Dragon Seinendan ドラゴン青年団 [series]

Cute but its more like a failed Yuusha Yoshihiko. What was that ending? 

First off I was confused that the theme tune was Kat-tun not Kanjani, but that was the least of my problems with this show. 

I liked it enough at the time, maybe because I really wanted to like it - I love to watch Yasu being seriously Yastastic but alas he was kind of the only thing that was worth watching it for. well, Daito Shunsuke, adorable Renbutsu Misako as well. Ok so the cast was great, and actually everyone was really good. 

I loved the setting; really reminds me of Yuusha Yoshihiko in the sort of gameplay style of scenario, but I was really disappointed with its non ending end. Im not sure if that's what they were going for but it felt like a real anti climax. 

Cast: 

Yasuda Shota - Yoshio 

Renbutsu Misako - Yoko 

Endo Kaname - Kenji 

Honda Chikara - Tamotsu 

Yusuke Santamaria - group leader 

Daito Shunsuke - Kazuki 

Araki Yuko - Yuka 

A dragon appears in Tokyo, all flames and carnage. 

At this time in Hikariyama City, three childhood friends Yoshio, Kenji, and Tamotsu, on finding a scroll at a used bookstore, discover that they are in fact the descendants of the Warrior of Light. 

They decide to take on the responsibility of killing the dragon and saving their neighbouring city. 

Kamenashi Kazuya apparently does a little guest star appearance which I dont even remember. 

I remember them all trudging around looking for crystals and getting really stupid powers, finding birthmarks on themselves which they really should have noticed by that point in their lives, and Yusuke Santamaria being epic and brilliant as usual. 

I first saw him in Bimbo Danshi and have super joys every time he turns up in a drama when I'm not expecting it. He was very funny, stepping in to seemingly cause issues but ultimately being awesome and helping them on their way. 

The idea was so close to being great but the execution of it was lacking somewhere. 

I did enjoy it, I like dramas which spoof video games or other movies. 

But this was a little bit frustrating. 

Not Kingdom Hearts frustrating because I'm so useless I cant beat the cards and save Alice in the second level, its just that I found the character's stupidity a little bit over the top and the story wasn't quite enough. I didn't really notice until the end though, it felt like it was building to something that never came into fruition. 

Only by the end of the last episode I realised it wasn't going anywhere. It duped me up until that point thinking there would be a cool show down with terrible graphics. Nothing much happens and it felt a little pointless to have sat through. 

I think the bar has been set pretty damn high with Yoshihiko now, I don't think any gameplay spoof dramas are going to touch that by miles. 

Its a shame that this didn't delivery because they wasted a great cast by not giving it enough ...something. 

Im not even totally sure what it is that is wrong with it to be perfectly honest. Just missing something. 

I don't like to write something off like this, but I prefer things that are so bad I love them ,or so great I cant stand it, sadly this is neither of those. Like I said, it was enjoyable at the time, up until the end and it suddenly felt like a big fat waste of time. But that's just what I took from it. 

Maybe when I got back over it to get the screen shots I will rewrite all this because I've been swayed by remembering all the good parts... If you're reading these words right now then that didn't happen.

Guess not then.

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Q10 キュート [series]

Pafu!

 

It wasn’t a half length series but I still watched it in a day. I couldn’t leave it. I love Sato Takeru (Kamen Rider Den-o, Mr Brain, Princess Princess D, Bloody monday), I’ve accepted that, but I don’t think I fully realised just how different he is in everything. It had been a while since I had seen Kamen rider and watching a few episodes straight after Q10 just brought it home to me what a great actor he is.

I love his comedy eeeehhhhh??!!’s and his little slapstick sugokku shokku moments. And as much as he geniusly falls down and gets pummelled in Kamen rider, in Q10 his comedy is even funnier and a little bit more grown up. There is just something quietly intelligent about his approach to his roles I think, the more I watch him the more I see how great he is.

Gah, enough ureshii squeeing about Sato Takeru.

The female lead Kyuuto is played by Maeda Atsuko (AKB48) and I thought she was brilliant. I think I will even watch this drama again pretty soon. There was something I can’t really explain that I loved about it. I was not impressed with the new Hana Kimi, and couldnt even finish it. But her performance in this was perfect.

