Current mood:	cheerful
Entry tags:	jdramas, recommendations

jdrama madness
As far as I can tell, "And then I started watching jdramas, and I haven't done any work since!" is the number one thing to hear in any classroom teaching an East Asian language.  Of course it isn't always jdramas - some extremely virtuous Chinese and Korean students will watch twdramas, hkdramas, kdramas, or even mainland dramas instead* - but on the whole, we fall beneath the same scythe, and that scythe is Japanese in origin.  Which is to say, I regret to announce that I too have been laid low by this mighty opponent.

Honestly, they don't sound so dangerous on paper.  For one thing, they're short - jdramas in particular are rarely more than 10-14 episodes long.  And for another thing, most of them don't have official subtitles, which means that you have to refer on fansubs - which can range from fantastic to frankly atrocious.  (Despite a certain degree of internet reputation of being soap operas, I've read synopses for jdramas ranging from action cop shows to srs bizness stories about the struggles of people with life-threatening illnesses toperiod dramas to sff pieces.)

Unfortunately, what this fails to take into account is the fact that you therefore can't even pretend to do work while watching them, since you have to be able to read what's on the screen - and because they're so short, it's technically possible to finish a single drama in just a day or two.  (Of course, it'd have to be a very stupid day, and I'm sure I don't know anyone quite that stupid - well, apart from...)

Anyway!  I could ramble on about the various traits of jdramas as opposed to Western television, both in terms of what I have picked up from my research and in terms of what I am speculating on, but I think that is probably really boring, judging by the way people look at me when I try.  Instead, therefore, I have decided mostly for my own elucidation to talk about the ones I have actually seen, in the hopes of convincing more people to join me in sin.

The first jdrama I ever watched was Hana Yori Dango, over last Thanksgiving (er, two ago, really) at my friend's house in California.  With eerie prescience, we went through both seasons - nearly 20 hours of television - over the course of three or four days, and managed to finish before we were deported to our various universities and back into school.  This is insofar as I can tell pretty much standard: EVERYONE watches Hana Yori Dango.  Everyone.  Because it's insanely famous,

The plot, such as it is, revolves around the unlikely relationship between Makino Tsukushi and Domyouji Tsukasa.  She's a poor scholarship student with a mean right hook; he's the spoiled son of the chairwoman of an insanely rich corporation, and beats people up for fun.  Also, they are both certifiable - quite literally.

Hana Yori Dango is justly famous for being the most addicting substance known to man, but that aside, it's amazingly bad.  The characters are all unpredictable not because they're intriguingly original, but rather because their actions do not make any sense at all; the plot is a terrifying mixture of utterly implausible and dodderingly clichéd; and like many other jdramas based on manga, the world retains a certain flavoring of manga, i.e. it is ridiculous.  Also, despite the entire first season being set at school, I don't think you ever meet a teacher.

So, having been suitably traumatized by HYD, I returned home and vowed never to look at another jdrama again lest my eyeballs fall out and my schoolwork spontaneously combust** - a promise which I kept until, well...about two weeks ago, actually.  At which point my cousin introduced me to Gokusen 2.

Gokusen 2 is the sequel to Gokusen, and both of them, like Hana Yori Dango, are based on a manga (also named Gokusen).  There is also an anime.  And, again like HYD, Gokusen is therefore entirely made of crack. 

The basic premise of Gokusen is that Yamaguchi Kumiko (Yankumi), the granddaughter of the leader of a yakuza family, wants nothing more than to teach high school.  So, she does: unfortunately for her, all of her students are rampagingly badly behaved.   There are three seasons of Gokusen drama, of which I have watched only the second: I have it on good authority that they are heavily repetitive, and I like the actors in the second season the best.  (Yes, since you ask, I do have deep, meaningful reasons for watching this show!  Er...)  Unlike Hana Yori Dango, the main plotline of this one isn't a romance at all: it focuses on the relationship between deranged teacher Yankumi and her equally but differently deranged students, most notably the ringleaders.  

For me, one of the weirdest things about Gokusen is the disconnect between the two plotlines: on the one hand, there are the rather serious stories about the students, mostly featuring various threats of expulsion and bodily harm - and on the other hand, there are the ridiculous relationships between the teachers (greatly enhanced by the fact that the Head Teacher's eyeballs have sound effects), the improbable squashiness of the yakuza, and Yankumi's fruitless pursuit of a character I refer to as the Sparkly Gay Boyfriend.  This is because he is really gay, but also because he sparkles.  Quite literally.

