Was going to take a break from this series of posts until March but have been viewing many dramas recently plus I get bored with just doing posts for gravure models and J-Pop Idols. Well, to an extent that is and one of the biggest pluses about this blog is the variety of posts I've done. For today will briefly look at four dramas I'm currently viewing, will have more of an intro further on down. Gotten into a nice habit with these posts as I'll usually start off with a favorite of mine who hasn't had a post for a while or has disappeared. Also have started off with some of my inane musings and will do that for today, the mini topic will be for marriages!!!! To begin the post off is Jurina and though the posts have really slowed down for her the last few years she's still a fave of mine and also with many of you viewers. Last week Jurina announced she would be getting married but no date has been set, he's a singer but someone I've never heard of and is about 5 1/2 years older than Jurina who will be celebrating her 29th birthday in two months.
Sure there's a few reading this who are like me and recall when she was SKE's Queen though still a teen. Jurina did say the pair had secretly been dating for over three years so nothing was rushed and 5 1/2 years is no major difference in age. Will try to do one more post for Jurina and hopefully around her March birthday. Those two pics above are from her second photobook that came out last year and the sales were much lower than expected. Jurina's solo career never did amount to much as she really did so little, Jurina's SKE mate Akari has shown everyone that being busy pays off and in the end run she's more popular than ever. But the biggest news to me is that Hinako registered her marriage on December 20th and that was a shocker to me along with her fans. Hinako will be turning thirty this July so she's plenty old enough but the man she's marrying is almost sixteen years older! That's a huge gap and he too is a singer though I've never heard of him. Let me have this news settle in a bit more and perhaps some more news will be coming out soon, hope it's not a shotgun wedding. Hinako is one of my all time favorites so I just can't stop posting about her so quickly even though her posts have slowed way down will try to have something for her around Valentine's Day.
Did have the news about Hinako getting hitched in the first post of the year and said she was the biggest favorite of mine to wed. She was my top Nogi member for a few years, had my top photobook of 2022, was third on that year's faves list and on the 2022 'Top Twenty Faves of All Time' list she was in the second position so Hinako is one of my all time top females. HOWEVER there was a bigger fave who got married and that was Minami Sengoku, had she remained busier after 2018 she would easily have been my all time woman!!!! At the end of 2020 Minami got married to an actor she had known for a while, after leaving the J-Pop group Up Up Girls she appeared in so many stage plays. About two years later Minami had her first and only child so her activities have slowed way down since then. But in an oddity yesterday got the video for her 2025 fan club birthday party so will have some screenshots from that as this April will have a post for her 35th birthday!
Would think most of you reading this know who the pair are above, most of the dramas I talk about are ones I had never seen before but it's not the case with this classic TV series which started over 32 years ago! Up until the Summer of 2024 the "X-Files" was the only American TV series I had seen, had watched a few episodes here and there of other shows which I thought were trash! But not the "X-Files" as I became an immediate fan and what helped is that my female co-worker was also a huge fan of the series and had been for many years. The series began in September 1993 but I never began on this until 2010, have viewed the first five seasons at least four times but hadn't for over five years except for an occasional episode. Didn't mention it but started again in early Autumn with this series, viewed the first season and for rewatches it helps taking a lengthy break as it all seemed new again.
So watched season one and they get better as the third and fourth are my favorites. Have viewed the first dozen episodes of season two again, took a break to watch the other three shows in this post. But tonight will start on the next dozen which will leave one episode to go. That's the first part of a three episode story which adds up to be my favorite 130 minutes of TV, the first two episodes of season three continue on from the final show of this season which was part one of the story.... make sense? Some highlights from the first twelve episodes are below, the man holding his arm out is a new FBI agent named Krycek who is actually a mole, him and Mulder butt heads often in the next two seasons. That odd looking creature below was a monster that had been breeding in the sewers of Newark, NJ and that was one of the few monsters we've seen to date in season two though every episode has been a winner. Many viewers think the two part "Duane Barry" story could be the best of any X-Files episodes, they're the bottom two pics which were from episode's five and six.
