Japanese Dramas - JDramas
 

I don't there is another thread for J-Drama but please merge this one with the older thread since I'm not a veteran forumer.

Back to topic, do you still watching J-Dramas lately. No offense if you still do but I think its golden age(if there is any) already ended long time ago. I still remember when it popularity exploded after Beautiful Life was shown and it spread like wildfire. TV stations start to show their own J-Dramas.

I got to know some other good ones too like Great Teacher Onizuka and Power Office Girls. What I liked about these two is both much like seinen anime turned to live-action. While its pretty obvious GTO based off from a manga with same name and I don't about Power Office Girls. Some rumors said POG was based on manga too but there is no solid proof of that claim.

Of course there are some bad ones and at least disappointing at worst. Kindaichi adaptations are good examples. There are two drama adaptations of Kindaichi at a live-action movie as well. For the dramas both died prematurely and perhaps low ratings killed them.

It is safe that J-drama were actually killed by K-drama as Japanese housewives(who else?) rather see K-dramas than their own. Some had annoying shallow reason like the heroes of K-dramas often more handsome and bishie-looking than Japanese ones.

I asked myself, am I the only non-Chinese people watching Cantonese dramas? It seems so...

no, i haven't been watch jdrama for along time, the last show i watched was gto live action.

"JDrama" isn't in my vocab. They're all just dramas. And I don't bother much with dramas featuring actual actors, than animated. Be it involving Americans, Japanese, or anybody. Though, Desperate Housewives caught my attention once. LoL.

And, I did see GTO. And I was amused by it.

I've only seen a couple J-dramas... I just don't like dramas that much in general, but loved the ones I saw. Galileo, Bijo Ka Yajuu and Ryomaden were all excellent but I only saw them cause Fukuyama Masaharu was lead... I'm planning to see JIN this summer and perhaps Kimi Ni Todoke. Oh, and continue with SP which I stopped watching at episode two!

I don't know if there was a golden age for Jdrama. Maybe it was before I got into Jdrama which was around 2001 or so. I love dramas/movies so I still watch them. I started out with C-dramas, then anime, then J-dramas, then K-dramas. Now I'm not currently watching C-dramas and K-dramas (due to lack of good ones) but I do watch anime and J-dramas. My favorite Jdramas are Glass Mask, Yasha, Nodame Cantabile, Kekkon dekinai otoko, Hotaru no Hikaru 1-2, etc... I'm currently watching Jin 2 and a bit of Koukousei Restaurant. They're alright.

I'm watching J-Dramas with action. Like Security Police and Kosaku Kuroda.

I tried watching them a while back, but after 2 or 3 I realised they all felt the same.

They were either romance/drama related, or work related. The romance/drama was all overly artificial, usually built on incredibly unlikely premises, while also taking itself perhaps a bit too seriously. The work related ones (like detective etc.) had too much "dramatic passion" whereby the lead makes these dramatic impassioned speeches to the people they come in contact with, and they're inspired. It was good the first time, and maybe even the second or third time, but the pattern gets old. Saw it a lot in shows like GTO and it's copycats.

It's possible that there are good drama I'm not exposed to, but as it is currently the english fanbase for them skews heavily towards those types of vehicles. In my experience while there's a lot of good japanese cinema, that quality doesn't usually extend into the televised domain. As I said though, a lot of it is down to my own tastes not gelling with the drama fandom. Anime fandom is quite balanced, if nerdy, while drama fandom is much more heavily skewed towards women. Often shows are popular just because they have a hawt male lead like Takuya Shimura. In my experience K-Drama has a bit more subtelty, but has similiar problems. Unusually though, I enjoy Anime drama and only rarely j-drama. The acting feels better, for some wierd reason.

Yep, Boss is back with series 2, and on in an hr, so gonna get ready, unwind with food for the night while watching it ;)

http://wiki.d-addicts.com/static/images/e/e2/Boss_2.jpg

I'm probably the only one here who's into J-Dramas. Lol.

I just recently finished watching Absolute Boyfriend. It was pretty entertaining. But my favorite J-drama so far is the Team Medical Dragon (Iryuu) series. Maybe it's because I'm a medical student. Lol.

I'm not into K-dramas much. The only one I really liked was Coffee Prince. But IMO, K-dramas are pretty draggy in general.

I personally haven't watched a J-Drama now for a good while, but recalling some of my previous watches in the past from a couple of years ago online, I can very strongly recommend LIFE, Hana Kimi & Otomen very much, I thoroughly enjoyed all three of those very much :)

I prefer K-dramas to J-dramas.
But a drama is a drama, and I looove dramas ~ heehee ~
Prefer real people to anime :D

While LIFE was a good show, I'm not exactly into J-Dramas much. They all kinda feel the same for some reason...

