Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

House of Flying Daggers is a Wuxia and love tragedy, which features three characters in focus namely Jin, Mei and Liu.  What's better for me is that they are played by Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Ziyi and legendary actor Andy Lau (who I first saw in Magic Kitchen and later saw him next in Internal Affairs).  Also this film was in the memory of the late Anita Mui, who died of cervical cancer before she could be cast.  Now for the review. The film had the Peony Pavilion where Mei sings a song which arguably was the theme of the whole film.  The song goes to describe of how a gorgeous woman then appears which causes ruin from a Han Dynasty poem.  Made me think that I would actually want to see a Wuxia inspired by the Trojan War someday.  In this film both Jin and Liu are both caught against each other, because of Mei's beauty which happens later in the film.  And the whole plot also revolves on the house of rebels as the Tang Dynasty is already in decline...

Black and White is not just a standard police series.  I would even say that the first series of Vic Chou to take him to new heights, is more or less which is all revolving around the anti-hero Chen Zai Tian and his partner, the more honorable Wu Ying Xiong (who is also a douche at times)... which tries to connect these... Chen Zai Tian's identity was a mystery.  So he was supposedly adopted by the mafia leader of San Lian Hui, where he got an identity change.  As the anti-hero, he has one mysterious past which goes to "Well he is... then he isn't..." which actually, his true parentage was never fully covered (weak point).  Then the mysteries move to Wu Ying Xiong, whose shady past is revealed as the series progresses forward. Another of my favorite mysteries in the series is... who is the real main antagonist?  The whole mystery between the Sarkozy and the San Lian Hui is something.  And for one, where in the world did Sarkozy get all that resources? ...

So this is the first version of Mischievous Kiss I've seen... I haven't seen the Korean or the Taiwanese version.  I'm usually more inclined to watch the Taiwanese version tha the Japanese version.  Now my thoughts on this version and I'm ten episodes so far. So Yuki Yamada and Miki Honoka are former Toku actors.  Yuki Yamada was Joe Gibken in Gokaiger and Miki Honoka was Mezool in Kamen Rider OOO.  So okay, I better be careful not to go pedo mode over Miki Honoka... and we have Yuki Furukawa who has not been in Toku. Another familiar face is Kanna Mori from Kamen Rider Decade.  I'm not all that surprised considering after playing the role of Kotaro Minami, the actor Tetsuo Kurata played in J-Drama with Megumi Mori as sidekicks in Hey Brother (which I haven't seen). So my thoughts this is a pretty silly story since I was thinking, Miki Honoka compared to Ariel Lin as the leading lady, is underaged.  And I was thinking that the story itself is more o...

Toshiki Inoue's writing in Kamen Rider is basically getting you mixed.  He wrote several good episodes in Kuuga, the he wrote his magnum opus Kamen Rider Agito (which was basically would not be possible without Kuuga).  Now for what went wrong with him! His bad sense of humor.  Introducing Megumi into Ryuki just ruins the supposed tone of Ryuki as a darker and edgier show.  If that's not all, you might consider the forced comedy he does a lot and I mean a LOT!  In Kamen Rider Blade, episodes 29-30 is a WTF cooking battle.  In Kamen Rider Kiva, I find the show enjoyable but some jokes in the show like Nago tend to get flat.  I think the worst part about him is that he thinks he's so funny. -_- Getting too dark and edgy with a load of douchebags.  I use this picture to show something.  Kamen Rider Faiz was a show with great potential, I enjoyed the human vs. Orphnoch war here.  But the problem was that Faiz introduced the worst char...