Sean Akizuki's East Asian Drama and Movie Blog

I decided to check out this Netflix movie which I treated like an unwrapped birthday present. The film's literal meaning is I Just Dropped My Smartphone while the international distribution title is Unlocked . I wanted to watch some legal K-Drama but with me watching some more older Tokusatsu (for now) - I felt watching this movie would be better than my planned watch of the legal comedy Love to Hate You . The source material is Japanese novelist Akira Teshigawara and a Japanese film named  Stolen Identity . A familiar face returns when Chun Wo Hee (of Argon ) returns as the main character. It was fun seeing Wo Hee and her excellent acting in Argon . Sure, I don't find her pretty but good acting matters more. Though I kinda wanted Shin Hye Sun to be the main lead even if Wo Hee still convinces me that she's in a state of dilemma. We also have Im Si Wan as "Oh Jeon Yeong" (his real identity is a mystery) and some brutal murders. A father thinks his son was committi...

  It's really an oddity when some older Chinese never knew that Buddhism came from India. Some people have even mistaken the Laughing Buddha for Siddharta Gautama. It might have even shocked some Chinese Buddhists when they were told that Buddha was an INDIAN man. Now, another character often represented as Chinese is actually also too obviously INDIAN. That's the goddess Guan Yin whose full name and title is Guan Shi Yin Pusa. The name means "She who hears the cries the cries of the world." Avalokitesvara means "one who looks from above". Another Sanskrit name is Gayatri meaning "she who hears the cries of the world". Guan Yin in the Hindu context Guan Yin's equivalent would be the goddess Gayatri. Gayatri is seldom seen as an incarnation of Saraswati or a totally different character. The name Gayatri is more synonymous with Guan Shi Yin than the name Avalokitesvara. Gayatri is called the Goddess of Mercy herself. One of Gayatri's temples ...

At first, I didn't feel like watching Mr. Queen which is one weird WTF series with food porn. I'm wondering why Choi Jin Hyuk is given a rather minimal role on-screen. Jin Hyuk plays the role of a playboy chef Jang Bong Hwan. Bong Hwan gets accused of something and he tries to escape. Bong Hwan falls into the water, Shin Hye Sun (Kim So Yong) kisses him for some reason, and the two become merged with So Yong as the dominant body. I was expecting it to be a body-swapping role where So Yong gets into the modern day and Bong Hwan stays in the Medieval era. I felt it was punishment from the gods that Bong Hwan should occupy the body of a woman. Instead, it becomes a weird mix when Bong Hwan and So Yong. At first, Bong Hwan is the dominant force while his body is in a coma. However, his body would later attempt to reawaken which causes So Yong to somehow switch between personalities. There are times Bong Hwan's personality becomes dormant while So Yong becomes the dominant force...

Soompi It's no secret that I can get rather superficial in watching anything. Nobody can deny that I went back to watching Super Sentai  because of pretty-looking girls that I'll never have back in the 2000s. I also had moments of being shallow while watching Chinese dramas (whether they be from China or Taiwan), Japanese dramas, and Korean dramas. It's already no secret (and I spilled it) that I once wanted to marry Kim Tae Hee while I was in college  because she was so pretty. I just felt like writing this post-Valentine's Day article since I'm feeling pretty Korean women tend to get overrated in the looks department. It's one thing to appreciate K-Drama for the acting and script. It's another thing when all that's done is to overglorify Korean women simply for their looks. It's not like as if there aren't any better-looking women out there. There have been various Korean doppelgangers across Asia. I'm not a bit surprised that Liza Soberano...

Back in college, I fell in love with Chinese entertainment thanks to F4. What I didn't know was that, like the Filipino language, there are several Chinese dialects. F4 had its famous song "Can't Lose You" which was the opening song of Meteor Garden II . Then there was the F4 concert in Hong Kong to which I couldn't different Cantonese from Mandarin. It was until I started listening closely to music of the late Anita Mui (and I only appreciated her existence after she left us so soon), I could say Andy Lau played an impact (and I first saw him in Magic Kitchen with Jerry Yan), Jacky Cheung (who had a duet with Regine Velasquez-Alcasid), and Faye Wong. Interestingly, some Cantonese singers did a Mandarin cover for songs originally in their native language. I remembered my habit of changing Cantonese audio to Mandarin. My aim back then was to well, learn, Mandarin, so that's what I did. Ironically, I still enjoyed Cantonese music after knowing that it was well, ...

I guess I'm now a sucker for cop drama, right? After the love story genre, I felt that legal drama can be more interesting. Though, there will be some bad eggs like how I dropped Somebody because of how boring it can get. Yeah, I dropped Squid Game but because of the annoying "main hero". I decided to watch Bad and Crazy which is crazy but definitely not bad. In fact, it's more than not bad. It's kind of good especially with the choreography, action, and the gray morality of some people.  I was reminded of the time I watched the Taiwanese cop series, Black and White . Black and White did have Vic Zhou with a vague morality of a police officer. Here, actor Lee Dong Wook, who's as old as Vic, while this place took place in 2021. Dong Wook's character is named Ryu Soo Yeol whose birth name was In Jae Hui. Soo Yeol is pretty much an ambitious cop who has corrupt tendencies. Black and White also had Vic's character of Chen Zaitian as a cop of vague morality...

Today is the ninth day of the Chinese lunar calendar. The birthday of the Jade Emperor would fall on that day. It would be time to analyze the role of the Jade Emperor in the novel Journey to the West . The story would have the journey from China to India to gain the Buddhist sutras. An earlier portion of the novel took place 500 years before the legendary journey. Yes, 500 years which is the amount of time needed to win ten consecutive Mortal Kombat tournaments from the Mortal Kombat game. In Mortal Kombat, the Jade Emperor would be the highest-ranking Elder God, the one who'd call the shots, and have the Mandate of Heaven.  However, Journey to the West presents a curious case of the Jade Emperor's defeat. The defeat was so bad that they needed the help of the Amitabha Buddha to defeat Sun Wukong . How could Sun Wukong defeat the Elder Gods? Was it because Sun Wukong ate the peaches of the Queen Mother of Heaven, the wife of the Jade Emperor? Lao Tzu tried to burn Sun Wukon b...