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a few reviews -- just japan things
28 Mar 2016 03:44 pmMy entries are getting longer and longer...in between.
The endless cycle of sleep-eat-work-eat-sleep doesn't leave much space for introspection on the 2 days of the week you have leave from it.
I've actually been watching a lot of random stuff since coming to Sydney, and this Easter break has been a bit of an unintentional marathon. Some of them I haven't finished yet, but it would be so long until my next entry, that I should at least make the effort.
SPECIALIST
As a continuation of 4 drama SPs over the last couple of years that rated pretty well each time, it managed to be the top rating drama of the season (not including the long-running shows). Even so, the decline in drama ratings over the last few years have been unrestrainable, with most dramas these days struggling to break even 10%, and even the top rating ones of the season seldom pass 15%.
Is it good? It's not bad. The plot holes are less obvious than some of the other stuff that goes on in Japanese crime thrillers, and the mystery is usually interesting enough to keep you engaged for the 45 minutes run time. But the characters are pretty bland, and the overarching conspiracy was - rather typically of Japanese crime dramas - a letdown. The ending is open, possibly paving the way for sequels later on.
Verdict: a good police procedural, but don't get too attached to the big conspiracy.
Kaitou Tantei Yamaneko
It's been a long time since I could bring myself to watch another one of Kame's dramas, and I'm pleased to say that his acting has improved greatly. Yamaneko is sufficiently brash and burlesque for Kame's public persona not to overwhelm the character.
Yamaneko is an interesting character - sort of like Detective Conan bred with Gintama. Japanese literature (if you count manga/anime amongst "literature") does these sort of characters very well - from Kenshin to Gintoki, the carefree and careless main character who carries a dark and bloody past. He's a "good thief" who steals from the corrupt rich, but previously trained as a spy at the order of a mysterious entity called "Yuuki Tenmei" who came into power during WW2 but still exerts a stronghold on Japanese politics. Somehow, Yamaneko had a fallout with Yuuki Tenmei, and while completing his "side quests of the week", his main mission is to find Yuuki Tenmei and the answer to his existence.
Unfortunately, rather typically of a show of this enormity - e.g. Ouroboros, SPEC - the ending dissolves into ludicrousness. One of the twists was seen a long way coming due to an unfortunate casting. And like many Japanese shows of this calibre, the show is peppered with odd morality lectures and the ending is immensely confusing as to what it wants to say about the world.
Verdict: an excellent effort by all core actors, let down by a disappointing script.
Matsumoto Seicho adaptations
Matsumoto Seicho was one of the great authors of modern Japanese crime literature. Every year, there are multiple adaptations of his works released as drama SP, drama series or movies.
I watched a few of them: "The black forest", "The woman who bought the local paper", "The castle of sand", "The flag of mist". They're slickly produced SPs (well okay, most Japanese drama SPs are quite well done and often better than the series...) which are all well-acted and very atmospheric.
The female characters are...interesting, and really rather pitiable. Apart from "The Black Forest" which quite easily translated to a contemporary setting, the others...I want to say that they're dated, but they're not, because in Japan (and probably many other parts of the world) women are still subject to the same sort of inequity that's put on display there.
For example, the extremely capable and shrewd reporter in "Castle of Sand", who provided multiple clues and ideas to the police investigation, gets transferred away from investigative journalism because she's a woman and should be writing about things like...girly things.
Or the rather tragic female main characters in "The woman who bought the local paper" and "The flag of mist". The first story was extraordinarily...claustrophobic. Here is a woman who was being extorted and raped, who wanted to keep her marriage together, and murdered the two perpetrators because they threatened to continue their abuse. In the end, to protect her husband's reputation, she divorced him before turning herself into police. She had intended to kill herself but one of the other characters stopped her, saying - "the man's (the rapist) children won't get any of his life insurance if you die, because it would be counted as suicide. I hope you can turn yourself in, so that the children know the truth, and they can continue to love their father."
I don't know why I reacted so badly to that. I felt she had already been through so much, and while murder can't be justified, there's certainly extenuating circumstances. I don't feel the man deserved any sympathy and he certainly wasn't portrayed as a good father - he had multiple women and was rarely home to see his wife and children, and on top of that he extorted this poor woman for money and raped her multiple times. I felt she had already paid so much for another undeserving man in her life - the husband, for whom she had an abortion as he demanded it of her, and the botched operation made her infertile. For whom, even when her own honour and security was at stake, she still cut ties with him so that he could be protected. In a way she was a 白蓮花, but she also wasn't, because she became strong enough to take matters into her own hands and kill the perpetrators. I don't think people should commit suicide to avoid facing retributions, but I was very annoyed that the above speech could change her mind - why should she have sympathy for these children, when their dad is such a low life and when she couldn't have children?
Less tragically, in "Flag of Mist", it was about a girl's revenge against a lawyer who declined to be the defense lawyer for her wrongly accused brother. I felt a lot of her hate was misplaced, but yet tragically understandable.
What ties these stories together is that a lot of these women - these women who try to get their way, are not your usual "good girl". They become hostesses, they sell their bodies, and when asked, they sigh and say, "We have to live, somehow".
