FACE MAKER [series]

What's that you say? Another budget late night suspend all real knowledge of science and logic style crappy drama? yes please!

Yep. Here is another one. Ridiculous science that is always attributed to genius rather than technological advancement because they know its never likely to really happen this way. 

This time it is in the shape of face transplants. And hair and voice I might add.

Oh they try to get around it but saying of course the voice changes when the face has been reconstructed this way - but taking the bandages off to have a brand new hair colour and cut is an optional extra I guess everyone opted for. 

The hilarious short clip in the intro of the face being removed is like saying the transplant merely consists of the skin being glued like a mask over the newly skinned face of the client. 

Like your bone structure has nothing to do with it. 

And when you see the wall of faces in his office you start to get the idea they really want you to think that's how it works.

This is certainly a far cry from realistic. But having said all that its not that bad of a drama. It got a little bit boring in places but generally it was pretty level and easy to watch. 

It comes complete with all the bucket loads of morals that you would expect to find in this kind of drama, 

with a moody, confused, angst ridden doctor stalking his patients so that any given moment he can pop up like a f*cking MS Word paperclip and suggest a better way of doing what theyre doing. 

Oh, and to tell them that he sold their face - the one he cut off them a few months ago.

These clients (if you really want me to do a plot synopsis then I guess I should) come to this genius surgeon to give them a new face to run away or begin again for various reasons. 

Usually it all goes well for a while then the person's life that used to own that face rears up in front of them to cause problems or the person with a new face's old face gets sold to someone - sometimes to the one who's face is now on the person with the new face - and jesus what the hell kind of sentence was that? 

Ok so the plot can get a little confusing. But each episode has its own story so its not so hard to follow. If they had all been weaved in and out of each other then maybe it would have been as confusing as my last paragraph. Actually might have worked well weaving some stories together but I think they had enough on their plate. 

This doctor used to work for the US witness protection program - have you noticed that even though Japan is incredibly advanced in many ways they always feel like their genius characters have more credibility if theyve worked or grown up abroad? 

They shipped in Ataru from the US, this face maker guy is pretty much the same. 

He finds himself back in Japan searching for something - although this guy is far from savant like Chokozai-kun. He has all the feels and knows all the things. Apart from his own stuff obviously. Knows exactly what everyone else should do about their troubles but has no idea about his own.

The face maker has a blurry past and, as usual for these forgotten memory dealies, just one photo in his pocket of a girl he thinks holds the key to something half remembered in his past.

Yeah yeah same sh*t different drama. Its nothing new by far. But it was interesting enough. I liked a few episodes more than others. 

I liked that not all of them ended perfectly happy for everyone, and some bad decisions were rightly rewarded with bad results. But mostly the moralities were correctly played out like fate always wins and the good will out. 

There were many familiar faces in this one. No idea what the character's names were so I wont do a cast list but they are in the labels at the end of the post. The face maker is played by Nagai Masaru and his sister is played by Hinata Chiho, a few other notable guests were Kamen Rider Kabuto's Sato Yuki, and Dr DMAT's Kato Ai who seems to be in every thing I watch recently.

It was not the worst budget drama I've seen, but its no better than most. I love the idea that he can just swap faces around like he is playing Mr Potato Head with random people and letting them lose in the world.

These cheap ass dramas, they're like an addiction for me. Seriously, one day I really should give these up. 

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Kamen Rider Kabuto仮面ライダーカブト[series]

 obaachan said this: so much gay it may have been made out of rainbows

How on earth do I go about trying to review this mental series. I watched most of it on the train on the way to uni as I was kind of desperate to finish it off when it started getting really exiting. Yes it does, you’ll have to take my word for it, from the outset it doesn’t look like it will be that great but it really pulls together about half way through. This was the series right before den-o.

