orange days オレンジデイズ [series]

chibi eita and ueno juri again

orange days is a great drama for those about to go to uni (which i am - yes im a little late with that but shut up). the group of friends form somewhat haphazardly and begin to center around the pairing of kai and sae.

sae who is deaf uses sign language and lip reading to communicate, kai already knows how to sign as does her friend akane. 

a close bond is formed between sae and kai through a bikering volatile friendship and kai's busybody current girlfiend is pushed to the side.

as the group become much closer the series follows their ups and downs involving university, thinking of their future, and their relationships.

cast:
orange society:
kai - tsumabuki satoshi (long love letter, IWGP, lunch no joou)
sae - shibasaki kou (sora kara furu ichioku no hoshi, galileo)
shohei - narimiya hiroki (yankii-kun to megane chan, gokusen)
akane - shiraishi miho (suppli,nodame cantabile )
keita - eita (voice, nodame cantabile, last friends, sunao ni narenakute)

maho - konishi manami (shoni kyumei, anitque)
ayumi (shohei's sister) - ueno juri (nodame cantabile, last friends, sunao ni narenakute)
yuriko (sae's mother) - fubuki jun (sunao ni narenakute, fuurin kazan)

orange days has really made me want to learn JSL now, i picked up quite a bit just from watching the show. i liked how the others in the group who do not already know how to sign pick it up quickly and try their best to use it for sae.

it is quite an emotional series. sae's character has been through a great deal of trauma due to losing her hearing (she is a musician so it was a huge distress) and kai tries to soften her closed prickly personality enough to become a person she can trust and rely on.

akane and shohei have a kind of will-they-wont-they thing as (obviously) do kai and sae. eita's character is the "nice guy" that never gets the girl :(

this series ads to the endless amount of things eita and ueno juri have been in together though in orange days they dont have any scenes with each other.

this drama is very funny and sweet but it is one of those sort of series' that takes you through all the frustrating hardships that friends face together. it isnt hard going, it isnt all fated to end in complete disaster - though it comes close at times.

with the emotional rollercoaster sae has to ride due to her disability and the seat kai takes next to her in that journey, there are many upsetting moments to go through, but overall this is an uplifting fun series that makes me want to be closer to my friends and not waste the time we have together.

and it really makes me want to learn JSL.

and my god, shibasaki kou is so beautiful. have you seen her pocky adverts? 

she is so adorable i cant even explain. she did the milk pocky ad once, i saw it on youtube and nearly died of her cuteness. 

i know that tsumabuki satoshi has done some pocky ads too (who hasnt?) if they havnt thought of this already and ive just missed it, they should have them do one together. orange flavour pocky! they missed a trick there. damn it i want pocky now.

anata wa watashi no pocky!

yawarakai fuwa fuwa + shibasaki kou =

*dies of cuteness*

~

summer time machine blues サマー タイム マシン ブルース [movie]

just go home you bunch of d*ckheads! *bangs head on the wall in frustration*


i watched this film last night and loved it.
it is daft and confusing and features chibi eita and ueno juri.
well cast all round, good story from start to finish, colourful and
pretty mental all the way through.



i have to say i was exhausted from laughing and shouting in frustration
when this finished. the laughing was from great moments like the guy
unexpectedly smacking his head on the locker door, and them all going
uwaa!! in unison every five minutes,



and the shouting in frustration was due to the absolute stupidity of
some characters running around with no sense when they should have just
got on with what they were supposed to be doing instead of
making everything worse and worse!





usually films about time travel are either very sh*t or just too confusing
especially when they try to follow the old physics of time being a straight line
(which causes paradoxical problems and it just makes for mind melting
soul crumbling unfollowable plots...)
but if done well it can be fun to explore that world of paradoxes and the
calamity that can occure when f*cking about with the time line.



they have the balance right with this film. explaining the time line a little
and then being complete retards for the rest of the time. actually even when
they are explaining the time line stuff they are still being cpmplete retards.
its very stupid and infuriating but totally watchable.



