Asian Drama Queen

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Love Generation / ラブジェネレーション

Rabu Jenerēshon

KIMURA TAKUYA is 38 this week!

Happy Birthday, hotty!

(I wonder if he's still single - cause he's REALLY close to me in age - just kidding.
I know, he's married with 2 kids.)

This JDorama goes all the way back to 1997, and it stars one of my all-time favorite, Japanese actors, too.

At the beginning, his character, Katagiri Teppei, has this glorious mane of long, thick, and wavy brown hair that made me wish I could just slide my fingers through it, grab hold at the sides of his gorgeous face, and stick my tongue down his throat.

sorry ...

Anyway, the story starts out where he's kind of hanging out at or near a bus stop when a girl who just got into a fight with her fiance is dumped at the curb.

Aloof Teppei pretends not to notice anything until she starts to walk away, and then he invites her to sit beside him and even offers her a smoke - which she accepts and then proceeds to choke on after the first drag.

He nonchalantly invites her to entertain him at a nearby 'love' hotel, and while it seems as if she intends to oblige him, she ends up singing karaoke until the wee hours of the morning instead.

Undaunted, Teppei tries encouraging her to get in the mood, and she suggests that he shower first.

When he leaves the bathroom wearing nothing but black Calvins (sigh - wait a sec - I need a moment to simmer down from THAT delightful memory) he dives onto the bed only to discover that our heartbroken girl is fast asleep.

They part ways, but it isn't long before the two, mismatched strangers are thrust upon one another yet again at the office - where cocky Teppei is removed from the design department at an ad agency and forced to work in the Business Department unless he wants to resign instead.

He's not happy, of course, and he looks as out-of-place in a business suit as he feels about having to wear the stuffy garments.

He's at least pushed back his glorious mane in a ponytail, but the head of the department informs him right away that long hair is NOT acceptable and that he must conform by looking exactly like all the other men in the department - unless he chooses to resign instead.

Poor Teppei.

The girl he tried to shag the night before ends up being the OL whose desk is directly beside his, and when, after a few days, Teppei still sports the ponytail, the chick takes a pair of scissors and ... GASP!

No! You horrid, wicked, evil BITCH!

Yes, she did do that - she cut that ponytail right off his head, and I think I threw something at the computer screen, too, I was so angry.

Okay, whatever ... so, this is the story of a few love situations that all converge.

Teppei is still in love with his high school sweetheart, who turns out to be his older brothers fiance, and the OL he spent a loveless night with at the 'love' hotel still has feelings for the man who eventually dumps her for another woman.

Teppei also has a cute friend who has a crush on the OL, and she has a friend who wants to get busy with Teppei.

Whatever - of the 27,791 total views at aznv.tv, a majority of them gave this a 5 out of 5 points, and even as old as this thing is, I have to agree.

Yes, it was predictable, but even without my shallow observations about Kimura's super-fine ass being the biggest draw, he is an amazingly versatile actor who effortlessly draws you in and makes you believe in whatever character he portrays on screen.

There are a lot of issues personal and otherwise that need to be worked out in order for our destined pair to finally come together, and even then - Teppei's past keeps creeping in and messing things up for the budding romance.

I LOVE THIS GUY!

I liked watching Love Generation, too.

Again, it seems inevitable that the two, quarrelsome strangers will eventually come together in the drama, but the in-between stuff that occurs in the eleven episodes were nothing to complain about, trust me.

There were a few times when Teppei said something to make the girls laugh, and his delivery was so right-on that even I giggled like an idiot while staring at his smirking expression as he asked the laughing chick beside him, "What - was I funny?"

I know it's an oldie, but if you haven't watched this yet, I strongly suggest that you do - if anything (and like me) for a chance to drool over Kimura and his charismatic ways.

By AsianDramaQueen on November 10, 2010 JDorama, Kimura Takuya, Love Generation, ラブジェネレーション, 木村拓哉 0

アテンションプリーズ

Attention Please!

2006 JDorama that stars

Ueto Aya as Misaki Yoko

and

Nishikido Ryo (that dude from NEWS) as Nakahara Shota - an airline mechanic working for JAL, where Yoko hopes to become a flight attendant even after finding out that the guy from her 'punk band' days isn't, actually interested in girls who wear a uniform - which was the only reason she decided to apply for flight attendant training in the first place.

I didn't rate this drama quite as highly as others I've seen, and not because I didn't care for this story because I did, actually - it just wasn't, quite up to JDorama standards as far as I was concerned.

Didn't care for the theme song, either - but this time I remembered the MUTE button.

In each of the eleven episodes, we watch as our young, energetic and totally clueless Yoko goes through the motions of flight attendant training while incurring the wrath of a sour-face matron instructor not even involved directly in Yoko's training.

The woman in charge of her class is a beauty with poise but who also has that sour lip position a majority of the time.

Yoko is loud, carefree, and she dresses funny, but even after finding out that the guy she was in love with isn't interested in her or chicks in a uniform, she decides to go ahead and learn how to serve tea to passengers at 30,000 feet.

Ryo's Shota held true to his 'Ryo' expression throughout, and he was even rude to Yoko on occasion, but believe it or not, he actually cracked a smile here & there - or was it just once that I noticed and was so shocked, it stuck with me for a few, more episodes?

Regardless, Shota was cool, aloof, and a help to Yoko every time she felt like walking away from the monotony of her training.

Attention Please! focused mainly on the rigors of training for this type of job, which helped me to better understand the inner workings of what on the outside appears to be a glamourous position in life.

I recommend this if you are snowed in, have the flu, or a long weekend with no plans.