When the first season ended the X-Files had been disbanded but after the Duane Barry case which Krycek tried to thwart AD Skinner reopened the unit at the end of episode six. For a while who we didn't see a lot of was Scully who is played by Gillian Anderson, when she did get screentime Scully was usually sitting in a lab. That's because in real life Gillian was pregnant so she shot most of her scenes early on and many were inserted into the first eight episodes. By then Scully did make her return as the X-Files had been reopened so her and Mulder are once again on the hunt for the unexplainable with of course many conspiracies thrown in! I'll be watching this series for a while, least up until the end of the third season which means another 35 shows to view so will be talking much more about this classic series in future posts. Above is the box set I have for the second season, the others look just like that and are quite impressive but not like the next series I'll discuss. After the pics is a short trailer for the second season and there aren't many videos like that one on YT.
Have talked about "Supernatural" in two prior posts and wasn't going to after that. But viewed season eleven which was so terrific, when all is said and done this may end up being my all time favorite TV series! There's a lot of similarities between this and the "X-Files" as many writers, directors, producers, etc. were involved in the first five seasons of "Supernatural" which aired for fifteen seasons! All were filmed in the Vancouver area and so weren't the first five seasons of the "X-Files" plus many Canadian actors appeared in both series. The second photo above is the boxset I have for this must watch show, it set me back $125 but is worth every penny! There's 83 discs and a total of 13,700 minutes for the 327 episodes, that's close to 230 hours. Then add in at least 25 hours of special features and $125 for 255 hours of entertainment seems like a good deal to me! All eleven seasons have been beyond superb, am watching one season a month. Then I'll go back and start from episode one as I've forgotten so much of what's taken place, this show ended in 2020 and I'd love to see a reboot of the series but it would have to be with the original cast.
Who of course are the Winchester brothers Sam and Dean, they're #1 to me as far as characters go. Even with eleven seasons and over 220 episodes the stories are still so interesting and there's never a dull moment. It'd be impossible for me to rank the seasons but this could easily be number one and some unexpected things happened with the brothers. With the biggest of them meeting.... GOD himself(!) and that's the man in a beard below. His name is Chuck and he was a character near the beginning of the series who wrote novels titled "Supernatural". He was also a prophet of God and the novels were of cases the brothers solved but in a twist Chuck wrote them before they happened! Like may characters he was around for about a dozen episodes but after a seven year gap Chuck reappeared as God and that stunned the Winchesters and their enemies. The main reason Chuck revealed himself as God was to fight his evil sister and who knew he had one! Her name was Amara and she's below in many screenshots, shame we won't see her after this season but am not positive about that. Amara was played by the Canadian actress Emily Swallow who was terrific as Amara but she may have set a new standard for hotness and check out those photos! At the end of the season God and Amara reconciled which meant the Earth was saved and more importantly it means another eighty episodes!!!!
The special features for this series are second to none, my all favorite feature for any series or film was in this eleventh season. It was titled "On set with SPN: The Real Fan Contest" and it was fir who were the biggest fans of the long running series. Out of 20,000+ entries only two winners were chosen, they each could bring a guest and one was a young man from Oregon. The other mega fan was a woman named Yasuko from Kobe, Japan and she was such an interesting woman.... quite a kawaii one too! She brought her friend Shoko to Vancouver with her, the four winners watched episodes being filmed, how special effects were done, met the stars of the show and much more was in the segment. In a pleasant surprise the 29 minute feature is on YT and the video is after the photos, if you are a fan of the show I highly recommend viewing the video. EDIT: Here's the link to it, I don't know how to play it as I've never seen a video like it on YT and perhaps you'll know how to play it.
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The first two stories were very similar to the Japanese drama but of course there had to be many different things or why do a remake? The biggest difference is that this Liar Game is a live reality show and the money stakes are much larger, if there's a grand champion they will pocket 100 billion won or ten million dollars! Of course with so much at stake there will be a lot of backstabbing and there's also been a lot of that with the producers of the show who want to see high ratings and also their 'Moles' win that vast fortune. Nao Kanzaki in this series is named Nam Da-Jung, she's played by Kim So-Eun and she does look quite a bit like Erika Toda. Da-Jung is also a very naive and ultra honest young woman who got roped into the game when she helped an elderly woman one day with her suitcase. That's below and as you can see was jammed with Won notes, $250,000 worth! An innocent Da-Jung reluctantly entered the game and quickly lost her cash, as in the Japanese version it was to her high school teacher. Instead of an Akiyama Da-Jung recruited the services of someone to help get her swindled money back, that was of a man named Ha Woo-Jin who she met on the day he was released from prison!
