Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

Well I've just started rewatching IRIS and well, I'm here to admit that it was all a guilty pleasure of viewing Miss Kim Tae Hee.  Hee hee, just my thought she was a guilty pleasure of mine and perhaps one of the most unique beauties yet strangely, she's still single at the age of 33 but she's dating 31 year old Rain though.  But I'm now remembering the nostalgia of watching it in College.  I really had my thoughts of her being really a tough chick in here as well.

After considerably being known for darker and edgier stuff, like Inoue, Kobayashi also shifted into the world of lighter stuff which can be evident with Shinkenger for Super Sentai.  In fact, one may take a look at this series... Compared to Kamen Rider Ryuki, Kamen Rider OOO was basically a lighter and softer season which had these kinds of jokes. Eiji was no better of an idiot than Shinji in Ryuki, in fact here he is even worse.  I thought it was funny though.  I'm just glad that Eiji isn't like Spongebob Squarepants in terms of character development or having some useless gags going around. Obviously blatant silliness.  Yup, I thought Haim Saban ahem Kosei Kougami the Cake Boss can seldom get annoying aside from the fact he's a cheapskate of sorts.  Well Kougami may not be as annoying as Mr. Krabs in Spongebob but still, his cake gags can get really old fast.  I guess Kobayashi was fond of parodying real life people and I wonder who Dr. Maki was a parody of.  I

Well it's time I dug up some old videos and it's time to review the series "Forbidden Love" which stars eye candy Kim Tae Hee who's currently dating pop singer Rain.  The whole story of Forbidden Love is tragedy with loads of action as humans are in constant battle with the supernatural, namely the Gumiho race that hunt down on humans and eating their organs.  Which of course, that's classic nightmare fuel and her character Yoon Shi Yeon gets involved with a relationship with a human being known Inspector Kang Min Woo who has no idea she is a Gumiho, on the other hand she is also engaged to Moo Young, and of course the clan leader Lee Hwi Hyang (who previously played as her mother in Stairway to Heaven where she was the smoking hot wicked stepsister).  What I thought about this was that, it was hard for me to enjoy the action because I was guilty of drooling over a girl I'll never have. So what's the real point?  The nightmare fuel in this show has

So it's time for another review that was stuck in my head... that is to review Star Runner.  I might do my reviews on Magic Kitchen (disliked that film) and Sky of Love (still disliked it), but here's one good starter for Vanness Wu (so cry all you fangirls since he got married already).  The whole movie itself focuses on Vanness Wu who is a student who gets into a forbidden relationship with his teacher played Kim Hyun Joo.  For me, the whole relationship was somewhat complicated since it's unethical for a student to date a teacher as long as they are in that relationship.  So I think Bond Cheung (Vanness Wu) is merely a few years younger than his teacher Kim Mei Chiu.  The film itself is pretty entertaining considering the fact that Bond has to deal with the dilemma of falling for his teacher who may just be a few years older (which is she's a young professional) instead of somebody old enough to be his mother. While the plot is somewhat moving too fast, it was sti

Well I haven't done much reviews for Korean drama lately so I might do some rewatching.  These reviews might be IRIS (I'll probably rewatch it), Forbidden Love and Love Story in Harvard.  Pretty much, I was occupied with my top favorite Chinese dramas and Japanese dramas I forgot about Korean.  I hope this gets me back on track soon.  But I might do my review on Forbidden Love then I'll do some comparisons with it with other horror series for this October. Well I've seen IRIS a year ago so I might have to rewatch it before I review it.  As far as I know, this was more eye candy material for me than it was action-related. Other reviews for Korean drama which I have watched might include Iljimae (first season) and Spring Waltz. I'll probably need to rewatch them as well.  These were reviews taht were overlooked.

Pacing is a very important part in writing drama.  Some shows do suffer from slow pacing like TV drama in the past from the Philippines tend to drag even for a year or two landing in no real ending.  Zaido may have been advertised as a TV drama but still, it was no excuse for its lame execution.  As said, there were good ideas but rather poor executions.  Now to see why pacing does matter. Kamen Rider as a Tokusatsu drama really required proper pacing.  During Kuuga, Naruhisa Arakawa and Toshiki Inoue were careful about the time pacing.  That is, okay maybe you don't see Yuusuke beat up a monster in the first episode but they were careful not to spin things around too much.  The whole way Kuuga did its pacing was pretty much the model to follow and improve for later Kamen Riders, that is provide some plot even if there are some plots that run around in circles like Faiz, you still get the right pacing.  Faiz despite its rather redundant pass around the belts plot, still should b

Well it's time for another review after some time, but hopefully I'll get something kung fu related to review instead of Kamen Rider but let's start shall we?  So here's the story of the Battle Royale between humans and the Undead.  Pretty much, I think Kamen Rider Blade has a lot of unusual drama for a drama lover liek I am.  With this one, the Battle Royale feels like what I like in horror-action movies and series- nightmare fuel and tons of action, and a real cool plot.  So after a cycle of 10,000 years these Undead start to come again which is a real horror.  The main character is namely Kenzaki as Blade, Tachibana as Garren, Hajime as Chalice who is also an Undead and Mutsuki as the struggling Leangle who is fighting to control the Category Ace.  The battle of the Riders and the Undead leads to the huge Battle Royale storyline as well as the supernatural which really leads to some events.  The writers Shou Aikawa, Shouji Imai, Junichi Miyashita, Toshiki Inoue ad S

