oh my god oh my god oh my god

ikuta toma is going to be starring (starring!) in a new drama called ‘majo saiban’ (!!!) which is basically “apollo justice: ace attorney” (or, if you must, 逆転裁判4 – gyakuten saiban 4) crossed with Judge John Deed, now with added Johnnys!*

ikuta toma stars as “a typical part-timer with little interest in social issues” (i hope he has a quiff, a comb sticking out of his back pocket and a delightful sneer) who becomes a lay juror, and we assume, develops… some kind… of interest? in social proceedings?

nice upselling of the revisions to criminal proceedings, coming in in… may, apparently? this is corporatelegal services social responsibility the way i like it. first doctor yamapi sells doctors, then SUPER RANGER nakamaru bigs up firemen, and now ikuta toma as everyday layman… hmm. what’s the japanese equivalent of “joe bloggs”? i hope that given the percieved unpopularity of the system that this won’t nosedive.

airs on april 25. must watch, must watch.

*dudes, would it not be awesome if KIS-MY-FT-2 played “The Gavinners”?! uglyface Kitayama (who isn’t really ugly at all, but the name has stuck) could play Klavier Gavin…

Reasons to watch Satomi Hakkenden (2006):

1. Sometimes you just need the pick-me-up that only wafū wire-fu can provide.
2. Nakama Yukie – ie ‘her out of Gokusen’ – looking saintly in period dress there, marvellous.
3. Our old friend, Terrible Gender Politics– i.e. not to spoiler anything but it appears that to express any bitterness at woman’s lot means you’re on the expressway to evil. oh and the only form of power a good woman has is killing herself.
4. Takizawa Hideaki, chewing scenery like some sort of hair-straightener’d hamster. Oh, Takki, Takki, why are you always in jidaimono, is it because your classical girly features are just too ~*dazzling*~ for modernity? Is it because the Jimusho spent so much money training you up for Yoshitsune and they need a return on their investment? Is it because you’re a master of the ‘flip your hair, look impassive and say something in mock-classical japanese’ school of dramatic arts?
   (not but what I very much enjoyed his look-at-my-range bandit/onnagata revenge tragedy whatnot a year ago, in which Takki had some kind of bromance with… himself? I suspect the ichikawa kon original is probably more fun – apparently it has unnecessary jazz? you can’t go wrong with unnecessary jazz.)
5. Let’s jump out a window so we can fight on the roof! Let’s run away from the road so we can fight in a forest! Super bad special effects! I love you, all attempts to create a Japanese wuxia.
6. Was that… did I hear… a speech about the meaning of nakama? Oh, Takki, you shouldn’t have.
7. YAMASHITA SHOON, WIND WAKER.

Will someone else please take up the issue of new drama “Smile”? With Arashi’s Matsujun playing a half-Filipino “whose father has died and mother has disappeared. Despite his misfortune and the issues he deals with, such as race, he lives his life positively with a constant smile“? I simply don’t have enough grounding to tackle the world of “haafu” kids andwhether Matsujun’s eyebrows are “enough” to passport (ha! pun not intended) him to the haafu-experience (whatever that might be). Because I’m just like “buhh”?

Also featuring much hated by me Aragaki Yui (short version: I used to like her, then Code Blue, then frothing at the mouth red-misted rage at the mere sound of her name), playing “a young woman living cheerfully despite losing her ability to speak due to an accident“. I suppose at least she won’t be talking? I’m sorry, “Gakky”. It’s me. And you. We won’t do.

I hope Jun gets to speak in Tagalog.

Everything else about this = feeeeeeeeeear (google suggests the tagalog nahihintatakutan <– gripped by fear, that’s about right!)

SHOCK AUTHORIAL REVELATION. Shin and Yuko Kibayashi are nothing more but another pen-name. I can now exclusively reveal the true writers of Kami no Shizuku: IE VIZ: Michael Winner and Matthew Fort tanked up on a heady diet of the Twilight series and 20 bottles of vintage chateaux 2 bouteilles pour un fiveur dans le newsagente locale. Seriously, the amount of purple prose has already been run through a translator, but it goes on! And on! Descriptions from the art galleries! Description by the character of the deep soil in the south of France! Analogy to butterflies! “A mist, a bridge across the mist, a flower field, the intoxicating scent of red BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOOOOD”…. all combined with CGI straight out of those “magic 3d pictures” which we all loved in the early 90s…

FURTHERMORE, in addition to the characters ALREADY lecturing your humble viewer on the matter of plonk ((a)Msr Robert, the long haired wine sensei, (b)the mysterious barkeep who seems to think NOTHING about opening prize vintages for sampling purposes, (c)Tomine Issei and his 3D GLASSES OF EVIL, (d) his WIFE in her fur coat of evil AND (e)manic pixie dream wine girl), we have yet ANOTHER fine wine conniseur who ironically enough – is one of those “Japanese Beer Girls” (TM). Can you imagine! She advertises beer but really likes wine ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH GO AWAY.

