Catching up on Japanese drama

I have been like missing in action like forever... It's getting harder to blog because I havent spent much time watching anything until recently!

I have stayed off Korean drama for a long time since Secret Garden. I watched one called Fashion King  and it was so utterly stupid & absurd that I was cursing myself for wasting time on that piece of crap drama.

If you havent watch Fashion King, DONT. It's a freaking piece of crap drama. Half the time I was like groaning in disgust at the bunch of nitwits. The initial few epi was ok but then it got overboard and became stupid. I had to fast forward episode just to complete the series so that i can know how bad it is. My friend started watching it and halfway through, I told him it was bad and he was skeptical. When he finished it, his comment was "WHAT THE HELL!!!?! #$%%^" So that sums up our views about that time wasting drama.

Meanwhile, I think recent Japanese drama seemed promising!!! I am watching the current remake of "GTO 2012", "Rich Man Poor woman" and this investigative mystery series. All these 3 drama are keeping me really busy.

To start with GTO 2012.

Okie, initially I was skeptical about the lead. He seemed abit too scrawny and unnatural for the role. However by the 3rd epi, I was slowly getting use to him, not to mention that Shirota (as Ryuji)& Yusuke (as Saejima)  as his buddies. Is it me or Shirota looked as if he gained quite a bit of weight in this series? He looked abit round....but still cute of coz.

Hahaha. However, I do missed the original GTO cast with Takashi because everyone are soooooo cute in there, including the students such as Ikeuchi Hiroyuki, Tokuyama Hudenori, Oguri Shun who are all now big stars in their own rights.  Need I go on? Not to mention Takashi really NAILED the role down perfectly and left an indestructible image in my young mind back then. This time round, none of the students stood out. Are Japanese suffering from lack of good looking boys and girls now? This batch looked so bland and blah except for the short hair gal.

"Rich Man Poor woman"

Starring my fav Shun Oguri as the eccentric self made IT dude who basically says what he thinks, and his greatest flaw was his inability to rem names and faces. So the story goes that he is looking for his mum who ditched him when he was still a kid. However, he chanced upon this Tokyo uni girl (looking for a job) who claimed to have the same name as his mother during one of the recruitment drive and he rem her, shocking everyone around him. I am up to epi 3 and I am glued. Shun is really funny and cute here. No doubt about it. I will follow this drama till the end!!!!!


The third drama Mystery I am watching, is like watching multiple novels adapted to TV drama.

Each episode is a self standing story about murder cases with the twists and turns. I like it.  Each episode has great leads in it and being a sucker for mystery cases, this series had me hooked!

The 4th series that I am backtracking to is "Cleopatra no onnatachi"

I have just started on this and it looked probably interesting. The topic revolves around this male cosmetic surgeon who had posted from the Mainstream hospital to working in a private esthetics's cosmetic makeover surgery salon. 

The guy is obviously struggling to cope because he cannot understand nor accept the fact that there are people out there who would go under the knife to so call "beautify" themselves when there is nothing wrong with them. Previously in hospital, his surgery was to only aid those who suffered from accidents and grafting etc that truly required help. Hence, thrown into this new environment, he found it hard to reconcile his disgust and dismay but yet having to stick it out because of the heavy loan he had to pay off (i think coupled with the 300M yen debt his father left behind to him). He was abandoned by his folks when he was a kid and he never forgave his mum, that added his distrust and dislike for woman in general. I think the idea of the drama (not sure yet at this point since I havent finished watching) is about the perception of "beauty" and why some would pursue the idea of beauty relentlessly while some are content with their looks, and why one should not be so judgemental about those who go under the knife.

It was interesting after the first epi when they interviewed common people on the streets about what they like about their face and almost everyone would say there are parts they didnt like etc...It was interesting for me because I had never thought about my face that way, as in altering it to make it better.