By AsianDramaQueen on November 10, 2010 Attention Please, JDorama, Nishikido Ryo, アテンションプリーズ, 錦戸亮 0

崖っぷちのエリー / Gakeppuchi no Eri

Erie Cliff

July through September of 2010 JDorama that stars these people:

The girl in the center is Eri, a girl from a seaside area of Japan with oddball parents who do wrong at every turn, but this has little affect on her psyche OR her interest in art in anime or comic fashion.

All her life, she has had dreams of becoming a famous sketch artist, and despite a bad uncle who keeps stealing money from her, Eri still manages to make it through a semester at a prestigious art school before deciding to drop out and just sketch full-time.

Publishing houses, magazines and the like turn her down until she enters a run-down annex of a major publication and finds a rag-tag crew of rather intriguing employees and lands a job as a cartoonist for the 'skin' or soft-core porn mag they produce.

A young man working there hardly fits the type of character who would photograph, much less write articles for such a rag, but Koizumi Kotaro as Hirabayashi Masamune is that guy, and his main reason for working there is because the photographer is his hero.

See, there is this well-known photograph of foreign children posing for the camera when a bomb explodes behind them, and the image garnered the photographer an award - so why, then, is he working at the smut magazine chasing young girls up & down the street to get them to pose for the dirty read?

This is a comedic endeavor with plenty of laugh-riot moments as well as an interesting storyline that kept me rooting for Eriko to the very end.

The subtitles were good, but I never got nor liked having to read the Popeye-type lingo, which I'm assuming was meant to be written in the form of some Japanese 'hick' dialect of sorts?

Eriko struggled to maintain her job, her dignity, and even her virtue while clinging to her dream of becoming a well-known sketch artist, and in the end, ... well, I'll let you find out on your own.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS ONE!

By AsianDramaQueen on November 10, 2010 Gakeppuchi no Eri, JDorama, 崖っぷちのエリー 0

나쁜남자 / Na-bbeun-nam-ja

Bad Guy

May through August of 2010 Korean drama that stars Kim Jae wook (one of my favorite, Korean actors) and Kim Nam gil (a guy a lot of people find interesting, if not handsome - except for me).

Kim Nam gil

When I first heard about this drama, it intrigued me for a couple of reasons: namely, Kim Jae wook, but also the storyline, which described in a totally convoluted manner about a guy coming back from the dead to haunt another guy who supposedly replaced him.

Turns out this is actually the story of a Chaebol clan whose head conceived a child by extramarital affair, and that boy came to live with them for a time.

Later, however, it is discovered that the wrong Hong Tae seong is in their midst, and so like any, human being with a conscious would do, they toss to the curb on a stormy night the confused boy, his possessions (none of which he had when he first arrived), and an adorable puppy tied to a leash.

For the first, ten years of his life, Shim Geon wook lived with his mother and a deaf-mute father in a tiny village far removed from the opulence of a Chaebol existence.

On the night the boy is replaced with another child (Kim Jae wook as the REAL Hong Tae seong), young Geon wook shivers in the cold and driving rain while awaiting the arrival of his supposedly 'legitimate' parents - who, of course, die in a traffic accident along the way.

Geon wook ends up at an orphanage, where he is later adopted by a couple from America, but due to the deep-seeded wounds of that fateful night, he returns to Korea as a handsome, educated adult with nothing but vengeance on his mind.

One by one, he moves in on the siblings of the Chaebol and proceeds to destroy them in some way, but to the bitter end, he remains somewhat friendly with our poor, clueless Hong Tae seong.

Both boys are romantically ensnared by the leading lady - who first met Geon wook the man when she hit him with her car, but without causing any, bodily harm to the super-human dude who walked away without a scratch.

She then meets up with our shiftless Hong Tae seong aboard a yacht in Japan, and it is at this time when vengeful Geon wook enters the picture - taking care of Tae seong so that his father asks that Geon wook serve as his chauffer/mentor/bodyguard.

I gave this four hearts because while the story did tend to seem drawn-out and over-done, I liked the acting of all the characters - including the chick who played an obsessive twit in Mischievous Kiss, who also portrays an obsessive, young twit in Bad Guy.

Sim Eun-kyeong 심은경 as Moon Won in

By now, I should know better than to try and read into these types of tales, but this was another of those stories where I kept wondering why the leading character couldn't figure out the obvious until the last, few frames of this 17-episode drama.

I mean, it was obvious to the viewer that Tae seong was just as much a victim of the Chaebol greed as Geon wook was, so what was the point of our Geon wook torturing the poor guy when it was apparent from the very start that he, too, suffered from the hateful and resentful machinations of the wronged 'wife'.

Ding-bat Won in was in a baby carriage when Geon wook arrived at the manse, so what could she possibly have done to deserve having 'revenge' thrust upon her?

I get it, though.

I mean, regardless of the extent to which any of the relations had in destroying Geon wook's happiness, he felt obliged to destroy each of them in order to completely destroy the happiness of the adults who had wronged him.

The mother-bitch in this story was over-the-top frightening this time, too!

I recommend you give this a chance if you haven't already.

Now, for my photo-journal:

The girls in Asia are dressing more and more like street walkers nowadays, wearing short-shorts with high heels, mini-skirts that 'almost' cover their ass, and so on.

In one scene, the leading lady is wearing a mini-dress as she helps a drunk Tae seong back to his apartment in the city, and after making him some warm wine, she kneels before him when he knocks the glass from her hand, spilling the drink in her lap.

Naturally, none of the liquid is on her bared flesh, but it did manage to ruin her dress, so she goes to the master bath to clean it up, and then she dons one of his button-downs since her mini-dress is destroyed.

This SHIRT happened to be longer than her dress, and yet she became suddenly modest and felt obliged to tug at the hem of the shirt in order to ... oh, I don't know ... cover her ass?