The Last Empress

I bet you thought I was done writing drama reviews.  That’s ok, I did too because I don’t really watch dramas anymore.  But yet here we are.  Last post I revealed and confessed that I was watching a drama called The Last Empress.  I also said I’d write posts per episode, yeah that was clearly a lie I was too busy being a degenerate and binge watching it episodes at a time.

I haven’t even written drama reviews in so long that I forgot my usual format for these things.  I guess I’ll start off with how I found out about this drama.

I found out about this because I saw a random clip on youtube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj572zwnY8U this one to be exact.  And I thought “this kinda looks interesting”, and one of the comments said “I love how strong she is. She was fragile like glass. But they broke her. So now she’s the sharp pieces that seem Beautiful Because the light is reflecting off of it.” and then I was done.  You can’t tell me there’s character development like that and I don’t watch.  I LIVE FOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, I LIVE FOR THE WEAK CHARACTER FINDING THEIR OWN INNER STRENGTH AND THEN CAUSING EARTHQUAKES WITH THE WRATH OF THEIR CLAPBACKS.  And so the rest was history, I begun watching it.

When the drama started it reminded me a bit of Princess Hours/Goong.  Set in a world in where the Korean monarchy did not end and continued into modern times.  However, this Korean monarchy, as it turns out, has a FEW skeletons in its closet.  With great power and influence, one must have a few…..sacrifices I guess.  We have the main female lead, Jang Nara, who becomes the Emperor’s wife out of convenience, a means to creating an alibi, as well as providing someone controllable, easily influenced, but also easily discarded as need be.  And as is necessary, when there is a female lead who plays the emperor’s wife, there must be an emperor, played by Shin Sung Rok.  An Emperor fully convinced the emperor can do no wrong, and a man you early on are conditioned to hate.  But that’s the beauty of a great drama with a great plot.  There is development, there is change, the characters you watch at the end are not nearly the people you see at the beginning.  The comment that intrigued me enough to start this drama rang true.  The “fragile like glass” female lead becomes a shard in the monarchy’s side.  You see the disgusting face of the royal family that it manages to hide, but now that she’s on the inside she sees that her fantasy happy ending will never happen and thus instead resolves to expose the family for who they are, even if it costs her own life as payment.  It shows you how much they seek to break her that it turns her this way, that she’s willing to go down with the ship, so long as the ship goes down.

But what else that gets me about this plot is that there are so many things lurking beneath the scenes,  as the plot thickens, it also reveals even more of itself.  Certain things begin to make sense, you understand why one character is this way, why another character is that way, why one character does this, or does that.  You learn everyone’s motivations, how everyone is connected to each other, why everything is happening.  And BOY IS THERE A MESSED UP ENTANGLED WEB OF CRAP HAPPENING EVERYWHERE.  And fortunately, the show is 52 episodes, so there is A LOT OF TIME, EPISODES, AND SPACE TO FIT EVERYTHING IN HERE.  There’s a lot to unpack in this plot, to many characters, so many entwined relationships, so many motivations.  But experiencing/enjoying/discovering the plot is part of the enjoyment, so I will not rob you of that, just give you a teaser snippet with this description.  But it’s definitely got an amazing plot.  Plot I’d give a solid….9/10.  It has some parts that honestly feel forced at times, the end wasn’t QUITE what I had hoped it to be, which isn’t a bad thing honestly.

As for the cast, I honestly do not religiously follow actors/actresses although if I recognize someone I am more likely to watch it than if I recognize no one.  I know Jang Nara from watching the korean remake of Fated To Love You and she’s cute, she did a great job in Fated To Love You and I REALLY think she did this part major justice.  She portrays a good naive and kind person, but also portrays the jagged empress that has been broken to the point of retaliation incredibly well as well. I also recognize Lee Elijah, not from anything she’s starred in but from watching Running Man (because i watch a lot of variety shows), so she’s got the recognition factor but definitely showed good character portrayal.  Giving a score for cast has never been my strong suit since honestly I don’t know how I’d give a proper score for it or know what defines a good score?  Is it because you got big names? Is it because whoever you picked played their parts well?    How would you know if they played their parts well? maybe they played their parts well because the story was done well, or maybe it’s the other way around and the cast carried the story to be good through their skill.  Either way though, I’d say the cast for this did really well to portray the story so if I were to assign a score I’d probably give it a 8.5/10, the .5 because i’m flipflopping in my head over whether it’s an 8 or 9.