What a great cast though. That is one of the things that kept surprising me. People would turn up left right and center that I knew from other stuff and it was great to see them in a stupid show like kamen rider. These series’ are getting better and better as time goes on. You can see that by how much better Den-o was than any that have preceded it. But Kabuto was such fun it holds its own place in the grand scheme of all things kamen rider.

 ~

This time we are fighting alien shape shifter type beasties called worms. They kill a person then take their form and stomp around all wormy being mean and bad and mean. There are a hundred million riders in this one, well maybe not quite that many but sometimes too many to keep track of. Not a bad thing though because as you expect, at a few points during the series their powers combine and they go all kinds of kamen rider ape sh*t on everything that moves. There is a bit of governmental nasties, goodies who were really badies, badies who turn good, then sorta bad again, and even a bit of weird timeline bizarre bending nonsense thrown in to get you ready for den-o.

Cast:

Satonaka Yui – Hiyori

Sato Yuki – Kagami / Gatack

Mizushima Hiro – Tendo / kabuto

Okumura Natsumi – jyuka

Teshima Yuka – Renge

Yamaguchi Yoshiyuki – tadokoro

Nagata Anna – Misaki

Tokuyama Hidenori – Yagurama / Hopper / the bee

Uchiyama Masato – Kageyama / Hopper / the bee

Kato Kazuki – Kazama / drake

Kanzaki Airu – Gon

Miwa Hitomi – Mamiya Rena

Yamamoto Yusuke – Kamishiro / sasword

Umeno Yasukiyo – jiya

Man this cast list is huge.

Satonaka Yui is just so beautiful. I really like how her Hiyori uses boku instead of watashi, she is so quiet and understated and genderless that it works somehow that the actress playing her is so stunningly flawless.

My main overriding memories of this series come from towards the end as usually happens with long series’ like these. So I won’t go into much detail and ruin it all.

There are some great changes that happen to many of the characters throughout and a real growth and progression evolves so it is kind of hard to review. I can barely remember how it all started but I do seem to remember gatack being utterly useless for a good long while before becoming all kinds of crazy cool and mega serious. He stays a total doofus for like half the show. We like him.

Be aware that this series needs an almighty boy love alert, my god, watching this along side ningen bem was like a storm of gayness raining down on my computer. If the friendship between kabuto and gatack wasn’t enough, the fallen bees all gothed up taking refuge in each other was the absolute gayest thing id seen until holyland. Brilliantly funny. Staring off into the sunset arm in arm talking about how they only had each other and nothing else forever. How they did all that with a straight face is beyond me.

But besides all the gay, it has all the standard kamen rider stuff you come to expect. Rubber suity bad guys, fights with bizarre sword / gun / insect like weapons that make no sense in our physics, no real solid explanation about what kamen rider really is or how they originally came to be, or how the general public aren’t that shocked by seeing a kamen rider crew busting down the street to save someone from some sort of alien youma bug issue – I would’ve thought it would cause mass panic but I think the general backdrop to most kamen rider films and series’ is that weird stuff exists in the world and people know that.

They do explain (eventually) how these particular riders were ... maybe not formed, but maybe, inlisted...? but that is about all the info we get. As per the norm, we must suspend all current knowledge which contributes to our understanding of things in order to follow kamen rider in its plight to entertain with high kicks and stupid phrases. *rider shooting!* in an inappropriate American accent. Love it. *one, two, three!* so imaginative right there. My god. Still, mizushima camply *henshin*’s like no other.

Mizushima is gracefully funny – killed me almost every episode. The same with Sato yuki. Their boy love will they wont they friendship was rediculous at best. Tokuyama Hidenori sex voice man was great as ever. And the overall story was worth getting invested in. Not as complex as Den-o but great all the same. There is certainly one thing in kabuto that isn’t in any other kamen rider I have seen so far...

...The unashamed homage to sailor moon. I actually nearly died it was so funny. I’ll just say this; Matsumoto Hiroyuki who played Nephrite even turns up to do a make up battle with drake and they even use the make up! henshin cry – and it was very funny to see both Matsu-Hiro and Kato in glorious make up, and being as camp as usagi-chan herself. Drake does it a few times and it was amusingly stupidly flamboyant for a masked rider fighty dude, but when nephrite turned up I nearly lost it completely.

