Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

Well Shinnosuke, good job, now it's time to make way for Kamen Rider Ghost! So it's the end of Kamen Rider Drive with a special episode, I know some people may have gone "HUH?!" with Kamen Rider Drive, perhaps it didn't meet their expectations but I'll proudly say that I love the series and I think it's a must watch. The Kamen Rider Drive crossover with Ninninger was pretty good in itself. Now it's time to tackle on the upcoming Kamen Rider just in time for the Halloween Month: Not what I had in mind but I hope it will be better than Kamen Rider Kiva... The next Kamen Rider will be known as Kamen Rider Ghost. I'll admit that I enjoyed Kamen Rider Kiva and as of late, I am more excited for the next Kamen Rider than the next Super Sentai season. Now I'm still watching Ninninger, it's somewhat entertaining but Kamen Rider Drive had given me more entertainment value than Ninninger. So, that's my freaking opinion and I have no righ...

I would remember this TV series called "My Lucky Star" which the main lead was Jimmy Lin (who plays as the prodigal son of EShine's owner named Zhong Tianqi) and Korean actress Yoo Hana (who plays as the jewelry con arist Xia Zhixing) get entangled into a series of mishaps.  This of coruse, wasn't really a comic relief of a show, it was a lighthearted show but not without a tragedy in the middle.  I thought this TV drama was entertaining with how it actually talks about how it explores a rather awkward love story. Zhixing (also called as Ah Xing) herself had a boyfriend who was a con artist, after she got out of her jail, her boyfriend left her and she meets up with Tianqi.  With the typical rich man and poor girl scenario, I was expecting some loads of tears but it was laced with mostly lighthearted plots.  This of course also involved some reasons why Tianqi left and he's a contrast to his responsible brother Tianjun (Leon Jay Williams) who has a fiance n...

Well as said, yesterday concluded Kamen Rider Drive in a very atypical way. So Banno (the big bad) is finished off by his own son Gou, while the Global Freeze is about to happen. A lot of events in the show are pretty atypical which is either a good thing or not especially with how the final episode was written. After both Kamen Rider Drive and Heart destroy the program that Banno created to cause the Global Freeze, they have their struggle under the rain. Medic is gone, yes, sad to say and so is Chase (but their templates are still alive). Granted, Riku Sanjo wrote Kamen Rider W and a good portion of Kamen Rider Fourze, I felt like a elements were all there. While Chase does not come back to life, we meet the Roidmude that he was based on as the series ended. I thought the whole epilogue also showed how the team would cope up.

I thought about it what if senior actress Liu Xuehua acted as Daoming Feng in Meteor Garden?  I would feel that while she does have a very strong performance, we might make the bitch more bitchy with Liu Xuehua's acting skills, I also thought of one factor that could happen... she might actually give a lot of praise to the leading cast. She would probably mention the days where she and Qin Han played an on-screen couple and might actually call Barbie Xu Wang as pretty much her equal, Jerry Yan would probably be praised for his debonair acting, she might compare him to Qin Han.  She might call the F4's work quality as having been done thanks to a lot of cooperation but she might focus on Jerry Yan and Barbie Xu Wang in most of her talk. I could imagine her say something like, "During the scenes that Jerry and Barbie filmed, I could remember the time me and Qin Han filmed under the pressure of the water machine.  I could see how both of them were determined to do it to...

When it comes to Chinese drama where it comes from the People's Republic of China, Republic of China (Taiwan) or Hong Kong, I still cannot help but bring up the topic of, "For the love the rain!"  When I'm watching Taiwanese-Chinese drama whether it's contemporary or the older ones, I still find the rain really makes it a lot, even in comedic ones. My first exposure to the love of the rain was in Meteor Garden, I still couldn't get over that really sad scene of Daoming Si and Shantsai breaking up so she can prevent her friends from being bullied.  Post-Meteor Garden II, the love for rainy scenes just never stops especially when it comes to emotional scenes.  Dolphin Bay was in fact one rainy season, granted, it was a very tearjerking drama and there were lots of scenes under the rain.  For Romance in the Rain, I felt like both the 1986 version and the 2001 version (I haven't seen the 1973 version) somehow glorifies the idea of romantic scenes under ...

I do enjoy Chinese comedy drama like "Poor Prince" but I think this show beat it in terms of really wacky humor.  Now I'll admit that I got inspired by this post after supposedly watching Abaranger or Kamen Rider Kiva.  Weird?  Funny?  Freaked out?  Be freaked out all you want or criticize my opinion all you want but I think this show, "Love at First Fight" is really a Chinese drama, set in China but in its run, you really just get loads and loads of cartoony humor!  I credit Wallace Huo's improved acting and Miriam Yeung-Ting really knows how to act her part, that's why she's one of my favorites. I felt like this film parodies a lot of stuff that were either common among Chinese in the past, both the good and the bad.  Whether it's making fun of the stupidity of making it mandatory to have a male heir (which really led to China's gender imbalance in some areas), to Wu Shilang disguising herself as a male when she's female which wa...

Whenever I start backtrack watching with Qiong Yao drama and films, nothing has been more absurd with how I tend to actually like Qin Han and Liu Xuehua's pairing even if the former is pretty much, 13 years older than the latter but man, they do have good chemistry!  Provided I've watched modern series more than I did with older ones, I could actually write more about certain actors and actresses I wished were drafted into Qiong Yao's World! Jerry Yan and Barbie Xu Wang would be the first two.  While I would admit Meteor Garden II can be a pain to watch due to my eyes getting swollen then (insert funny scene) moments then more swollen eye moments, I thought about it that they do have the chemistry of Qin Han and Liu Xuehua at more than one level.  Jerry Yan is debonair in his acting and Barbie Xu Wang is the only actress I felt could cry as beautifully as Liu Xuehua.  I felt it that when I looked at Ting Yuan Shen Shen with Qin Han screaming, "Han Ye!!!!!" und...

I remembered an old article that called Meteor Garden as, "Having a plot that's older than your grandmother's dentures." Now I thought of that statement to how it also applies to heartbreaking, tearjerking Chinese series and it's a real challenge to sit through them and battle my emotions. After watching Meteor Garden, there was Meteor Garden II that was pretty much a tearjerker with badly timed comedy (ex. Shan Tsai's parents) that either piss you off or make you laugh. Meteor Garden II still made me cry to a certain extent especially when Lei reveals all his repressed feelings or Shantsai plays what I call the "Liu Xuehua card" so well, I feel Barbie Xu Wang is the only actress so far I felt could cry as beautifully as Liu Xueha could, a comparison I made only years later after I saw the series. When I think of how Jerry and Barbie were as a couple, I simply thought they were five stars for chemistry. The second season of Meteor Garden actuall...