The OST honestly I don’t think is much to write home about.  Admittedly it’s been a bit of time between the time of me writing this review and the time when I finished the drama, but even then in this time none of the songs stood out to me to really reminisce about or stick in my brain.  That being said, that does not mean the OST/backing music was bad, the opposite actually, I feel from what I remember. thinking that the music fit quite well at least for making me as the viewer feel the proper emotion, and so in that sense, the OST did really what it’s supposed to do. I’ll say 8/10.

As for overall satisfaction, I’d say I’m satisfied with my service (thank you Baymax).  If I didn’t enjoy it, I would not have binged like 5+ episodes a day.  So it’s a pretty easy 9.5/10 on the satisfaction scale, again a .5 because I’m hovering between it being really the ULTIMATE/PERFECT satisfaction (comparing to dramas like Proposal Daisakusen that are solid easily 10/10) and a really satisfying drama.

So where does that leave us on an average score? 8.75/10, which I think I’m ok with rounding up to a 9/10 honestly.  We’ll just say an additional .25 for the intangibles, because this really honestly was a very good series that I highly recommend.  Yes it’s 52 episodes compared to say….a 16 episode series like many KDramas are, but believe me, there’s A LOT that happens in the 52 episodes that you’ll appreciate that they gave a lot of room to allow everything to happen.

Impromptu random KDRAMA related post

It’s 1 in the morning, I’m supposed to be sleeping so I can wake up for work but instead I’m watching the Korean remake of the taiwanese drama Fated to Love You.

And it’s inevitable but because I know how the story goes I cannot help but compare the two.

Essentially Ive jist finished episode 12 and two questions immediately pop into me head. First do they really have to imitate to that level that the BIG climactic emotional moment haopens in episode 12 in both dramas? And next which version did it better, Korea or Taiwan.

To the first question I guess really it’s a good place to have it considering what I know of the story. I will just pass it off as coincidence.

The next question is the one really that’s more fun.  This is probably the third drama I can think of where I’ve seen both remakes of it, the three being Boys Over Flowers, Proposal Daisakusen, and this.  And in all 3 cases I have preferred the original, the first one I watched.  It may be because of rose colored nostalgia glasses but I always looked fondly at them.  Maybe it’s because each time it was the first time I learned the story and the second time it’s no surprise what will happen which maybe takes away from the experuence.

However in this case especially I think that’s not true in my opinion the original presentation of this scene and point in the story far out classes the Korean equivalent.

First the events leading up to it are similar but intensely different. Each is due to misunderstandings of some kind, spurred on by tasteless pinches thrown from a scorbed and jealous ex-gf.  But the taiwanese tied it in much nicer to the story and made it an integral part of the plot progression, in the Korean one it was related and tied but not nearly as tightly and cleanly.  In the taiwanese version when it happens you FEEL it. For one thing the bgm is blaring part of the scene, it sets the tone from the beginning. The actors themselves embodied every emotion they meant for you to feel.  In the taiwanese one you cannot do anything but feel exactly what they intend for you to feel.  It’s not rose colored glasses imo this time because I actually went back and rewatched that scene to see if that’s the case, nope it cuts just as deep then as it does now.

The decision, the ensuing self blame is much more evident and felt. You feel even more because in the taiwanese one it’s more of a misunderstanding, he means well but because of interference his message and intention is muddled and confused,  there is no such equivalent in the Korean one in my opinion. The interference of the scornful ex doesn’t come into play here, more of a stupid misguided intention from the guy.

The decision racks our taiwanese guy much more to my eyes than Mr annoying laugh. You see him anguish more in his decision. The line he delivers is like a stab, amazing but painful to hear. And then the aftermath the difference is clear, in one you see it on their face much more because it’s just a natural progression from everything leading to that point seamlessly and so it serves as just this culminating moment of everything just coming together.  In the other it’s not quite that.  It’s also because in the taiwanese version, the guy is still kind of growing and progressing himself, hasn’t quite actually sorted out his feelings fully whereas in the Korean version he kind of has.

In a way I’m left a bit…disappointed out of nostalgia. Because I viewed the original scene so highly, I put lofty expectations. I guess it’s one pitfall of it being a remake and me knowing the story it becomes me expecting and wondering how they’d present it and inevitably comparing.