its no way as confusing or complicated
as primer or any other such bending the time line type films (which i
usually have to watch 3 or 4 times in a row so i even get half of it)



to sum up:
a mushroom man from the future, an air conditioning unit's broken remote control,
a bunch of usless guys bursting into a dark room like its not gonna spoil everything,
playing baseball paradoxically stretched across two seperate days,
and the origins of kappa suprisingly revealed in a mess of accidental timetravel.



basically the sci fi club (who hate sci fi)
break their air con unit's remote, a time machine randomly appears,
they use it to go back and get the remote before it gets broken,
they start to freak out about paradoxes,
some of them are too busy d*cking about to get the f*cking point,
and i start banging my head on the wall and shouting
*just go back now you idiots!*
all the while the farce becoming more and more stupid.





it all wraps up nicely. the end is great and still very stupid.
it is lighthearted, unless like me you get this wound up by
people d*cking about and potentially ruining the flow of time
when they should be getting a f*cking move on,
and there are some really really funny slapstick moments
i hurt myself laughing so hard

...and should have contained my frustration a little - its a
good job my wall is wood not plaster or there would be a dent.

i think i woke up with a little concussion this morning.

sunao ni narenakute 素直になれなくて [series]

ok my head hurts now...

the last three episodes of sunao finaly finished. it has taken me so long to get to the end this drama. it was painful from beginning to end- what started off as a general cringe as things went from bad to worse ended in desperate hope that any good could come out of it all.

seki megumi, who plays peach, i hadnt seen before this but have seen since. peach is still my favourite role of hers, though i wasnt sure if i would warm to the character at first. the first darker edge to the series comes from her with a suicide attempt, she is a weak willed person who had the potential to become a character that would just annoy you with her simpering needy behaviour but she just wasnt like that after all.

tamayama tetsuji who i also hadnt seen before is the key member in this drama, linda, who brings all the characters togther. he is also a weak willed soul but it is hidden from everyone at first. linda creates a twitter group of the five strangers due to a work project but it soon becomes a life line of true friends. his character is mostly responsible for my massive puffy red eyes right now.

ueno juri looks so beautiful in this i think it may be my favourite role of hers too. eita spends the whole series in leather trousers looking really really quite awesome, and hero jaejoong looks as he always does - suspiciously perfect (i swear he's too beautiful to be human).

nakaji (eita) and haru (ueno juri) have an iffy first encounter but become best friends almost accidentally. the pair look well suited for each other romantically but it is a completely tangled mess; doctor (hero jaejoong) falls in love at first sight with haru when the twitter group first meet, nakaji has some other crazy stuff going on with another woman, and haru seems to have really fallen for nakaji unaware of how the doctor feels for her.

this is only episode one!

this mess gets more and more tangled and uncomfortable. i actually stopped watching it a few episodes in to have a break from the constant disasters.

it was genuinely exhausting at first.

the more doctor's character developed the more i was rooting for him but the relationship between nakaji and haru was so sweet i was torn. maybe it would have helped if they hadnt got someone as beautiful as hero to play that role -

it was great to see him act so adorkable though, flapping about like a puppy and giggling like an idiot.

ive been waiting for a eita/ueno drama where they actualy manage to get together so when i started to really like doctor aswell i couldnt decide how to feel. it was so frustrating.

i wont say details of who else falls for who but there are quite a few love swaps as you progress through and it left me feeling a little dizzy. i truely loved all five characters so much. i was trying to work out how the writers could make it so every one ended up happy - i was honestly pleading it would be magically all better somehow.

well, i liked the ending but the few episodes leading up to that point made me cry so much that im just glad its over! i feel like i could watch it again and enjoy it now that i know how it all pans out. but then again, it would still make me sad for sure.

a lot of stuff happens with linda that i wasnt expecting that just broke my heart.

i was expecting something like haru rejecting doctor in some epic way for nakaji and feel terrible even though i loved the pair - but really it all went a bit nuts. 