Fukai Heita (Sato) finds a robot and accidentally activates her requiring him to give her a name. Seeing the weird barcode/stamp thing on her foot he names her Kyuuto, and from that moment on all manner of difficulties arise as he has to be responsible for her at school and keep her out of trouble with her secret safe.

Heita has to work out whether it was really by chance he was the one to activate her or whether he is meant to be with her. Kyuuto is more and more sure that he is the only one she should be with and it may be more than a default program setting.

I should have learnt from Zettai Kareshi that programs about robots and cyborgs  don’t tend to end completely sweet fluffy fuwa fuwa, but it wasn’t as soul destroyingly sad as that one. Nor did it have a special that served no other purpose than to open up the wounds of the last episode and make you go through it all over again. What a depressing end to such a fun series. Q10 on the other hand seems to offer more acceptable reasons for the outcome and it is a very sweet concept - albeit a little potentially paradoxical.

Who else have we got in this series? Ah yes, Kaku Kento (tumbling, samurai high school, young blackjack) I don’t get to see his face crop up enough. I’m beginning to really rate him, I hope he does more stuff soon, I would love to see him in a lead role – he is so diverse.



And also there is Renbutsu Misako from Zenkai girl – thankfully playing someone who is really likable this time. She plays a girl with red hair, in a rock band, who tries to keep out of school life as much as possible. She becomes friends with Heita’s friend in hospital, Kubo Takehiko (Ikematsu Sosuke) who is a really great character – he pulls the best face when he suddenly realises he has a crush on her after she falls flat on the floor. Their story arc is really sweet.

The little side story between Takahata Mitsuki and Kawai (Takahata Mitsuki) is lovely but unnecessarily unfortunate after how cute it all is, but there is a lot of fate destiny type stuff in this drama so I guess the reasons are in the intentions of conveying that.

There are other familiar faces in the school faculty but as I can’t get on the internet right now I’m not going to do a full cast list.

There is a crazed otaku who is after Kyuuto, a mysterious girl who seems to know too much about Kyuuto and Heita, a great bit of him having to pose like a pop star (ahaha the music video made me laugh so much), Kyuuto saying ‘pafu’ all the time – which got cuter and cuter the more she did it, the whole class screaming an SOS in the school yard for some reason that I didn’t quite understand other than the metaphor that was intended to help the classmate who couldn’t ask for help, and I don’t know what the damn rubix cubes were about.

Ah but the pafu thing was so cute.

promo poster:

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zenkai girl 全開ガール [series]

another chance to see roro just d*cking about with cakes and kids.

Nishikido Ryo (last friends, orthros no inu, inu o kau to iu, 8uppers need I go on?) was the most adorable I’ve seen him yet, and Aragaki Yui (My boss my hero, code blue, dragon zakura) well, I’m so impressed with Gaki, as is most of the dorama watching public.

The best thing about this series though has to be the kids, where the hell did they get these kids from?! They are amazing! I’m even using exclamation marks. Take notice.

I wanted to watch this because of Roro but ended up loving everyone – with the exception of one character but we won’t rant about that until a little later. Baka Sato Jiro had me in fits, I laugh before he even says anything, I think I could happily watch him ramble on about sh*t for hours. Joy of Joys when I then saw him just days later in not only waraeru koi wa shitakunai but also in rescue, he should actually cameo in everything. Every single program.

I find these reviews hard to do now as I am way out of my comfort zone. I have no internet and I am no longer in my cabin that I know inside out, where I can find my lamp in pitch black and all that. I am sat in my new flat with another two weeks to go before they hook up my phone line for the internet – I am dying without at least dramawiki.

It is lovely here, but I’m totally not used to it yet. At least my drama watching has picked up. Since leaving the cabin I have thrown myself into another bunch of great dramas, but now I am trying to remember the feelings and thoughts conjured up by zenkai girl. It feels like a long time since it finished it but in reality it has only been a short while. So much has kanjanied in between.

So thinking back to zenkai girl, my overriding memory has to be the endless stream of frustrated comments on twitter from myself and various people I know, all crying at the stupidity of these characters. It is bordering on proposal daisakusen frustrating – not quite but almost.

