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RL is throwing more and more problems at me, and I wish it stopped. I solved one big problem, I quit my stupid job, stop being annoying RL, give me a little breathing room now, please.
But at least things are good on drama watching front.
Kdramas
I watched two more episodes of The King Loves and enjoyed them a lot. My favorite beautiful murderer is still beautiful and murdery, and now he’s also having slashy moments with his boss. ♥ OT3 is still OT3-ing. I’m satisfied. 😊
But I have mixed feelings about the last two episodes of Wedding Impossible. I am trying to keep my expectations low and not to expect miracles when it comes to kdrama’s treatment of its gay character. *sigh* Just four more episodes to go, we’ll see soon if it was worth watching.
Jdramas
Before I’ll tell you about the last two Japanese dramas I watched, let me start with a little story. 😊
I haven’t been in England for six years. Last time was in 2018 when I went to see Hamilton in London. I wasn’t really tempted to go again until I’ve heard about Spirited Away at London Coliseum. It’s a re-imagining of studio Ghibli’s movie for the stage, which will be performed (by Japanese actors, in Japanese with English subtitles) for a limited time in London this year – from April to July.
And one of the three performers for Haku is Mashiko Atsuki (Yoh from My Personal Weatherman). I so want to see him on stage. I won’t buy the ticket now, because there is no information available which performance on which days exactly he will take part in. But I’m so tempted to just go to London for a week or so in May or June in hope of getting lucky and catching the performance with him as Haku. We’ll see. For now RL makes it impossible for me to go. I hope May or June will be better in that regard.
And for now, since Toku to BL pipeline seems to be a real thing in Japan 😉, I decided to cheer myself up by watching Mashiko Atsuki in Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger and Higuchi Kouhei in Avataro Sentai Donbrothers. These are only other dramas, besides My Personal Weatherman, with those actors available to me with English subtitles.
Both dramas are from sentai genre. Sentai (戦隊 lit. "Task Force" or "Squadron") is a sub-genre of tokusatsu involving a team of superheroes.
I finished watching Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger a few days ago, and now I’m nine episodes in with Avataro Sentai Donbrothers.
I enjoyed Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger a lot. It was very funny and sweet, with a few touching, teary-eyed moments, too. I laughed a lot during each episode, and unsurprisingly, my absolute favorite character was Mashiko Atsuki’s dancing and singing space pirate Zox Goldtsuiker.
He’s devoted to his family. He has a younger sister and two younger brothers and he takes good care of them. He would do anything to protect his siblings.
And he’s played by Mashiko Atsuki, so he’s very, very, very beautiful. He looks like that:
And here is Zox with his siblings (his sister Flint is awesome, too, and yes, his brothers look like little robots for majority of the show for plot reasons 😊):
And here on Youtube is a short vid with his first entrance in the 8th episode, and it’s such a fantastic scene. How can you not fall in love with him after that? 😊
Avataro Sentai Donbrothers was a harder sell for me. At first my main problem with this season was like that - this show is deconstruction of sentai genre, so what I enjoyed about Zenkaiger is not there. I like found family aspect, the team members liking and respecting each other and knowing who they are, and that they chose to become a superhero instead of being forced into it.
And since I watched only one sentai show it’s not like I’m tired of typical genre beats. Like at this point I wanted more of the same, but with ASD I got deconstruction.
So that was my thought process for the first seven episodes and I even wondered if I should keep watching. Especially since I have very mixed feelings about the main lead Momoi Taro played by Higuchi Kouhei. I find his superhero persona so annoying.
But then I watched the 8th episode, and it was awesome. And damn, the ending of that episode shook me. Well ok, fine, I guess deconstruction actually works for me, too, despite watching only one other show in that genre. 😊
But at least things are good on drama watching front.
Kdramas
I watched two more episodes of The King Loves and enjoyed them a lot. My favorite beautiful murderer is still beautiful and murdery, and now he’s also having slashy moments with his boss. ♥ OT3 is still OT3-ing. I’m satisfied. 😊
But I have mixed feelings about the last two episodes of Wedding Impossible. I am trying to keep my expectations low and not to expect miracles when it comes to kdrama’s treatment of its gay character. *sigh* Just four more episodes to go, we’ll see soon if it was worth watching.