well yes i got to see doctor cry as i thought i would but not over haru - i really dont want to watch hero jeajoong cry ever again, its like watching angels taking bullets for demons - and ive seen eita cry before but my god he made me lose it this time, the man can really sob.

i really have got quite a headache now.

there are lots of fun moments in this drama - there would have to be or we wouldnt love the five so much but having had very close relationships with my own friends and experiencing similar situations i can say it felt pretty real sometimes. if they hadnt been such good actors maybe i would have noticed

how over the top the story lines probably were

but when you look back over your life things do just happen and tangle up like that.

i can do nothing but gush about sunao really, it was brilliant. it was just so nice to watch nakaji and naru's friendship grow but i am truely exhausted from all the ups and downs.

oh yeah, and nakamura yuichi plays haru's younger brother so yay for that too. never get tired of seeing his face.

my favourite bit in this drama you can look forward to is doctor going nuts beating up a load of guys with his brief case. awesome.

~

last friends ラスト・フレンズ [series]

heartbreaking throughout

this drama is not easy to watch, even skipping through to take screen shots brought tears to my eyes. 

nagasawa masami plays michiru a girl suffering at the hands of her abusive boyfriend sosuke (played by nishikido ryo of jpop group news). 

eita and ueno juri pair up again with perfect chemistry making me scream at the tv "for f*ck sake are they ever going to play a couple?!"

(wait for sunao ni narenakute dear girl you will wish you had never said that) 

mizukawa asami and yamazaki shigenori are great supporting roles in this giving a little light relief to a dark setting.

i have to mention the theme tune prisoner of love. i heard this playing once in a japanese restaurant i go to frequently and it instantly conjured up all the memories of last friends.

when that song came in at points through the episodes and in at the end it usually sent tears to my eyes especially towards the end of the series. 

the picture ive posted of the scene where michiru is all beaten up in her best friend's arms was a fine example - the theme tune comes in while michiru is collapsing and starts to sob, eita's character runs out to see the couple in a mess on the floor in his door way, the music swells and i just lose it completely and have to take the dog for yet another walk to calm myself down.

its ryo's scarey eyes and masami's angelic face that orchestrated the crushing feeling in my stomach when i watched last friends.

i could not rush through it, i only watched one episode in a sitting which i dont often do. it was not one i could walk right through.

now, seeing ryo being his usual playful self in footage of news backstage its hard to imagine him be so horrible. Pissy temper or not.

i was actually reluctant to watch him in anything else after last friends because he was so mean that i didnt like him at all. 

but dont worry ryo, orthros no inu won you back into my favour (not that you care - why would you care? surely it means your acting did the job. 

why i am directing this at you, youre not reading this, shut up rat get on with it)

having said all that about him i certainly did feel something for sosuke in terms of pity or sympathy. ryo seemed to be able to force aggression into his character while still looking like a scared little boy.i think i was completely taken in by his acting to be honest. i didnt put a picture of him doing his scarey psycho face here, it is too scarey psycho like. 

ueno juri looks fantastic in last friends. i fell for her completely and thought how great she carries herself as a lesbian and was desperately rooting for her even though i knew it was hopeless.

the same with eita really, and i loved his hair - does he ever brush that mess?  takeru (eita) was such a sweet character and my heart broke for him over and over. you almost love everyone through him because he cares for them all so much.

its hard going, especially if you have been affected by any sort of abuse as it is portrayed with realism. it is just exactly how it happens - no eastenders / hollyoaks over the top crap, you feel her sense of being trapped, you feel helpless alongside her friends. i cried pretty much all the way through.

without spoiling anything i will say i was very pleased with how they ended it - and really wasnt sure how they would wrap things up.

it makes it worth sticking with till the end. i dont make a habbit of watching shows that will depress me  (^ ~ ^) but as sad as i was while watching last friends. it was worth every second of anguish.

it won a whole bunch of awards for good reason. i would recomend it but as a warning to anyone with a heart - it will be broken everytime michiru cries.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

~