I think why I’m disappointed is because I wonder if I had watched it in reverse would I have the reverse opinion, that Korea did it better.  Did I expect too much and not let the scene be what it is? If I watched the korean version would I think it was well done without knowing how it’s counterpart did it?

Maybe that’s why. Because the scene isn’t bad, it’s just that it’s not the taiwanese version.

It’s funny since when I first started watching Asian drama my opinion was that Japanese ones tended to be quote hit or miss and not rrally in between meh, and that Korean dramas seemed to be more consiStent in quality and on average good but taiwanese/Chinese ones seemed to fall short.  However here is the exception example to my previously very immature/premature/naive opinion.

If I were to score the taiwanese I’d give it a 9 (at least I think I rated it a 9 before) but the Korean remake  so far in comparison 12 episodes in seems to be a 7. Acceptable, quite good actually, but feeling at the moment unfortunately like just an imitation rathee than having its own merits to stand on in comparison.

That opinion may change as the drama goes along towards completuon. It’s happened before with proposal daisakusen which I thought would be OK partway through then turned out to be my favorite ever, even the Korean remake. I’m hoping that happens here. I want to be pleasantly surprised so very much and to enjoy this drama for being good because of itself, and not because it was a remake of a drama I feel nostalgic ally is amazing.

Surprise I randomly was watching another Kdrama

No one really knows this, although i’ve mentioned it before, but i’ve had a DramaFever account since they were in beta lol.  Definitely used it while I was working as a mail clerk, because once the daily mail delivery came and I sorted those, usually pretty slow day until I clock out, besides random UPS/FedEx/DHL/whatever other delivery company stopped by and needed a signature for whatever was ordered and dropped off.  Lately I only really use it to watch Running Man episodes/Infinite Challenge, but I guess this drama i finished last week is proof that the ads they now put IN the episode before playing it (so not removed by things like adblock/premium account) work, because I wouldn’t have known/watched it otherwise.

Anyway it was for this drama called Uncontrollably Fond, and it’s the first series in a very long time that i actually watched while it was airing, so it was over a longer period of time where I actually had to wait each week until the next episode aired and was available, which is something I haven’t had to deal with in a while, not that I’ve watched any dramas in a very long time.

If I was to describe this drama to others, it kind of reminds me of Byakuyakou.  The whole plot revolves around hidden crimes, corruption, and trying to discover the truth before the statute of limitations expires.  It’s what drives motivations each way, shapes the relationships and connections between the main characters.  You have the main character who is driven to seek justice, even if it requires unjust means.  You have the almost cliche love triangle rivals for her love, each despising the other and viewing the other as unfit to love the fair maiden, for reasons very personal to said hidden crimes.  You hear a lot of “YOU/I HAVE NO RIGHT TO LOVE HER BECAUSE <insert reason>”.

There’s a lot going on, I almost wished i was as cool as some other blogs that do an episode by episode analysis, as opposed to what i’m doing which is just recapping essentially the entire series from memory, which is harder this time because it’s over a longer period of time because i watched while it aired, versus others where i watch something that’s been out for a while so i usually just binge it.

Also to get it out of the way and settle the elephant in the room, the answer is yes, I watched because Suzy.  But then I got intrigued and felt like I wanted to follow the storyline, because it reminded me so much of Byakuyakou.  The drama first started reminiscent of old Korean Dramas of “reunited old love”, and then they added additional elements to explain the in between from the past to the present.

The story overall had some weird points, but in general seemed to work, flow towards an actual conclusion, and the ending of the drama IMO wasn’t that DRAMATIC/CLIMACTIC, but ended things decently enough I suppose.  Maybe just because I was expecting one thing and another happened, but either way it didn’t make me feel like I had wasted my time on this series.  It was good stuff.

 

yeah.  bye.

A Life With No Regrets

k so the next in my series of writing longer posts about dramas i’ve already reviewed is my writing on the drama that is at this current moment and likely for a long long while will be my favorite drama of all time, Proposal Daisakusen.  I have so many reasons for this drama becoming my favorite, some of which only now do i realize but when the thought occurred to me, it made perfect sense.

