Zíza

Note: Our monsters don't kill children, only annoying adults. A weak 3 stars. Beautiful animation, and in truth a pretty unexpected ending (or rather the finale doesn't disappoint, as it sometimes does), but damn, monsters?! Why? Why?! The synopsis sounds so interesting, so mysterious, and you do feel that mystery for a moment, but even that faint feeling dissolves in the stream of monsters from the second floor. Fewer monsters, more mystery, more interesting characters, a little trouble with a mysterious illness, and King of Thorn would have been immediately more fun, more interesting. P.S.: My roommate fell asleep at this.

So it seems to me that Aiba is getting worse and worse roles, and even doing less and less acting. I just didn't believe his role as the bartender for a second. Arashi's ending song sucks too. I haven't seen the anime, I haven't read the manga, so I have no idea what the story is like, whether it works, whether it's funny; this one doesn’t at all. It clangs. It's the same formula over and over again. I didn't enjoy it. I was bored. And I quit after the 6th episode. I really don't need to see any more. A weak 2 stars.

The 90s are called the golden era of jdorama. I'm slowly starting to believe it, because this is still such an echo of gold... You knock up a girl, you don't want an abortion, so you take care of it. The three couples here work out their issues (with Abe Hiroshi as the buffoon, and he's good at it), but the last word still goes to the excellent Takenouchi and Hirosue, and what a sweet word it is. You have fun when you're supposed to, sad when you're supposed to. You don't cry, but who wants to cry all the time either? There’s plenty of crying from the pregnant girl (whose belly hardly gets any bigger, if you ask me). We make our way through a couple of clichés that are delivered naturally so they don't get in the way, and it doesn’t matter given the good dialogue and well-acted characters, and I must say that the filmmakers captured the psyche of the two leads quite well (and the others of course, it just felt very "Japanese"). I can't do anything but recommend it. Even the musical element was not out of place. A dorama over ten years old? No problem, they’re usually better than the horrors they make now. What I didn't like much were the expectant grandparents – Ryunosuke's mother is a hysterical busybody who doesn't know when to shut her mouth, Chiyo's mother was unappealing to me, and her father was a bit too uncompromising at times, but that suited his character, so he was the only parent I more or less accepted, not to mention his stalking... :-D

Ueno Juri just doesn't fit here for me. I remember her from Nodame, I remember her from Swing Girls, and I just don't see her as a strong heroine, I can't. Even her voice seems out of place for someone with that personality and life. It's a good historical drama, everything is great. Do you enjoy history, are you interested in how Japan was unified? Definitely go for it; although the rather larger number of episodes might scare you off. It's definitely high-quality. And there are plenty of actors who can and do offer decent performances. If only Juri... I like her, but I don't like her here. A strong 3 stars.

Sure, each episode is different, but they have an element that unites them, a bored prince with long blonde hair and a childlike desire to play with everything he can. The beginning is very promising, and the next section where the darkness is revealed is even more promising, but then the elementary school boys come in and (unwillingly) start playing Power Rangers, and that's where it stops working for me. That sequence didn't work for me. But that's okay, because it keeps going and finishes with a grand wedding... :-D I’m also giving it a better 3 stars for the captivating opening with the catchy "shit down". And I am happy to recommend it. It's not perfect, but you'll definitely have fun with it, because the little Prince makes sure of it.

My rating is exactly somewhere between Natascha and Subjektiv. I was annoyed by the infantility and I hate it when someone refers to God as the only one. I’m not extremely fond of boxing, either. Nor do I care for the whole bulking, cutting, bulking. But Kamenashi is so cute here, he just puts a smile on your face. For the opposite sex, there's the beautiful Kuroki Meisa. A perfectly average dorama that doesn't rely on the acting or the story, but on the faces of the leads, and it pays off rather well. If it had been anyone else, the rating would just go lower and lower. Of course, there are some bright spots, too. You know: "He who seeks shall find."

The beginning looked promising. A new world. Cute artwork. A main character who is ordinary for the time being, but not especially annoying. And then the others showed up. These, unfortunately, were obvious archetypes at first glance. But it didn't matter; the artwork was still nice, there was still something to look at. And then suddenly there wasn’t. Suddenly the art lost its charm and just wasn't that interesting. The main character was transformed into yet another archetype, and started being annoying with some of the decisions he made. As for Phryne, her decisions were annoying from the start and always the same, over and over again. Maybe the cheery and carefree Nessa could have saved it for a while with her presence. But unfortunately, she didn’t. The other characters were just added baggage who somehow here and there took the main characters somewhere, kidnapped them, slapped them around, or chatted them up. The only thing that didn’t let me down about this series was the ending. I don't know, I guess I started to like the Japanese pronunciation of English. You can hear a different perspective on it by Subjectiv, for example. A weak 3 stars.

I fell into this melodrama and suddenly discovered that I love melodrama :-D I enjoyed watching them work, I felt as tense as they did, and I generally liked both main characters. I don't care how weird Saiko's motivation was because I never got bored with it. Only Miyoshi annoyed me, but thankfully only in limited, smaller doses. I enjoyed it and it was the only series where I was looking forward to the next episode. Good god, hurry up with season 2 ^_^ Another thing I loved was the opening. It suited the whole thing very well for me. A weaker 5 stars.

As I was watching in the beginning, I kept thinking to myself: "Yeah, that's pretty good, it's pretty much a carbon copy of the first anime series, but it's cool. It's live action." And yet suddenly, out of nowhere, I started hating Sawako immensely. Because of that, every little thing started to bother me. And that's just wrong. I admit – it's not a bad movie, it's watchable, some of the actors even act (quite well at times) and Miura isn't ugly, so it's watchable (although he was prettier in Gokusen). Nothing against the actress (Tabe Mikako), but I find the character of Sawako extremely unsympathetic, and that's reflected in my rating. Towards the end we start to deviate from the anime, which was a nice bonus for me. Except that Pin was more annoying here than in the anime (where I even liked him in some scenes, but not here). Btw. Why the hell did they have to look upwards so stupidly at the end? :-D All right, I just didn't sit well with a movie that builds on a non-existent character.

Oh come on, I was looking forward to getting my usual dose of Disney TV movie and I got something I couldn't even take offense at, just watch, and rather incredulously at that. Man, it really could have been good, if only there had been more clever dialogue (I don't even want a better battle, it's a TV movie after all) and they hadn't just ended up seated together at a round table at the end. OMG.