Jdramas
Before I’ll tell you about the last two Japanese dramas I watched, let me start with a little story. 😊
I haven’t been in England for six years. Last time was in 2018 when I went to see Hamilton in London. I wasn’t really tempted to go again until I’ve heard about Spirited Away at London Coliseum. It’s a re-imagining of studio Ghibli’s movie for the stage, which will be performed (by Japanese actors, in Japanese with English subtitles) for a limited time in London this year – from April to July.
And one of the three performers for Haku is Mashiko Atsuki (Yoh from My Personal Weatherman). I so want to see him on stage. I won’t buy the ticket now, because there is no information available which performance on which days exactly he will take part in. But I’m so tempted to just go to London for a week or so in May or June in hope of getting lucky and catching the performance with him as Haku. We’ll see. For now RL makes it impossible for me to go. I hope May or June will be better in that regard.
And for now, since Toku to BL pipeline seems to be a real thing in Japan 😉, I decided to cheer myself up by watching Mashiko Atsuki in Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger and Higuchi Kouhei in Avataro Sentai Donbrothers. These are only other dramas, besides My Personal Weatherman, with those actors available to me with English subtitles.
Both dramas are from sentai genre. Sentai (戦隊 lit. "Task Force" or "Squadron") is a sub-genre of tokusatsu involving a team of superheroes.
I finished watching Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger a few days ago, and now I’m nine episodes in with Avataro Sentai Donbrothers.
I enjoyed Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger a lot. It was very funny and sweet, with a few touching, teary-eyed moments, too. I laughed a lot during each episode, and unsurprisingly, my absolute favorite character was Mashiko Atsuki’s dancing and singing space pirate Zox Goldtsuiker.
More with minor spoilers and two pics behind the cut.
In the beginning he’s a morally ambiguous character – he helps the good guys to defeat the bad guys, but he doesn’t care about civilian casualties. He mellows out a lot later, but he never really becomes a full-fledged member of the main superhero team, though he always helps them to defeat monsters of the week.He’s devoted to his family. He has a younger sister and two younger brothers and he takes good care of them. He would do anything to protect his siblings.
And he’s played by Mashiko Atsuki, so he’s very, very, very beautiful. He looks like that:
And here is Zox with his siblings (his sister Flint is awesome, too, and yes, his brothers look like little robots for majority of the show for plot reasons 😊):
And here on Youtube is a short vid with his first entrance in the 8th episode, and it’s such a fantastic scene. How can you not fall in love with him after that? 😊
Avataro Sentai Donbrothers was a harder sell for me. At first my main problem with this season was like that - this show is deconstruction of sentai genre, so what I enjoyed about Zenkaiger is not there. I like found family aspect, the team members liking and respecting each other and knowing who they are, and that they chose to become a superhero instead of being forced into it.
And since I watched only one sentai show it’s not like I’m tired of typical genre beats. Like at this point I wanted more of the same, but with ASD I got deconstruction.
So that was my thought process for the first seven episodes and I even wondered if I should keep watching. Especially since I have very mixed feelings about the main lead Momoi Taro played by Higuchi Kouhei. I find his superhero persona so annoying.
But then I watched the 8th episode, and it was awesome. And damn, the ending of that episode shook me. Well ok, fine, I guess deconstruction actually works for me, too, despite watching only one other show in that genre. 😊
Major spoilers for episode 8 here.
Monsters in this show are just regular humans overcame by greed and rage, and that’s why they turn into monsters and start attacking other people. And usually our heroes defeat them in a way that saves a human trapped inside a monster, and lets them live. And in episode 8 one of those monsters kidnaps the wife of one of our reluctant heroes. She gets rescued, or rather she rescues herself, because she’s awesome. But despite that her husband, who’s one of the superheroes, one of our main characters, one of our good guys, deliberately lets that MOTW be killed in a way that also killed a human trapped inside it, in revenge for kidnapping his wife. There is a voiceover with his thoughts where he says that this person deserved to be killed, and the world is safer without them. And wow, that was dark. For a silly show like that it was very dark. And I loved it.Tags:
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You are a much more devoted fan than I am. There are things I just can't watch even if my favourite actors are in them.
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*beams at you about The King Loves* <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
And ha, yeah, Wedding Impossible. I'm only at the beginning of episode 4, and Lee Ji Han is being so terrible, I want to throw him in a lake.
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As for Wedding Impossible I will only tell you that I understand perfectly your frustration with Ji Han, and I share it. :)
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Gong Yoo is a favourite but I've never even tried Train to Busan or Silenced because I know they're not for me even though I've read he's brilliant in both of them.
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