Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

From the many points in common between Toshiki Inoue and Yasuko Kobayashi, they do have a habit of putting douchebag protagonists in their shows whether it's the depressing seasons (Ryuki and Faiz) or the lighter seasons like OOO and Kiva.  Moving on... here's a collection of them as they appeared: When it comes to douchebag protagonists, Shinji, Kamen Rider Ryuki's main character is definitely one. How can I say that?  He can get pretty inconsiderate and can annoy you a lot though he does want to stop the Rider War so I can let him slide since he's not that bad of a douchebag.   Ren from Kamen Rider Ryuki is another.  Well we know how sad you are with your fiance's life at stake but you DO NOT mess up others (that's why he became Kamen Rider Knight) just to get your fiance to be better.  I was thinking he might not be as annoying as Masato but he does get annoying nonetheless.  Considering Kobayashi and Inoue were both working on Ryuki, he does...

Well after doing some reviews on the 90s, last decade from 2000-2010 and up to present, I thought I would do a review on the movie "Little Lark" which stars the late Peter Chen (who died from liver cancer) and the former actress Koo Mei who is now selling artwork (Thanks to Durian Dave for that information).  This film was in the 1960s (1964 to be precise) and I really thought I'd never see this with subs but I did.  So what's the plot?  It's entirely a musicale that may remind you of the likes of classic MGM movies like that of the late Elizabeth Taylor or the late Marilyn Monroe.  Now what's the plot? The plot is pretty silly as it features reporter known as Shitai who must get a story from the leading lady that is Xiaoyun (who is called the Little Lark in English) acted by Koo Mei.  It's hilarious to how many misadventures Shitai gets especially when he has an unscrupulous boss and when he takes the late Lydia Shum's picture by mistake.  For Shit...

It would be important to analyze the toy sales area of Kamen Rider for me especially I graduated in the field of commerce.  Now for my analysis: Kamen Rider Kuuga was basically one season that really was taking the whole new definition of multiple forms, each one was pretty cool.  So we have the Rising Form, Pegasus Form, Titan Form and Dragon Form which were all experimented on and did well.  It went beyond Black RX's having two extra forms and the format for riders with multiple forms was already a norm ever since.  Hmmm maybe I should credit Kuuga's weapons for adding to toy sales as well. Another strategy was the multiple riders.  I really thought that during the Ryuki series, I didn't immediately like the idea of having multiple riders in a rider but I grew to like it.  For Ryuki, it was Kobayashi's first work.  This show was produced by Shinichiro Shirakura and Naomi Takabe who I might actually credit for being money magnets in terms of toy...

Let me mention to you that I really don't really critique a show to be good or bad based on lighter and softer, it's more about execution-wise.  You can have lighter and softer and have a very good series while you can have darker and edgier and have a really bad series. Things started with lighter and softer with Kamen Rider Kiva which its head writer was Toshiki Inoue who had just finished Kamen Rider Faiz, his darkest work and this was where he attempted comedy.  Maybe I don't like Naomi Takabe when it comes to Gobusters but I appreciate the fact she was behind Kiva and OOO.  For Kiva, I guess some people were pretty mixed on it but I guess the designs brought in a lot of toys which again, we should remember Kamen Rider's top target are children.  I would credit this show for its aesthetic designs, action scenes and perhaps a lot of what kids really love.  Faiz was Inoue's darkest series and it was for me pretty much a hgue mess.  Kiva was messy but i...

Looking at how disappointing the reviews of the Gatchaman movie are and at Toshiki Inoue's bad habit of recycling or basically, he undid what he did in the Tokusatsu franchise. Now here's how I think the movie will be: The movie will most likely start with Dr. Nambu and Sylvie Pandora who are staring the Gatchaman project to have the peace of the world.  Meanwhile the threat of the Egobossler Government in Europe begins when Count Egobossler starts orienting his troops and we see Mechandol and General Kempler, he makes his speech and then starts a broadcast.  It might be like Radiguet's "We are your gods..." speech in Jetman and he might first to demonstrate his power blows up some important research facilities causing panic.  Ken Washio is the first Gatchaman volunteer.  As Egobossler blows up the space research facility, the energy hits four other individuals namely Joe, Ryu, Jun and Jinpei. Dr. Nambu may fall into the vastness of space only to be kidnapped b...

I just read from Manga Book Shelf and well, to no surprise the novel was more tragic than the 1982 adaptation and its remake in 2001 . Now for some bits and tidbits on the more tragic side of Romance in the Rain from the novel: First the tragedy of Lu Mengping the misguided bratty teenage daughter. I know she's done a lot of bad things but she was only 16 and hey she DID NOT murder anybody. During that time she got raped and got pregnant, I really think it was really bad for her father Zhenhua to actually disown her. Another of my complaints was that well she's a bitch but the original novel had her isolated, she stayed in a shelter and later she got out finding out she hasn't reconciled with her father, she finds her maternal half-brother Erjie in the orphanage and Erhao had gone penniless. Also, Erjie was never recovered from the orphanage in the second novel to be reunited with his legal family. In the 1986 version, Mengping got married despite her state while in 2001...

The Lu family is the center of Romance in the Rain which was utterly dysfunctional.  So we have the following according to the 2001 remake: General Lu Zhenhua- He is the patriarch of the family who has had a series of failed marriages.  During the start of the series, he already had seven ex-wives and he randomly picks Fu Wenpei for his eighth wife (and had two daughters, one who died young and the other was Ruping the protagonist) and then he immediately picks up Wang Quexin which was a bigamy then divorced Fu Wenpei for Wang Quexin which was a bad decision.  Of course, karma is a bitch when it hits him that after he and Quexin had three children namely Erhao, Ruping and Mengping the youngest Erjie isn't his but the son of his latest wife with another man who was a criminal.  Later we realize that Zhenhua was once a lowly servant who fell for a rich man's daughter, he became a general and later found out his girlfriend had committed suicide to escape an arranged...