Obviously Kamen Rider Kuuga should always be remembered by fans as that experimental show that was a huge success despite some shortcomings and what really triggered a revolution. I find Agito better than this successful experiment but it would be wrong not to give this show its credit. Now for the stuff that was tried on... by Naruhisa Arakawa the head writer (his first headwriting job was here), Toshiki Inoue as a sub-writer (but too bad he later faltered after the success of Agito) and producer Shigenori Takatera as an experiment that was done with utmost care with some mistakes to learn from. Just my thoughts on how the season itself was starting to write, "How should Kamen Rider be written" and can serve as a guide for newbie writers, in fact I feel like I need to rewatch this series: The way the hero handles through ALL of his forms. Unlike Black RX where the hero seems to learn things immediately, here the hero must learn to control the new power. While it's a

Kamen Rider was supposedly known for its nightmare fuel value even during the Showa era when writing style was very different.  True the Showa Riders were filled with villains who had very convoluted if not really silly schemes like Super Sentai villains but they were still nonetheless filled with nightmare fuel.  Now for the change of writing style and the transition from "darker and edgier" to "lighter and softer". Despite the tons of changes Kuuga had in the style of how to do Kamen Rider, it retained the one thing that Kamen Rider was known for- nightmare fuel and scary stuff.  Yup, Kuuga is enjoyable but doesn't have much of the comical humor.  It had really tons of nightmare fuel and so did many of the Riders that succeeded it until Hibiki.  Kuuga was basically a revival for nightmare fuel and heart-pounding action, made better during Kuuga and done rather too much during Faiz. Kamen Rider Faiz was where things got the darkest and the edgiest that fo

After looking at Dragon Knight's style of not copying Ryuki plot per plot, I might actually do these kinds of changes in the story.  The Kiva family are savvy with the supernatural.  22 years ago, something by fate happened that led to the events of 22 years later.  A teenage guy gets some Fang powers later and in the middle of the humans/Fang wars which was caused by some stupid incident by the Kivas, the Fangs seek their revenge on the human race.  The Fangs now dwell among humans, some are good and some are evil.  As the Fangs have lost their natural source of energy, some of them have resolved to killing humans. I might really do a lot of remodeling with the story.  For example, his power sources will not be mysterious but rather I might get a teenager around 17 years old who got his ghost powers from some strange machine his parents made.  So pretty much, it's similar to Danny Phantom.  The portal opens to the world to the world of the supernatural, and the race called

Toshiki Inoue was known for originally being fond of darker and edgier stuff but after Faiz (which was one show I dislike for being overly edgy), he switched trying to write comedic stuff while thinking he's so funny.  Are his finales the worst mix (worst finale is Faiz and Hibiki) or his humor?  Let's now analyze his humor in Kamen Rider now... The instance of Inoue's humor showed up in Ryuki but with the addition of Megumi?  Megumi is hardly contributing to the plot material plus her silliness ruins the show's intended darker and edgier mood. In Kamen Rider Blade, you could consider episodes 29-30 are really stupid.  I mean, what's up with  that stupid war of Taiyaki vs. Takoyaki thing when Blade is supposed to be a SERIOUS season?  This was just shortly after he wrote Faiz and man those two episodes are pretty silly but I still got a laugh, but he can't reach Junki Takegami's level of silliness (Go-onger is still funnier imo) or Naruhisa Akarawa

Well adaptations can't be all bad like Meteor Garden.  Now either TVB or ATV or any station can actually take this Japanese media set in China to become a drama.  Well maybe tweak things a bit or maybe even continue the plot dangler that happened during the Anime.  My thoughts are these... a fresh new cast especially to play Liu Mao Hsing the main protagonist though we can also have Andy Lau to play as General Lee.  However I hope this idea will reach any Hong Kong station to take the initiative to get the rights to this show and make it into a live drama.  Now then, I hope this can really begin something new with changes for the live version.  As far as I can say, maybe just limit the legendary utensils to three or add new original utensils into this possible adaptation.  Now then, new talents are needed for this idea to come to life.

Here's my list of Kamen Rider era that I find is filled with so much nightmare fuel.  Kamen Rider Black had its own fair share of nightmare fuel prior to the Heisei era transition.  Now for them... Kamen Rider Kuuga- Yup this show was not only filled with some interesting mysteries that get slowly unwrapped but I'll admit the Grongi are pretty scary.  The Grongi plots are a suspense factor for Kamen Rider Kuuga, which you will never know when they'll strike next or trying to figure out any of their patterns, adds more nightmares to the show. Kamen Rider Agito- Yup after Kuuga's success, Agito became the next one which was more or less for me an enhanced version of Kamen Rider Kuuga.  In terms of nightmare fuel, this show has lots of it though as impressive as the Lords are, I don't think they were as scary as the Grongi in terms of plot.  But still, the murders in this show are a real nightmare fuel. Kamen Rider Faiz- Despite my dislike for this show, I'