First of all, quick summary of the drama in the case you don’t know or can’t be bothered to look earlier in my posts or on drama wiki.  The basic storyline is one of second chances.  We have a man who wakes up to hurry to the wedding of his best friend.   The best friend he’s known his whole life.  And the best friend that he is madly in love with.  As he gives his congratulation speech and watches the slideshow, he starts to remember the events that are forever captured in the stills.  He sees the sad face on his friend and begins to feel regret and guilt.  The prevailing thought he keeps having is “if only i had made that frown a smile, if only i had made that memory a happy one, would i be the one there right now next to her?”  He begins to feel intense regret, wishing for a second chance to make things right.  And he is given that, a second chance to go back into the future with the time limit of whenever the picture was taken, after which he will be sent back to the present.  And so with a second chance to make things right again, our main character quests on a journey to win back the girl he is convinced is the only one for her.

Nice story huh? I liked it alot as well.  And from the beginning i felt it would be a simple story.  Go back, change the past, win the girl.  If it was that simple, i would have been content, given it a cute rating of maybe 7-8/10, and gone on with my life.  Instead, i was shocked at what unfolded before my very eyes, and what ended up being my highest ranked drama out of all i’ve seen since.

One of my favorite kinds of plots are those like Densha Otoko, and Nobuta Wo Produce.  Densha’s very nature is one of romance, Nobuta Wo Produce’s not so much.  What ties these together and make them amazing was their decision to focus on character growth and make it a critical portion of their storyline.  I personally thoroughly enjoy watching dramas and stories in which you watch the evolution of a character, a profound change, and by the end look back and think, “my how far (s)he has come”.  And that was what i found in this show.  I found the story of a man’s development.  I said this in my actual first review of this, but the reason i would have given it a rating of 7-8/10 would have been that it would have been far too simple, and i wouldn’t have enjoyed it to the level i did.  Instead, i watched what felt more real, a drama of a person who evolves from beginning to end.  From a man that wishes, to a person that desperately desires.  In the beginning, he merely wanted, by the end, it is clear he has decided he needs her, and no one else.   There is the moment, which i feel is the defining moment of this entire series where he is given a chance to cut ties, forget her forever, and save himself from the agony he will feel when he returns.  It is a time when it feels he is beyond saving, when it is now impossible for him to get her back, to just give up forever.  Watching that moment, the moment as his tears begin to flow, is a moment i would never forget ever, and when you see the gravity of his decision, and you realize this is no simple matter to him.  The moments like that dispersed through this drama are what hit it home for me and made me realize how much of a favorite this drama had become to me.  As you looked back at the man of the beginning, you realize he wanted her but did not deserve her at all.  he was just simply not ready to provide everything he thought he could or would be able to.  Hence the reason for this story.  This story became one of learning and growth as you followed him learning his shortcomings and slowly overcoming them.  He first had to gain courage, the courage to go for it even when told not to.  He had to gain prediction, the ability to understand her messages and signs.  He had to make known his feelings, and make that first strand that has the potential to grow a connection and relationship.  He had to gain the resolve, the resolve to continue and go for it despite everything else, the resolve to go after her and never give up.  Finally, he had to gain what i feel, and still feel, is the most important thing in any relationship, and that is he had to remind her he was still and always would be there for her, and reminded her of all that they had gone through, and how they were friends.  And so we watched a man who went, metaphorically speaking, from a sad little caterpillar who wished they could, undergo a metamorphosis and gain wings.  I felt it every minute of every episode, and it hooked me enough to watch it till the end, all 11 hours of it in 1 day.

The story was not the only reason i loved this drama, the music helped greatly as well.  The OST here was dramatic when needed, comedic at times to give some breathing room between the serious, and just wonderful to  relax and listen to.  Music was definately top notch.  Chiisana Koi No Uta, haven’t heard? Change that now, song’s amazing, enough said.

However, there was a huge reason, the biggest one in fact, for why this became and has stayed my favorite for so long.  And it is a reason i have just recently begun to realize was one.  And that was because of my personal connection to this drama.  I felt so attached to this drama, because of how much of myself i saw in the main character.  Watching this man struggle through it all, i felt like i knew exactly what he was going through, how he was feeling.  As i watched him wish for second chances, i remembered my own feelings of sadness and regret at the past.   As i watched him struggle through hurdles and grow, it made me realize how much i too personally had to grow up.  Stop being a selfish kid.  It made me realize that selfishness and self-want ends the moment you decide on someone, and watching him made me realize how much he was willing to give for her, rather than thinking of what he wanted from her.  Call me lame, call me old-fashioned, call me whatever, i learned so much from watching this drama.  To the day i die, i would never forget this show, or that main character.  And never will i forget what it helped me to gain, and how it helped me to grow up, even if it was just a little bit.