That said, the student plotlines range from ridiculous to adorable to frankly rather excellent, with a very vague acknowledgement at best that there's any difference between them, and almost all of them include some combination of the main characters getting beat up.  I finished the entire thing in 24 hours - there are only 10 episodes, so it isn't quite as ridiculous as it sounds, but, er, it nearly is. (Okay, 24.5 hours, but it sounds better to go the other way!)  Sparkly, addictive crack, but also actually rather good.

Having destroyed my work ethic on Gokusen, I told my dealer to withhold all drugs until I had finished with my midterms for the week, and she kindly obliged; unfortunately, the next thing recommended to me was on mysoju, which is sort of like the jdrama capital of the internet, and thereby a place of incredible sin. 
Said next thing was Shibatora, a cop drama about tiny, baby-faced Shibata Taketora, a police officer who infiltrates various youth spots in his pursuit of CRIME! 

Despite a first episode which read like instructions to Gokusen and its kin to lvlup (prostitution, murder, infiltration, incest, abuse, and torture!), low production values, a bad dye job on the main secondary character, and dragging second and third episodes made me drop this one, although I think I'll probably pick it up again on my next break - when they get things right, they really do.  It's just that the ones they get wrong have a tendency to look extremely silly.

Giving up on Shibatora, at least for the time being, I went looking for other dramas starring the same actors as Gokusen: here, to my delight, the magnificent dramawiki [which I would link to apart from not being able to get to it ] proved horrifically helpful, and steered me first into 1 Pound no Fukuin, a comedy about a boxer who keeps eating himself out of his weight class and into trouble, the nun he's in love with, and his hard-drinking lunatic female manager (who at one point picks a fight with a street sign) - surprisingly awesome, except I got bored during the boxing scenes, through an exceedingly brief Yukan Club detour (lols.  just.  lols.)  and then rather reluctantly into Tatta Hitotsu no Koi.

Like Hana Yori Dango, Tatta Hitotsu no Koi is a story about a romance between two people of vastly different social standing, but there the resemblance pretty much ends.  I started watching THNK mostly because it had an actor I rather like, but then it turned out to be AWESOME.  Not only are the production values the best I've seen - seriously, this thing is gorgeous - and the actor in question so in character as to be unrecognizable as his earlier role, but despite it being a romance, the main characters' problems do not revolve entirely around their being thwarted in love.  And from a pretty early episode, it takes predictable scenes and turns them 90 degrees until they become awesome.  I could talk about this one forever, and I know a certain person will read the spoilery bits if I were to post them, so I shall not; suffice it to say, this one was awesome!  And I finished it in two days, because my brain fails at life.

At the moment, I'm in the middle of Nobuta wo Produce - hilarious, ridiculous school-based comedy featuring ghosts, a vice principal who is probably a crow spirit, a bookseller who only lets people he likes read before buying, a little old man who will follow you everywhere asking you to tell him the truth, and a main character whose deep dark secret is that he wears his hair in a little ponytail on top of his head when he's at home.  I hear from my sources that it becomes srs bizness （一本正经!）before the end, but so far it is sheerly delightful.

Also on the list of May End Up Watching Despite Myself/have seen several bits: Kurosagi (a conman who cons other conmen), Ryusei no Kizuna (orphaned siblings taking revenge on their parents' murderers), and Yasha (secret twins, genetic manipulation, epidemics, and a theme that makes an oldskool Doctor Who soundtrack sound subtle).  Ryusei no Kizuna is probably winning at the moment, due largely to an awesome early scene which parodies the manga-is-reality school of jdramas, but in fact I'm kind of waffling. 

So!  Those of you who watch jdramas, what should I watch next?*** Those who managed to escape the lure, having once succumbed - how did you do it?  Those of you who think I'm insane, please tell me so!


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*Each of these have their own unique quirks: loosely and unscientifically speaking, hkdramas are like the actionist action movie that ever blew up in your face; twdramas are like manga-based jdramas on crack with one hundreth the budget; and mainland dramas are full of nationalist sentiment.  I have no idea what kdramas are like because if I'm going to flail around in a language that isn't the one I'm studying, it might as well be the same one consistently, and jdramas are shorter.

**Sadly, at my school, this would not be an excuse not to do it, since I would be hard-pressed to get a doctor's note for the spontaneous combustion of my homework.

***My ideal jdrama consists of equal parts pretty boys and violence, with enormous showers of bonus points for a plot that doesn't routinely make me headdesk.  People who recommend me things typically miss the 'violence' part of this, which is saddening, especially since romances are typically my least favorite type of story, but if you happen to know one that fits, I am desperate, here!