ITEM! This is possibly a little unfair to Matthew Fort but I can’t think of any other wine critics so whatever.

ITEM! do Bordeaux and Burgundy wines really come in different shaped bottles? I can’t say I’ve ever noticed this down Threshers. I suppose I *have* learnt something… unfortunately the major lesson is STICK TO GIN. Come on, Jin’s Gin y’all. COMMISSION x 12 (c) me).

Now I’d best get back and finish the episode, I had to stop 17 minutes in just to post this…

Yuukan Club, the drama unique for throwing the concept of ANY non-Johnnys Entertainment signed tarento as starring actors out of the window, did quite well last season. Akanishi Jin starred as a lollipop addicted son of a bumbling police chief, fellow band member Taguchi Junnosuke dyed his hair bright blonde because he was HALF SWEDISH do you SEE (son of the Swedish ambassador? Why Johnny, with these Rocher you are really spoiling us), and Kanjani8’s pratfall gutter-humour and boob-fixated Yokoyama Yu got himself a preppy hairdid and played a serious straight acting son of a hospital director. As far as I am aware, no-one played the son of a preacher man. (Their female opposite numbers were respectively daughters of a jewellery empire, a tea-ceremony family* and er… eccentric head of a huuuge corporation).

These characters were RICH. Loaded. Rich characters, attending rich people’s public school. (Scrap Teacher, which I am afraid I couldn’t bear for more than 1.5 eps had rich people crashing a poor foax school – when Dewy Eyed Love Moppet Yamada Ryosuke parachuted out of a helicopter you will understand why I had to stop watching it? I’m sorry Yuto Nakajima I do ♥ you but I HAVE MY BLOOD PRESSURE TO THINK OF). Yuukan Club on the other hand gets around the tedious wealth gap by eliminating poor people from the school entirely! This leaves the Yuukan Club in the position where the poor people are – literally! – the playthings of the rich, the Yuukan Club sits in the palatial high school at court and involves themselves in the grebt unwashed’s dilemmas “to pass time”.

I said the other day when considering possible reasons behind the bombing of Kami no Shizuku that “a Yuukan Club, say”, would probably do fine now. I put forward that the yuppie-esque world of KnS is alienating in a climate that wants everyday heroism. Would that mean that if a Yuukan Club aired now, it might also tank? (Putting aside the issue that I highly doubt that a drama with three Johnnys boys in the leading roles would be allowed to tank). I didn’t think so and here’s why:

The current Yuukan Club – is this a new rule? there is always a Yuukan club? Anyway, this season’s equivalent to Yuukan Club is this tripe.

Elements of Mei-chan no Shitsuji:
It’s set in a school where people are ridiculously rich! But also really MEAN. (Yuukan Club, Hana Yori Dango, all school bullying drama, all poor-girl-in-celeb-land drama)
There is a HUGE cast of people: all the girls in school, plus their fittt butlers oh god even saying it makes me feel like a moron (for certain definitions of ‘fit’. seriously, the definition of ikemen in these dramas is pret-ty loose. and yes it seems like the majority of the cast are direct from Hana Kimi.) (Hana Kimi, the Gokusens, all vaguely comedic school drama)
Lead character really likes making udon as it reminds her of her family. (all food drama ever. Mind you, this time it’s washoku for once)
Tomboyish girl has to learn to become ladylike for utterly contrived reasons (that Aya Ueto stewardess drama, actually all Aya Ueto dramas ever. i remember when i used to like Aya Ueto. it was before i saw any of her dramas.)
Actually, you know, spending more than a couple of seconds thinking about this drama’s setup makes me feel as if the neurons are steadily falling out of my brain. There is some kind of insaaaaane gender politics to be drawn out of here (so every spoilt rich girl has a male ‘butler’ who exists to serve her, on first glance someone who reflects her emotions/opinions but some of them have – gasp – their own motives for choosing service), but the utterly tired combination of
1) bitchy-rich-girl bullying
2) opaquely-motivated dei ex machinae
3) thinly-veiled allegory for the necessity of becoming more feminine in order to get on in life
4) sheer boringness
has kind of put me off watching any further.