Like Akiyama Ha was out to avenge his mother's death and as we've learned entering the Liar Game may help him discover the true mystery of that death which was a suicide. The host of the live game is named Kang Do-Young and he could be my fave character to date. Like Ha he's got a shady background and why did this once wealthy man become a reality show host? Forgot to mention that Ha is extremely intelligent, before serving a one year prison sentence for fraud he was a professor at Seoul University. Also forgot to add in that Da-Jung owes a lot of money to a debt collector because of her father who disappeared and left his daughter with the huge debt! So she's hoping to pay back everything with a win on the Liar Game show but the competition will be brutal! At the end of the fourth episode we were left with a cliffhanger as Da-Jung's debt collector who does like her stole the money Da-Jung needed for the game but don't know how it will play out as I won't view the next show for another week! Below are screenshots from the first show followed by a short trailer for it, for American shows rarely have screenshots but do for Asian shows as subtitles let you understand what's going on.
Soon will be having a regular post for Kin So-Eun who plays Nam Da-Jung in the series and isn't she one spectacular looking woman! Two months ago gave a mini review of her 2014 horror movie "Mourning Grave" and that was a decent film. Below are some photos from the event to promote "Liar Game", she looks much younger but was 254 in age!
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Final show for today and it's one that was discussed in the last drama post, "Undercover High School" which aired in the Winter/Spring of 2025. An NIS agent had been sent to Byeongmun HS after screwing up on a case, if the agent Jeong is successful his team won't be disbanded. His mission is to find eighty tons of gold that were lost shortly after WWII ended, the gold bars had belonged to the King but his aide hid them and was killed before revealing the location of the gold bars. Which are worth about 80 billion dollars and would help out the Korean economy which has been struggling and officially the gold is owned by the government. But the head of the high school also wants the gold to fund a corrupt Edu-City project that will brainwash students and wants the gold to fund it along with making the director a wealthy woman, her name is Seo Myeong-Ju. The first four episodes were solid but too much attention was focused on the school and students, not enough on Jeong's mission.
But that changed near the end of the fifth episode and the last three have been terrific, there's a dozen episodes and I'm up to the eighth. Supposedly there's four urban legends at the high school, if someone can figure out the riddle to them all it's supposed to reveal the location of the gold bars. Seeing as how there's 8,000 tons of gold how was it able to stay hidden? Jeong has made strides and uncovered three of the urban legends but what do the clues mean, two of them have dealt with a piano and grandfather clock. In the seventh episode Jeong has discovered that the school director Seo is working with someone at NIS who is a mole and had sent Jeong there so he could uncover the gold! After that Jeong would be eliminated and he's become so distrustful of all except for his teacher who he had known when he was much younger. At first there was a lot of fluffiness in the show but that changed, there's been two killings at the school and is Jeong's superior and mentor the mole at NIS?
What really helped this series out was when the role of the Jeong's teacher Oh Su-Ah expanded and she's become so key to the story. Su-Ah's real first name is Bong-Ja and she had known Jeong twenty years ago but he had moved away after his father was killed, he too was an NIS agent and solving this case may explain the mystery of his death. Jeong had no choice and had to reveal his mission to Su-Ah and she's become an honorary NIS agent. She is a tough woman and Su-Ah has been a huge help with this case, more than Jeong's teammates. Of course so much more happens in this series but try to limit these brief recaps to three paragraphs so it's tough to give a lot of details. But may in the next post as I'll be talking about the final four episodes and after a sluggish start this has turned out to be one superb series, perhaps my top one for 2025.
Above is a short video of some assorted scenes and there's quite a few of those on YT. A major reason I'm watching this show is because of Su-Ah or to be more accurate the woman playing her, Jin Ki-Joo. She's my current favorite actress from Korea and has been for about four years now, problem is Korean dramas are long so actresses don't need to appear in as many. Every show I've seen with Ki-Joo has been a winner and this is the fourth drama I've reviewed that she's starred in.... or has it been five? In three weeks Ji-Koo will be celebrating her 37th birthday and she's still single, if I could choose just one woman that I post about to get hitched too guess who I would choose!!!! So I'll be doing a post for Ki-Joo's birthday and it's been way too long since she's had a post but that's the case for most Korean actresses. For her role as Su-Ah she won an MBC drama award for best actress, the ceremony took place ten days ago and doesn't Ki-Joo 😍 look too perfect to describe?!!!!
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