April, and the new season of J-doramas has begun! Although finals are around the corner and I really shouldn’t be watching any kind of television, the spring season is really good.
Proposal Daisakusen
My long-awaited Yamapi drama since Kurosagi and Nobuta wo Produce. After watching the first episode, I can safely say Proposal Daisakusen is a rom-com version of The Butterfly Effect. The love of his life is getting married to someone else, but Yamapi gets the chance to go back in time through photographs (proxies for memories) during the wedding ceremony in order to set things right. This has to be the ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy, and I absolutely love it. My prediction: None of the (possibly imaginary) time-travelling changes a thing, and only real action in the present will get him the girl, though come on this is Johnny’s Entertainment seishun amigo Yamapi how can he not win?
Liar Game
First of all, it stars the beautiful Toda Erika, who played Amane Misa in Death Note 2 and various other roles in recent j-dramas (like Nobuta wo Produce, Galcir, Queen’s Classroom etc). Also stars Matsuda Shota who was in Hana Yori Dango 1 and 2, but who cares about him? Erika totally steals the show. Liar Game is based off a manga series, and reminds me of Saw in the way Erika is manipulated into playing a cruel psychological game. There’s lots of popular psychology in the show in how the characters trick each other into revealing secrets, which makes this the fun show of the season to watch.
Why is the new k-drama season so boring? The only ones that seem halfway interesting are Witch Amusement and Mawang, which I refuse to watch until I start my language study. There’s only language value-add in watching dramas after some basic language foundations are laid, which is why years of j-dramas and anime have not made much of a difference and I would still fail JLPT4.
On the flip side of the problem is the complete lack of any interesting c-dramas, which should be easy to handle since I have mandarin background, but since there aren’t any my mandarin is just deteriorating for lack of use. I’ve started on the recent TCS-8 drama The Peak / 最高点, which apparently had the highest ratings ever for any drama serial in Singapore, but that’s not saying much. Tw-dramas like ISWAK2 and Hanakimi are so derivative it hurts, and I simply cannot stand them. Mainland production 爱情占线 looks pretty interesting though it probably won’t start for a while. Where are the good c-dramas? I can’t maintain language ability with only Jay Chou songs.
You may want to try “The hospital”, a Taiwanese drama serial. Maybe abit sad but I feel there are lots of good underlying messages for us to appreciate. I also like it but it does not have a happily ever after fairytale ending which I feel is more reflective of real life. Yet, it encourages us to appreciate whatever we have.