Through every episode, i thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it. watching the rise and fall of a man.  I say this each time, but every time i mean it, this is not a drama to be missed, in fact it would be even sadder if you never watched it.

-Aznanimedude

Konayuki, snow’s not the only thing that falls when i think of this drama

Ok so, while doing my random browsing of youtube today i went back and ended up listening to Goose House, which is an incredibly amazing group you should take a listen to if you haven’t, you really are missing something amazing if you don’t know about them. But getting back to my point, which you probably have already deduced from this post is, i was listening to them do a cover of Konayuki from 1 litre of tears. And since lately i’ve been in a more mellow mood and because i decided i wanted to, i’m doing more indepth analyses of some of my more personally top rated dramas, and so this triggered me to decide to write about 1 litre of tears next.

before you continue though, play the video, i feel like personally i’d want to read this with music in the background anyway 😛

So for those of you who do not know what 1 litre of tears is, it is a drama that aired in 2005 and has become one of the undisputed most loved and favorited drama of many. It has spawned such a reaction and created such a stir there is hardly a drama fanatic i know or have seen that has not at the very least watched much less heard of this drama. There are so many reasons why this drama is pure insanity of amazing, and why for the longest time until my discovery of certain other dramas, this held the top spot of my favorites for a very very very long time.

To start off with, dramas in japan i have found to be very, shall we say, streaky. Unlike Korean Dramas which many find to be of consistent at least quality wise, japan is very hit or miss. Of the japanese dramas i’ve seen, they have either been a smashbox hit, or a titanic disappointment, i have really not seen that many that were middle of the ground average.  This drama was far from a failure, if anything this likely exceeded the expectations of many.  I personally when i started this was a bit skeptic as to how impressive it would be.  I was sure it would be good, but this just went so far beyond anything i had ever expected that i was floored by the end of it.  There is certainly a reason why this has garnered the fanbase it has, in fact, there are many reasons why this drama has managed to stand atop so many peoples’ lists.

The first which i will discuss is the plot.  This plot is (and good god i hate the fact i say this every time i make one of these), PURE DRAMA GOLD.  The moment your curiosity gets the best of you and you look for a quick synopsis (don’t lie, i know you looked/read one before watching it), it said something like this:

15-year-old Ikeuchi Aya was an ordinary girl, the daughter of a family who works at a tofu shop, and a soon-to-be high schooler. However, odd things have been happening to Aya lately. She has been falling down often and walks strange. Her mother, Shioka, takes Aya to see the doctor, and he informs Shioka that Aya has spinocerebellar degeneration – a terrible disease where the cerebellum of the brain gradually deteriorates to the point where the victim cannot walk, speak, write, or eat. A cruel disease, as it does not affect the mind in the least. How will Aya react when told about her disease? And how will Aya live from now on?  (taken straight from d-addict’s dramawiki site, no plagarizing claims pl0x <3)

BAM, super heavy hit, you know this is not your happy go lucky love drama, it will not make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.  This drama from the get go it is clear will shake you to the very core.  And that is exactly what some people are looking for sometimes, a drama that hits it home, gives them a heavy gut check and shoves reality back into their face that life is not always nice, happy lucky events in love happen, but so do tragedies and things that can downright depress and bring you down.  Cutesy lovely this is not, life-jarring and stunning it is by a MILE.  I can tell you that personally the moment i finished it, i sat there.  And sat there for a good 30 minutes just sitting there, thinking, stunned, letting it all begin to hit me.  This was honestly the first drama i had seriously watched (not a bad one to start eh?), and it was from this drama that i began to realize how much i loved stories like this, things that i could just delve deep into and analyze.  And this did not disappoint me at any moment.  The plot of this drama and how it was presented was so amazing and masterful that the title was well named, it did bring tears to many a watcher’s eye.  How they cleverly pulled you along, had you follow the story and feel yourself as event after event happened, this was brilliance at a peak.  It gave you sadness, but not so much to depress, but to remind us.  One should take from this drama to cherish every moment, that life is a very precious thing.  It was not meant to make you feel life is hopeless, what is the point, no, this is meant to inspire humanity to take life and love it.  I sat there for 30 minutes thinking how selfish i was and began to feel like i should cherish what i am given and have, and this drama made me feel like i should fight to hold onto everything rather than lose it without trying.  That is why this drama has inspired and gained such a fanbase, that is why this drama has stood out, for the message it presented.

