Don't think I use the word Class(y) too often here but for certain women that description is so apt when describing them. Such as for Yuika ๐ who I miss doing posts for, she's never had many but all have been so terrific. As far as Classy goes she would be number one in that category over all women here and so wouldn't that top photo, doesn't Yuika just ooze of classiness(alluringness?!) in that pic? She sure does but this is not a post about Yuika nor any Japanese dramas which many sound odd as the title says this is for my current drama watches. For well over a decade 90% of the things I watched were from Japan, mainly things before 2010 as the quality has really slipped since then. Especially for dramas and it took me a while to notice that, I was watching dramas and other things from Japan just because they were from there! Sure others have done that for whatever your passion may be and after I got through the top two tiers of superb dramas should have slowed down there, say five years ago. But I didn't do that and after a while the Law of Diminishing Returns kicked in and what I truly need is a break from Japanese dramas. But mainly just newish shows as I have many from the 1970's through the 1990's to view and those I'm not tired of.
It's got to be tough at times for creators to come up with original stories, the last few years seems shows are just repeating what's been done many times before and there's nothing new and exciting. Plus I'm so tired of seeing ex-Idols star in these series, it's true I like them quite a bit but that doesn't mean I want to see them in a TV drama. So am putting current shows on the back burner for a long time and will concentrate on older series, mainly Sentai and Sukeban shows. Don't plan on recapping many of them as there's now over 2,050 posts of recaps and reviews, how many do I need to do? Not many more which is why I will continue this monthly series that will have 2-4 posts a month, they've been somewhat popular which means you viewers like this format better than of me doing twenty recaps for a series. But all my negatives were for newish dramas, my viewing of older Japanese movies has increased and will do reviews of them on occasion. The title says part one for my current watches, part two will be of some upcoming older movies that I will be viewing and all are from Japan. There's still no topping those old classics from the 1950's through the early 1990's though there's been some superb flicks since then too.
Began to get much more curious about American shows when my interest in Japanese dramas began to ebb. Glad I expanded my horizons a bit as far as viewing TV shows goes and I never knew much about any series, had heard of them and knew what the story was to an extent but that was it. When I buy a series at the store it's always the complete boxset and these days they are such a good deal, all are blind stabs by me meaning I didn't do any research about the series or boxsets before purchasing them. Not the best way to buy things but my success rate is way up there, I would say over 80% if the shows I've bought have all been very good or at times beyond excellent! What I'm also going to do is increase my viewing of Korean dramas, will talk about two of them today. To me Korea has had the best dramas over the past fifteen years but a negative has been how long the shows are, a Japanese series may last for 450 minutes while a Korean one would often be over a thousand minutes! Which made them tougher to recap but the last few years the series have been shortened, most are now a dozen episodes and that's good news to me so will discuss that and whatever else a bit further down the post. Sigh, I can never get enough of Yuika ๐ and I've been silently gloomy on how little she's done the last few years or at least things I can post about. That pic right above is from her last photobook which came out on her 35th birthday three years ago and as far as who I would want to be stranded on a deserted island with it would be tough to top Yuika, sigh again.......
Talked about this semi-historic series before and have been taking my time with it as I'm enjoying this show to the Nth degree and will be so sad when it ends! About a year ago did one of these posts and had mentioned how I was up to the fourth season of "Supernatural", there's fifteen in all! It's the longest horror/mystery/supernatural show of all time in America, it ran from 2005 to 2020 and had a whopping total of 327 episodes. Above is the box set I have and it contains 86 discs, each season is packed with such interesting special features and in all the 86 discs have a total of ~255 hours to view.... WOW!!!! This was another of my 'blind purchases' meaning I had no clue about the series but had noticed it a few times at the store while getting other box sets. At $125 it's not cheap but in a way it is as it's only $1.48 per disc or 48 cents an hour so to me that's quite a bargain. There are two other shows I've bought that have been higher in price and both are terrific also but not at the level "Supernatural" is.