In other drama news, as Sarah says, this season’s theme seems to be “the japanese, they’re pretty noble– in their everyday lives“. Take VOICE, Ikuta Toma’s current (he’s back to playing the unthreatening unexceptional best-friend part, who’s surprised): it’s like a CSI or Silent Witness in which no-one has been murderised. People have died in mysterious circumstances which turn out to have been acts of kindness! Or at least they turn out to be so after Eita has stroked his chin and looked ~pensive~ for five tedious minutes. I know I complained about Innocent Love and its unrelenting emotional sadism but I did not know how good I had it; I’d rather lol catholicism and Horikita Maki as lightning-rod of all the misery than this utterly uneventful pollyanna nonsense.

It’s enough to turn you to drink. Before I could even write up my first thoughts about new season wine-based drama Kami no Shizuku, comes the news that it’s tanking. Going belly up. On the rocks (much like the much hyped Jacobs Creek rosé “over ice” promo much pushed in pubs of London over the summer). From the source:

According to Shukan Josei, a decision has been made to move up the ending of the drama as an excuse to hurry up and finish filming.

I’m kinda baffled – not because I think the drama is so good I have the desire to watch the rest of the episodes, but because the drama is no more or no less bad than anything from the past two seasons! Thematically we have manic pixie dream wine girl played by Naka Riisa as the sommelier-in-training sidekick – we can also think of her as a “supertaster” in training. Her “mentor” is Kanzaki Shizuku, played by Kamenashi Kazuya, who in a “only from manga” plot set-up, enters into a rivalry with wine ctitic Tomme Issei over his late wine-critic father’s 2.5mil wine collection.

Some youtube viewing for yoooou~~~

IE viz, salad of all the sempais when they were but tiny kouhais themselves! Alltogether now, coo, aw bless, wasn’t Kimutaku still a dork when he was a bairn.

It also includes a little most excellent footage of Hikaru Genji. Boo, of course it includes some performances by SMAP (they are just as bad as BEAKS, just when you think you are rid of them they pop up AGANE) and the best of all – something which I must track down in full – a shot of KinKi Kids performing Go West! Yes, that Go West. Tsuyoshi’s face. It would be a great Moment in Pop, if there were more than 2 seconds of it… Undebuted KAT-TUN boggle at the hilarity in video asides. I wouldn’t giggle too much if I were you, bog-brush features… (naming no names of course, my little turtle pears).

In other news, I am considering taking tomorrow off work sick, and scouring London to see if I can find a copy of Hanako magazine which features Jin Akanishi thusly: with a fake tattoo of a butterfly on his wrist (just… confusing), in a suit (flashbacks to Anego, distressingly distracting), even sluttier in a suit and also wearing… Jarvis Cocker specs, which make him look VERY CLEVER and not at all as dumb as bag of rocks. I was so distracted when I first saw some preview pictures that I burnt my tea (honey spiced chicken, if you must know). Oh, I kid, I won’t skive off work just for boybandism… yet, if anyone just happens to be able to get to the Japan Centre or Mitsukoshi and if they could let me know if they may be stocking it, I promise I would thank you when I stopped whimpering. The best thing about photoshoots with just Jin is that one needn’t pretend as if they will bother translating the accompanying articles (which I did do, once, if a four line blurb about Yamapi being ones favourite person to see fireworks with counts).

I like to feel that Jin Akanishi is helping my understanding of the traditional battle of the sexes, as I have never been able to purely objectify someone so much before. So brilliant! He should have a prize, I will make him some cakes (not that he needs any *more*).

This is a bit late but I’m sure I have a good excuse. I’m afraid I’ve just been knocking back the port and occasionally shaking at the woefulness that is KAT-TUN’s christmas single. Making a song without a chorus is impressive academically in this day and age but this does NOT give it any further inherent value. Even the sleigh-bells sound resentful!! Dreary, dreary, although there’s a bling bling Santa with a gold sack in the video. Try harder next year! To try and make up for my delay, please find below a picture of Sister Angela with a leek.

SHE LOVES THEM THE WHORE.

We open up on the Mezrbox and Kousaku is wearing a towel over his head. Thankfully this drama hasn’t taken a worrying turn for the racialist, it’s a black towel and it is meant to signify that Kousaku is re-enacting his recent successful confession to our favourite leek obsessed nun. Kousaku’s eyelids flutter as he breathlessly repeats… “anata ga skiiiii desu”! Boxers roll eyes across the floor. Dewy Eyed Love Moppet Yamada Ryosuke picks them up, rolls them back. Ueda expresses polite disbelief that anyone could confess to Kousaku Hatanaka. Kousaku repeats his reply to Sheeshter, whilst DELM glowers in the corner, swirling his eyes around his sockets until I feel dizzy. He watches. It’s almost as if Kousaku thinks that the act of a shrieked confession in the shoddy excuse for a church means that this ridiculous crise du cour is over! Alas…

Caps from Isshun no Kaze ni Nare and One Pound Gospel…