This drama also does better than most dramas i have ever seen, its soundtrack.  This soundtrack felt like a breath of air.  I grew up listening to classical music, so i adore instrumentals and completely enjoy immersing myself in music.  This soundtrack is one that i love just putting on and then closing my eyes and just sitting there engrossing myself in the sound.  This was so carefully and amazingly orchestrated that it fits exactly the scenes that it backgrounds.  As you watch, the music takes the scene to unimaginable heights, from ordinary to emotional.  It takes an already heavy situation and brings you past the brink of tears and causes them to flow.  Take a moment and listen then now, to the song that spurred this review, i posted the video at the top if you haven’t yet.  Listen and perhaps you will understand, or maybe even recall and remember, this drama.  This OST was beyond incredible, and it only makes sense why this drama yielded such acclaim with music such as this to back it up.

This drama also clearly hit a homerun casting-wise.  Like i said in my previous post where i referred to sawajiri erika starring in this, this was her breakout role.  This was the drama where she screamed to the world she was here, and that this was what she had to offer.  I’ll put this out there right now, SHE DEMOLISHED THIS CHARACTER.  They say that quality actresses/actors become their parts, and you can tell the caliber of one by how believable they become.  I had to remind myself several times this was a fictional show, and that she was acting, so believable was she in her part that i sometimes was fully convinced she was becoming disabled and crippled.   The amount of effort and study she put into that part boggles my mind.  And i present the same challenge i made in my other post, i DEFY you to tell me another person who could have done this as well as she did.  I can think of no one else that would have played this so brilliantly, could have been this believable.  I’m sounding like a broken record here but this is really what i think.  This drama would not have reached the acclaim and attention it did had she not completely owned the role the way she did.  Casting was essentially completed the moment she was chosen for that role, the most critical one for this drama, and simply helped what was already a promising drama to the legend it has become.

More detail to come when i come around to adding more but until next time

-Aznanimedude

 

Orange Days

Oh how i wished i had the time to be able to do these anymore. Since i’m on break at the moment, i have no excuse and so i recently at the request of a friend watched Orange Days. Now those of you who know me or have seen my reviews on reviewasia.net know, i am a very kind reviewer, just about eveyrthing i’ve reviewed there has high scores with the exception of a few. That might be a bit biased though, since the only dramas I’ve written reviews for were ones i liked, and also the fact that the ones i watched, i watched because i felt i’d like them, if i were in a position where i was asked to review a drama I’d never looked at before might be different but, that’s aside from the point, on to the actual point of this post.

Orange Days was a highly awarded drama from 2004. I’ll be honest, i spent a good 10 minutes staring at the drama from that year, i recognized maybe 2-3 of them, and then the ones i recognized i didn’t think too highly of. Looking at the drama awards for that season, Orange days also handily swept all the awards that mattered: i.e.
-41st Television Drama Academy Awards: Best Actor: Tsumabuki Satoshi
-41st Television Drama Academy Awards: Best Scriptwriter: Kitagawa Eriko
-41st Television Drama Academy Awards: Best Director: Shono Jiro
-41st Television Drama Academy Awards: Best Cast
-41st Television Drama Academy Awards: Best Theme Song
-41st Television Drama Academy Awards: Best Opening

winning cast, script, director, musicality, this clearly has all the elements that make a drama noteworthy.  The only question then that was left was how good was it, for all I know, this could have just been a down year and that was the “least  crappy” of the lot.  I’ll save you that trouble, this clearly outclassed every other drama, and for a reason, if at the most simple it is AMAZING.  That word alone unfortunately is not even close enough to describe it, hence this review will be a quite lengthy one, and by the time of its publishing will have likely gone through at least 20 edits, more than every other post on this blog combined.

One thing that many dramas fail to achieve, or that many a watcher seems to enjoy complaining about, is content.  One huge complaint is that  there is not enough content for all the episodes and thus some end up being just filler, or at least, it seems that not enough happens that it feels like there is empty space dispersed through the drama.  Personally, i feel like some watchers don’t know what they want, because i’ve seen many an amazing drama that was heavy with content, viewers complained there was too much going on, and so there is clearly a balance that must be struck, not too much, but enoug hthat the story continues along at a comfortable place.  This drama, from the beginning to the end, there are no dull moments, situations where you think nothing is happening.  It is the kind of drama where everything that happens, happens for a reason, there is a clear purpose and flow, there is clearly some destination the story is headed, and you are masterfully guided through the drama from the beginning to the conclusion.