Gaki plays lawyer watanabe, yankumi style jersey wearing hardworking determined woman, visions of being a high flying top ranking name in the law world. Having pull herself up from her poor boot straps and been raised by her backwater, debt ridden, slightly mentally retarded and completely naïve father, she is now fighting to make a name for herself and shed any trace of poverty she once had.

Roro plays a man whom watanabe refers to as the pill bug, a single father working in a tiny cheapo café restaurant-ish place living together happily with his freaking brilliantly adorable son pitaro. Oh how we all love pitaro. Best character in the whole series. Watanabe and the pill bug are bound together by pitaro and his friend at day care school. In her aspirations to work for a certain highly respected female lawyer, watanabe becomes childminder to her small daughter (best friends with pitaro) tangling her up straight away with the pill bug and his life.

The children talk like adults and the adults act like spoilt selfish children. The banter between all of them is great.

The only one we don’t like is soyoko. Man she was so f*cking annoying – downright stalking the pill bug.

I wanted to punch her in the face many many many many times. They could not have made that character any more irritating. Gah, I must resist the urge to just whinge about her. F*ck, she is so annoying though. 

Watanabe was endearing, but my god did she need to get a clue. She had so little love experience as she had devoted her life to becoming this great lawyer chickie, that she is a total oblivious mess when it comes to dealing with emotions. She tries to ignore the fact that she is completely in love with this poor man, but equally he is such an idiot that he doesn’t really help the situation either. A good smacking of their two heads together repeatedly wouldn’t have gone a miss.

It is a very fun but often sad and heartbreaking series. The kids were too much for me at times and when they cried I just lost the plot. They were too good, and I think I literally broke when pitaro sobbed at one point.

Well, it fulfilled a spot in my life that can only be filled by watching Roro being all fun-dad-like, I could hear hundreds of wombs exploding in the distance every time an episode aired.

I think he wins hands down for who you want to father your kids right? I don’t really need to worry about my womb exploding, as it runs away down the street to go get drunk on sake in some bar until after I’ve finished with papa Roro on tv, comes stumbling back in at 3 in the morning mumbling some incoherent b*llocks about Tegoshilocks, an otter, and a giant cock. I don’t think it wants to be a part of this on masse papa Roro fixation the world seems to have at the moment. It’s waaaaay too dangerous.

So aside from Roro being absolutely sh*ttingly adorable, the kids being fantastic, and Gaki being unquestionably awesome, what more can I be bothered to say?

Actually I think that will do.

**update**

I wrote this a while after zenkai finished but also quite a long time before I finally posted it here – moving house has meant no internet for a couple of months now. At the time of writing this update we’re now into the second week of October and I’ve just found out that Yamapi and Roro have left News. My thoughts are that Roro waited until Yamapi was ready to go as it causes less disruption for them to go both together than have one leave then another, so there is a small blessing in that. And also, that the band haven’t completely disbanded – a huge blessing there too. Yamapi has big projects he wants to sink his teeth into and it has been no secret – on the cards for a long time. For them to both leave together is a bit of a shock but when you think about it, it is less destructive overall for it to happen in one go. Now it is time for Roro to get into the stream of drama offers that are no doubt flooding his way after zenkai, and for the remaining News members to get back on track with how they will now present themselves as a four member group. I do hope people aren’t stupid about this for long, I know they will be but I can hope. Let’s not be idiots about this ok? Lets just support them all in what they do; it is their lives after all. I hope they all succeed in everything they wish to do.

I am sure Yamapi will make me cringe with his solo music and awe inspire me with his acting in the future as he takes on the kind of challenging roles he now has the time to accept. I am sure Roro will continue to do what he does flawlessly, be it romping with Kanjani or making women’s biological clocks practically explode with the films and dramas he stars in.

Now with News containing the four members Kato Shigeaki, Koyama Keiichiro, Masuda Takahisa, and Tegoshi Yuya, I pray people will accept their efforts and support them over, through, around, or at the very least under, their latest obstacle. And for god sake guys, release a single already. It has been an age.

All six of these guys will have my support.

Hey! Pssst! News! Now is totally the time to do that show I was ranting about in my gachibaka post. 








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