I'm currently in the middle of the tenth season or at 208 episodes, when all is said and done this will probably end up being my #1 TV series of all time!!!! EDIT: Hmmmm, the final show for today may nudge this one out! I recommend this series so highly, I'm a tad odd as I still prefer DVD's and CD's, $125 may sound like a lot and it is but that's how much you spend going to your local watering hole for three Saturday nights! The story is of a pair of brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester from Lawrence, Kansas. When Sam was four months in age and Dean was four years old their mother had been killed by a demon in front of Sam who was too young to realize what was happening. Their father John trained the pair to become demon/monster/all-things-evil killers and the father was killed at the beginning of the second season. The Winchesters travel everywhere in America in their souped up 1967 Impala to battle the endless amount of evil forces and while unknown to most they've saved the Earth too many times to count! In season ten there aren't as many monsters but instead the brothers are battling Satan himself or the current ruler of Hell! He's a man named Crowley who has been around for six seasons and he just might be my favorite character. There's no way I can do this series any justice in two paragraphs and as mentioned I recommend this highly, sure a few others have seen this show and if so drop a comment about it as it'd be nice to hear from you and also about any other series similar to this one.
So after the twelfth episode of season ten of "Supernatural" took a break and will be going back to it tonight to finish off the remaining eleven episodes. Hadn't planned on taking a break but eight days ago bought the above boxset which was another of my blind stabs, it looked so interesting and when I arrived back home put the above series on hold for a week and dove into the first season of "Fringe", what a wise decision that was! **** Have made my return, stopped after writing that previous sentence to view the final pair of episodes for season one and there were twenty in all. Read the quality will dip a bit in later seasons, there were five in all, and overall it won't top the above series but season one was close to being the best one I've ever viewed! Went in without knowing much except for what I had read on the boxset's cover and I have been getting so lucky with these random drama picks.... sure my luck wouldn't carry over to the lottery! "Fringe" aired from September 2008 until January 2013, there was an even 100 episodes. This was similar to the above "Supernatural" series as there were many monsters but not the kind you would ever think of. Plus the creators were inspired by "The X-Files" so there was a lot of mystery and conspiracy in this first season, the intensity was actually much higher than XF.
These days I don't care too much who the cast of a show is but then again I don't know much about American actors. But try to choose series where there are no major stars or at least when the show aired they weren't too well known. The main lead is an Aussie actress named Anna Torv who is attractive but not overly so which is fine by me as I want to view something that is intense, mysterious, action packed and compelling which this season was. When the series began Anna as Olivia Dunham worked for the Boston FBI office but soon was recruited by Homeland Security after a major airplane crash. That was caused by a man turning into a massive creature while the plane was still in the air and incidents like those were becoming much too common for the Boston Homeland Security's leader Broyles, he's below on the right. Olivia is the woman and the man behind her right shoulder is an older scientist named Walter Bishop. He had been in a mental institution for seventeen years and Olivia sprung him to help out on that airline creature case. Walter has an IQ of 196 and is so eccentric yet after being released from the hospital in so-so shape his mind is snapping back to its previous state. So his release from the institution became permanent and he's helped Olivia with every new case she's received as Broyles has created a new unit in Boston to defeat these endless never before seen monsters, the unit is called Fringe.
First time I've had to use three paragraphs but it would take a hundred to explain this first season fully! Below on the left is Walter's son Peter Bishop and the pair had been estranged for twenty years, when the first season ended there were clues that this Peter wasn't Walter's real son and how will that play out? Peter had despised his father for so long but that hatred has mostly disappeared during this season, Peter has become a civilian agent for Homeland Security to help Olivia and her team. Mainly an agent named Charlie, there was an endless stream of monsters and other oddities such as teleporting which did work for someone!!!! It's kind of an advanced version of "The X-Files" though the leads aren't quite the pairing of Mulder and Scully. Am sure my ratings will drop with the other four seasons but I give this first season of twenty episodes a rating of.... 9.8/10 and that's my highest grade ever for a show! If you like the shows I compared this to and also the scenarios/storylines mentioned highly recommend obtaining this series and the DVD boxset was a decent deal. The episodes for the first season were close to fifty minutes each and the pilot was 81 minutes(!) so all in all the season consisted of 16 1/2 hours. Plus there had to be another three hours of interesting special features which meant almost twenty hours for season one. The second I will begin around Thanksgiving, there's a short series which I will discuss next that will be my next watch and then will have a week of viewing older Japanese films which will be the main focus of the next post for this series of what I'm currently watching.