One of the many things i feel that really define a drama is the opening episode.  Opening episodes are vital, as are good introductions to any written composition you will ever read.  It must be intriguing enough that you are hooked, but not too much that you feel you know everything and thus don’t need to continue to the finish.  This episode i would rank among the top 3 of all opening episodes i’ve ever watched.  Now mind you, opening episodes do not define the caliber of a drama, as oftentimes, there are amazing first episodes, but the rest of the drama seems to start to decline from that, as if so much was spent in the opening that you begin to run out of amazing for the rest of the drama, going back to the problem i outlined in the previous paragraph.  However, while they might not define the quality of a show, they go a very VERY long way towards whether or not you will finish a drama, and there has never been a drama that is considered so amazing you never watched till the finale.

Another quality that is indispensable is sound.  Ever watch a silent movie? No? Yes?  If yes, did you enjoy it?  Chances are not, because most people are similar in that, silence is boring.  Music is what makes a show so amazing, otherwise it’s a soap opera or just feels like a documentary of real life.  But with music, it becomes so much more, it adds to the characters, it aids in helping the audience feel the emotion that it is intended for them to feel,  it helps them get so much more into the drama.  It is possible to have a bad drama with good music, but not a single one of my favorite dramas, or even a single one of the favorites of anyone i’ve ever known, had crap music.  This drama had  music by  Mr. Children and Orange Range.  Don’t know who those are?  Better find out, cuz they’re amazing, and so was the music of this drama.  It fitted so perfectly it turned the scenes into so much more than they would have been otherwise.

However, regardless of these qualities, you will not have a drama without a cast.  Without a cast, you have a novel, writing, not a television show.  And a cast can take a story from good to unimaginably impressive.  Example?  Don’t even try to argue that 1 Litre of Tears would have been any more amazing if another person besides Sawajiri Erika had been the main actress.  I defy you, to tell me she did not take that drama and make it what it became, that without her it would have reached the heights it did.  Yes it had an OST that blows the soundtracks of just about every drama ever out of the water, Yes the story was amazing and was presented incredibly well.  But again i defy you to tell me that Sawajiri Erika did not define that drama.  That is the effect amazing casting can have on a drama, and i have seen cases where it completely saved what would have been an otherwise lackluster drama.  This plot and idea really was not lackluster, nor did it require an amazing set of people to save it, but the presence of some of the more amazing well known actors i have seen in other dramas, did nothing but help lift this drama to stardom.

This is getting long, so i’ll leave it at this for now.  The final criterion i will talk about is one that i find is the most important one i look for when i watch dramas, and is the one i spend the most time thinking about.  It is one of those intangibles that you will not be able to determine unless you go through an entire drama.  It is a quality that is answered by a few questions.  The first is “Well?”.  Well what do you think?  Has it caused you to think at least a little bit, as fictional as it may be, did it feel like that could have happened in real life?  Would you watch it again?  One thing that i have found is highly consistent among the dramas i’ve ended up liking alot, is the fact that i still watch them even now months maybe even years after i first watched them.  Is it so good that you would watch it again and still feel the amazement you felt the first time?  Good enough that you’d still remember it long after you finished the last episode?  Proposal Daisakusen, One Litre, Sekai no Chuushin De, and now even this, i know for a fact i will remember everything that happened, and would without hesitation watch again whenever i feel and not feel burdened repeating.  That is the quality i have found in this drama.

 

With all that said, if you were to ask me how i’d rate it among the dramas i’ve watched, i’ll tell you without question i’ll put it in my top 3, if you wanted mroe specific i’d put it at #2.  That says something, every drama in my top 10 has been there for years and never changed position, it is hard for me to decide something  was better than in my top 10 much less #2, because #1 is proposal, which is my favorite drama ever, and the new #3 is 1 litre of tears, a staple in every drama fan’s repitoire of what they’ve watched and for many their unquestioned #1.  I put a lot of thought into why and where i placed this drama because i felt that this drama was that good that it deserved such recognition.  And that is where i will leave this review until next i get back to it and add/edit more.

 

-Aznanimedude

Soulmate

How do you know, when that person is the one for you?

Byakuyakou

They were each other’s sun, but once more, they just wanted to walk under the real sun.

Star no Koi

He taught her how to live, and she taught him how to love

Cyborg Girl

I feel your heart