These days things are getting better for women, but his stories are an oddly painful reminder of how stifling Japanese society can be on the role of women.
The endless cycle of sleep-eat-work-eat-sleep doesn't leave much space for introspection on the 2 days of the week you have leave from it.
I've actually been watching a lot of random stuff since coming to Sydney, and this Easter break has been a bit of an unintentional marathon. Some of them I haven't finished yet, but it would be so long until my next entry, that I should at least make the effort.
SPECIALIST
As a continuation of 4 drama SPs over the last couple of years that rated pretty well each time, it managed to be the top rating drama of the season (not including the long-running shows). Even so, the decline in drama ratings over the last few years have been unrestrainable, with most dramas these days struggling to break even 10%, and even the top rating ones of the season seldom pass 15%.
Is it good? It's not bad. The plot holes are less obvious than some of the other stuff that goes on in Japanese crime thrillers, and the mystery is usually interesting enough to keep you engaged for the 45 minutes run time. But the characters are pretty bland, and the overarching conspiracy was - rather typically of Japanese crime dramas - a letdown. The ending is open, possibly paving the way for sequels later on.
Verdict: a good police procedural, but don't get too attached to the big conspiracy.
Kaitou Tantei Yamaneko
It's been a long time since I could bring myself to watch another one of Kame's dramas, and I'm pleased to say that his acting has improved greatly. Yamaneko is sufficiently brash and burlesque for Kame's public persona not to overwhelm the character.
Yamaneko is an interesting character - sort of like Detective Conan bred with Gintama. Japanese literature (if you count manga/anime amongst "literature") does these sort of characters very well - from Kenshin to Gintoki, the carefree and careless main character who carries a dark and bloody past. He's a "good thief" who steals from the corrupt rich, but previously trained as a spy at the order of a mysterious entity called "Yuuki Tenmei" who came into power during WW2 but still exerts a stronghold on Japanese politics. Somehow, Yamaneko had a fallout with Yuuki Tenmei, and while completing his "side quests of the week", his main mission is to find Yuuki Tenmei and the answer to his existence.
Unfortunately, rather typically of a show of this enormity - e.g. Ouroboros, SPEC - the ending dissolves into ludicrousness. One of the twists was seen a long way coming due to an unfortunate casting. And like many Japanese shows of this calibre, the show is peppered with odd morality lectures and the ending is immensely confusing as to what it wants to say about the world.
Verdict: an excellent effort by all core actors, let down by a disappointing script.
Matsumoto Seicho adaptations
Matsumoto Seicho was one of the great authors of modern Japanese crime literature. Every year, there are multiple adaptations of his works released as drama SP, drama series or movies.
I watched a few of them: "The black forest", "The woman who bought the local paper", "The castle of sand", "The flag of mist". They're slickly produced SPs (well okay, most Japanese drama SPs are quite well done and often better than the series...) which are all well-acted and very atmospheric.
The female characters are...interesting, and really rather pitiable. Apart from "The Black Forest" which quite easily translated to a contemporary setting, the others...I want to say that they're dated, but they're not, because in Japan (and probably many other parts of the world) women are still subject to the same sort of inequity that's put on display there.
For example, the extremely capable and shrewd reporter in "Castle of Sand", who provided multiple clues and ideas to the police investigation, gets transferred away from investigative journalism because she's a woman and should be writing about things like...girly things.
Or the rather tragic female main characters in "The woman who bought the local paper" and "The flag of mist". The first story was extraordinarily...claustrophobic. Here is a woman who was being extorted and raped, who wanted to keep her marriage together, and murdered the two perpetrators because they threatened to continue their abuse. In the end, to protect her husband's reputation, she divorced him before turning herself into police. She had intended to kill herself but one of the other characters stopped her, saying - "the man's (the rapist) children won't get any of his life insurance if you die, because it would be counted as suicide. I hope you can turn yourself in, so that the children know the truth, and they can continue to love their father."
I don't know why I reacted so badly to that. I felt she had already been through so much, and while murder can't be justified, there's certainly extenuating circumstances. I don't feel the man deserved any sympathy and he certainly wasn't portrayed as a good father - he had multiple women and was rarely home to see his wife and children, and on top of that he extorted this poor woman for money and raped her multiple times. I felt she had already paid so much for another undeserving man in her life - the husband, for whom she had an abortion as he demanded it of her, and the botched operation made her infertile. For whom, even when her own honour and security was at stake, she still cut ties with him so that he could be protected. In a way she was a 白蓮花, but she also wasn't, because she became strong enough to take matters into her own hands and kill the perpetrators. I don't think people should commit suicide to avoid facing retributions, but I was very annoyed that the above speech could change her mind - why should she have sympathy for these children, when their dad is such a low life and when she couldn't have children?
Less tragically, in "Flag of Mist", it was about a girl's revenge against a lawyer who declined to be the defense lawyer for her wrongly accused brother. I felt a lot of her hate was misplaced, but yet tragically understandable.
What ties these stories together is that a lot of these women - these women who try to get their way, are not your usual "good girl". They become hostesses, they sell their bodies, and when asked, they sigh and say, "We have to live, somehow".
These days things are getting better for women, but his stories are an oddly painful reminder of how stifling Japanese society can be on the role of women.