In the longish intro was saying how Korean dramas have usually been better than the ones from Japan and have said that in many other posts but I've viewed four times as many Japanese shows. Mainly because Korean dramas are much longer and you have to invest so much time into viewing them. But the shows have been decreasing the past few years as they've gone from twenty to sixteen and now 12-14 episodes for a season so am getting back into them after a one year break. Have been slowly getting through a series that aired a few months back called "Bon Appetit, Your Majesty" but won't be doing any recaps save for mini ones in any Kang Han-Na posts. A few days ago I watched the first episode of another series, said if it was decent would view the whole show and that's what is going to happen! "Queen Mantis" is next up for me and will view the first episode again as there was so many details, names, past events, etc. thrown at us viewers and there will be no time for any filler! For it's only an eight episode series though the shows average 62 minutes in length, shorter dramas like this one is what I hope becomes much more common for Korean shows. As I also mentioned in this post these days I don't care who the cast is and actually prefer watching shows where I'm not too familiar with any of the leads. Above are the four main characters and as you can see it's geared towards those of us that are semi-old.... I'm not old yet but am slowly inching up there and sure the same goes for many of you reading this!
The dramas that Koreans do better than all others are supernatural/horror/mysterious series but this isn't one of them. It's an intense police drama and Koreans also do those kinds of shows well, comedies and lighthearted shows aren't so good but no country has any decent shows in those genres and I refuse to watch those these days. This is what I gathered from the first episode and the screenshots below are from it. A murder(s) have recently taken place and they seem to be the work of a copycat killer who used the same methods of a murdered dubbed Queen Mantis. Twenty years prior she had slain five people and is serving a life sentence in prison, her real name is Jung I-Sin. Her son is now in his young thirties and is a detective who was assigned to this new murder case, his name is Cha Su-Yeol who works with an older man named Cho Jung-Ho. Cho had worked on Jung I-Sin's murders and there will be a lot of flashbacks to what happened twenty years ago. It appears this new killer won't stop at one and the only way Cha feels this madman can be stopped is having his mother help out on the case! Will stop there with the synopsis as I'm not sure what's going to happen after this first show but most viewers thought this was such an excellent series, so much many are clamoring for a second season! At eight episodes it wouldn't take that long to recap but still unsure if I want to do that or just discuss it briefly in posts such as this one but the show below this is one I will be recapping!!!!
Last up for this post is my all time drama and what I mean by that is the first two seasons are unbeatable though the first season of "Fringe" as mentioned was a classic! In nine days the third season of "Taxi Driver" will begin, as far as dramas and movies go this is my most eagerly awaited one of the year! For those two previous seasons were must watches, have viewed both twice and enjoyed them more the second time around! Am weening myself off from recapping entire seasons of dramas as they take so long but will be doing some movie reviews and posts such as this one. However will recap the entire third season of "Taxi Driver" but not until it's finished airing, that's something I do for all series. The first two seasons were so popular which is why there's a third, if this is a huge success too will we possibly see a fourth season? This third begins on November 21st and will air until January 10, sixteen episodes in all that will be 65-70 minutes in length. For now don't know what to expect and don't want to know to keep my level of anticipation at a high level. These pics are from season two, above is the main cast of the first two seasons and all will be in the third season.
If you have time do suggest reading up on this series and all 32 episodes from the first two seasons have been recapped. They're easy to read in order as one of the best things I've ever done for drama posts is having the links to all of the recaps in a post so you can easily begin from the first show and read all in order. The plot and stories aren't complicated but there's no way I can describe what takes place in one paragraph. But briefly all five major characters have been wronged in their lives and all have enacted revenge on those who had made such a mess of their lives. All five work for Rainbow Taxi and works as a team to help other victims get their revenge but the team has never intentionally murdered anyone. The main hero is taxi driver Kim Do-Gi who has no peers when it comes to fighting, he's the one who's in the frontlines battling these creeps and he's such an easy person to root for. Kim is backed up by the Rainbow Taxi owner Jang, then there's the female tech expert An Go-Eun with the other two being the mechanics Choi and Park. The roles for Kim's four mates really became much larger and important in the second season and along the way there's been some evil organizations the group has had to bring down besides helping victims out. So the recaps for this third season won't be for two months, think I'll watch the series first just to enjoy it and then view it again to take screenshots, notes, etc. After these second season screenshots is the first mini trailer for the upcoming season.
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