I don't like K-Dramas much either. To be totally honest, I'm not into dramas much at all. And BTW...I don't think that J-Dramas were super-popular here ever. Nobody that I know ever watched one (and some of them are pretty big anime fans.)

LIFE was an amazing drama! :D

I guess a lot of them are similar but depends which genres you're looking in there's so many. Same goes with anime, they're all kinda recycled and samey. :uhoh:

I have to agree. I watched one J-Drama, and enjoyed it, then i watched another, and it felt eerily the same. Then I watched another, and it again felt the same...

K-Drama is a bit better, their acting quality is generally better over all, but it still has the same weird "sameness" feeling.

Only watched those, i knew from the manga/anime, like Hanbun or Higurashi. ;)

No. It has been a very long time since I watched J-drama.

Beautiful Life (2000) was great because of the lovely Tokiwa Takako. But I believe the last J-drama series I watched that I really, really enjoyed was Dekichatta Kekkon (Shotgun Marriage; 2001), starring Takenouchi Yutaka and perennial cutie pie Ryoko Hirosue.



There was one. Or, at the very least, a short-lived "Japan wave" that started in the late 90s and lasted until the early 2000s. In Singapore, I recall it swelled with the massive hit Beach Boys (1997), the rom-com that catapulted the aforementioned to Takenouchi and Ryoko into prime-time fame along with Sorimachi Takashi. (Incidentally, I've always suspected that the main trio of Samurai Champloo was at the very least unconsciously inspired by the Beach Boys cast. The similarities, in terms of character designs and relationships, were too coincidental to ignore: Sorimachi as Mugen, Takenouchi as Jin, and Ryoko as Fuu.)

But even before Beach Boys, there was the mega hit Hitotsu Yane no Shita (Under One Roof; 1993 and 1997), which I watched while in university, courtesy of my friends' *ahem* friendly sources. The two-season series' popular cast included the then-reigning Japanese celebrity nadeshiko, Sakai Noriko. At the time, the commercial concept of J-drama or the J-wave hadn't quite been invented yet. Or, at the very least, I wasn't aware that I was watching "J-drama", the same way some people weren't aware that they were watching anime while enjoying Pokemon when they were kids.

I blame SMAP. The "boy band" has dominated the Japanese entertainment scene for so long (the five guys, including the ever-arrogant Kimura Takuya, remain active even today) that commercial TV in Japan has stagnated somewhat. Similar problems exist in Hong Kong and Taiwan: TV studios bank heavily on celebrities to flog otherwise-bland shows, and no longer bother to push anything groundbreaking or original. It doesn't help that most of these celebrities are sub-par actors at best.

In my opinion, Japanese period/historical dramas tend to be very, very much a cut above the rest, and often make for very engrossing TV. I remember being addicted to the NHK Taiga drama Takeda Shingen (1988) while in secondary school.

And then there is the arguably most-fondly remembered biographical drama of them all: the 297-episode epic Oshin (1983). Heh, I still recall having a childhood crush on actress Tanaka Yuko, the then-reigning celebrity nadeshiko who played the adult Oshin.



Surprise, surprise: I just discovered that Tanaka-san was the voice actress for Lady Eboshi of Princess Mononoke. Talk about coming full circle indeed. :)

The idea of period drama attracts me, but I'd only be worried about them being as poorly produced as normal drama. Likewise the length (and hour long episodes!) are a bit intimidating.

However, I'm willing to give one a go. Anyone able to recommend me a near universally hailed Taiga Drama, or other period drama? Preferably something recent, as more recent stuff has slightly better production values, and is more accessible.

I'm not sure if I'd go for a Biopic though, I suppose it depends on the person.

Well, there was a Ryoma boom in Japan last year thanks to Ryoma-den, the Taiga about Sakamoto Ryoma. He's the man who pretty much kickstarted Japan's modernization process in the 19th century - one of Japan's most popular historical figures ever, so it might be worth learning about him. It's the only Taiga I've seen but I liked it quite a lot. It was quite highly rated in Japan, and immensely popular, and it also aired in Taiwan, Korea and Thailand.

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/9...1656144352.jpg

If you consider rewatching Nodame Cantibile over and over again then yes :P

"The Japanese That The Japanese Don't Know" (Nihonjin No Shiranai Nihongo) was an entertaining J-drama. Not only was it hilarious, but it's a good supplement for those learning Japanese.

As for "sameness" among J-dramas, I felt it more with K-dramas. I don't know. I guess it's just a preference. I don't like it when they drag too long. Philippine dramas already do that.