont really know. she's just badass.
its always a race against time to stop the world from blowing up in an insane fight with code name: puff the magic dragon on crack, while the whole of the world watch, and only one small boy and his dog - i mean - laptop can save humanity... 
there are lots of camera shots close up of staring eyes and weird angles, dramatic music to accompany the countdown to explosions and death and such...