Between that and the goth boy love issue with the two za bee boiz, the stupidity reigns on high. But the three leading characters are strong enough to carry the show, I just havn’t spoken about them much because all the other stuff was so funny.

After watching kamen rider kabuto I ended up watching Tokyo dogs which is another mizushima drama also staring oguri shun. Polar opposite roles. The calm collected arrogant destined fighter kabuto, and the weirdo energetic cop marou. Then with that I also watched Arakawa – another oguri shun drama where he had an even more of polar opposing role to that of his stern detective in Tokyo dogs; the chief of a bohemian town by a river who is man who thinks he is a kappa... I can’t even begin to explain...

I love how these brilliant actors can have such righteously different characters and gloriously unrecognisable ages where their real identity is so completely lost to the new character I can barely remember who the hell is ever what when and how. Who are you again? Who am i? ...what?  I’m forever on drama wiki chasing up a face I can’t place even though I have JUST seen them in a movie or drama, these guys (genderless intention of the use of this word) are amazing.

oh yeah and I have no idea where the kabuto film comes in to the series by the way. I missed it. At some point in the middle somewhere.

voice ヴォイス [series]

with friends like these who needs autopsies?

eita and ikuta toma - what a brilliant pairing! for a potentially typical format of mystery drama the casting of these two was an inspired decision.

there is a lot of banter between all the main characters and even quite a lot from the supporting cast too. 

it was well written with sensitivity to a sometimes somber subject matter.

the setting is medical school and the five main characters are students taking a seminar on forensic pathology. this, they come to learn, is about conveying the voices of the dead to those left alive.

in confusing cases where the cause of death is unknown or suspicious, forensic pathology listens to the signs the body shows in order to hear the real story of those last moments on earth.

all taking the seminar for their own different reasons (often something in their past that has haunted them) the five work together to understand how dead bodies can explain the life that once was attached to them.

kaji daiki (eita) is actualy unwillingly drafted into this course by the lecturer who can see something in him that would surely flourish in forensic pathology.

his friend ryosuke (ikuta) is avoiding the pressure of his dad's high position, 

kanako (ishihara satomi) lost someone in suspicious circumstances, 

teppei (endo yuya) and akira (sato yuki) who have a great argumentative banter with each other from day one, also appear to have their own reasons for joining this usually fairly unpopular and misunderstood course.

the second great pairing in this is endo and sato. i would never have thought to put those two together but it was a stroke of genius. 

its always quite fun to see endo getting beatings and playing the nervous geeky fool, and sato is great as the scarey looking, angry but soft hearted idiot akira.

each episode has a new case for them to solve and they are all pretty interesting. 

but it is the banter between the main five plus akira's mum that i like best about the show. it keeps it all rolling.

all the boys seem to pick on kanako and she stubbornly keeps them at arms length for quite a while. ishihara is another actress who can play many different roles well. 

one minute a closed and focussed young girl and the next a frantic, rude, sneaky teacher as was her role as in puzzle.

ikuta looks beautiful in voice i have to say. he is a little slapstick (how we like him best) and a little serious too. and not many people look good in puffa jackets so thats one to be proud of.

kaji daiki is basically riding on his exceptional intuition and has Galileo style flashes of genius when he is in deep thought - he usually saves the day with his soft focus psychosis epiphanies.

its kind of cheesey i guess but eita's awsome expressions and that messed up

mop of hair he has just makes it fun to watch. i could watch him in the worst program ever created and i probably would still like it due to being blinded by his greatness. his thinking face is awesome. haha, it sounds funny to say that. it really is though. cant help but love that man in whatever role he is in.

and that big green/blue coat was another inspired piece of casting. it was like the 6th member of the team.

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