Shinigami no Ballad {Live Action}

[BBOvenGuy]

Okay, this is me once again making a wild guess as to which forum this thread belongs in...

Since we started a new thread for the live-action Jigoku Shoujo to separate it from the anime, I thought we'd also like to have a new thread for the live-action Shinigami no Ballad, which has just premiered.

The raw for the first episode is now available, if you know where to find such things...

In fact, that was how I found out about this series at all. How much does anybody know? The TV-Tokyo website doesn't have much information, and I can't read any of it anyway. Can someone out there fill me in?

[BBOvenGuy]

Thoughts on the first episode, with the caveat that I don't speak Japanese, so I can only go by what I saw and was able to infer.

The obvious big difference is the role of Daniel. In the anime, he's a winged cat, but in the live-action version, he's a little boy with an unruly mop of long hair. He does, however, still have the little collar with a bell on it. Momo gives it to him at the end of the episode.

The second big difference is that we get to see the world of the shinigamis. All of them have assistants like Daniel, small boys and girls dressed identically to him (but without bell collars). They all look much neater and tidier than he does, which gave me the impression that Daniel is something of a misfit. But then, Momo is a misfit, too. All the other shinigamis look like your typical "grim reaper," with big black hooded cloaks. Visiting "Shinigami HQ" looked a little like the opening credits of Dead Like Me. The shinigamis' world is also entirely in black and white - even skin tones are grayed out - except for the red of Momo's shoes and a few other red things in her room.

Spoiler for For the third difference, I need to use spoiler protection:

The third big difference is the tone of the show. In the anime, the stories were about Momo interacting with people in the land of the living who had been affected by the person who had died. In this series, or at least in the opening episode, Momo was interacting with the person whose soul she was destined to take.

Specifically, the story was about a teenage boy whose mother had died, and whose father had turned into a listless bum out of grief. The boy was working multiple jobs to support his dad and his little sister. In the anime, I would have expected Momo to show up because of the dead mother's regrets, and would have done something to heal the family. In this episode, she talks to the boy and somehow helps him get his father up and going again, but then things take a turn. The boy takes the box lunch his father made for him, and the baseball gear he's been wanting to use again, and happily dashes off to school - only to get mowed down by a truck. Again, I found myself thinking of Dead Like Me.

All in all, an interesting start, but signs that this could be a very different show from the anime. We'll have to see what Episode 2 looks like.

Speaking of which, in the preview for Episode 2, there was a date at the bottom of the screen - "Tuesday, July 7." At first, I thought that was the date the next episode would run , but then I realized that July 7 doesn't fall on a Tuesday this year. So I don't know what that was about.

[Kaoru Chujo]

I'm just downloading the first episode, but I did get a bit more info from the very thin official site and elsewhere. The star is an actress/idol called Hamada Shouko. Here's her blog (not entirely work-safe). And here's her official site.

The show is on at 2 a.m., which is a very late hour for a dorama. It is apparently aimed at the anime or late-night TV audience rather than the normal female dorama audience. It isn't even listed in either of the dorama sites I use: d-addicts.com and jdorama.com. From the size of the file, it appears to be a half-hour show, rather than the normal hour-long dorama.

[BBOvenGuy]

Yes, it's half an hour. Just like the live-action version of Jigoku Shoujo.

Thanks for the links! I'll check them out... uh, when I'm not at work...

[BBOvenGuy]

Episode 2 is now available. Its tone is more like the anime, although like Ep. 1, Momo and Daniel were interacting with the person who's about to die, not with others that the dead person felt regrets about.

The story centers around two teenage artists who meet and fall in love, only to be separated when the girl dies. I don't understand Japanese, so I can only guess at the dialogue, but I think Momo appears to tell the girl that she's going to die, and that encourages the girl to go out and make the most of her romance before it's too late.

I must say that the production values were... um, somewhat lacking in spots throughout this episode, even for a j-drama.

[BBOvenGuy]

So it's just me soldiering on, is it? Well, maybe that will change if someone starts subbing the series.

Episode 4 is the same story as the anime's Episode 2, about the boy who floats in the swimming pool at night until a girl comes along and puts a pirhana in the water. (Actually, in the live-action version, she puts several of them in the water.)

As I've noted before, in the first three episodes, Momo was interacting exclusively with the people whose souls she was about to collect. That's different from the anime, where she interacts with people who aren't about to die, but who are connected to some regret or another of a person who died before. This episode noted the change - we actually start the story at Shinigami HQ, where the dead older sister of the boy comes to Momo's room and asks for Momo's help.

So maybe the live-action series is the story of how Momo comes to get more involved with the living. That could be interesting.

[BBOvenGuy]

Episodes 5 and 6 were hard to follow without someone to tell me what everyone was saying.

In Episode 5, we meet a teenage boy whose father is an artist. He's an artist too, or at least I think his father expects him to be one. He's also having some kind of trouble with the bullies at his school.

Episode 6 focuses on a 12-year-old girl whose mother neglects her. The mom is trying to finish something (writing a book, maybe) before she dies - Momo and Daniel visit her several times, and she acts like she's met them before. The girl's teacher is the guy whose girlfriend died back in Episode 2. They go to an amusement park, build a snowman, and otherwise bond with each other. In the end, Momo does something that shocks Daniel - I think she gives the mom a little more time to bond with the girl.

Next week is the treasure-hunt story we previously saw in the anime, featuring the girl named Tomato...

[felix]

The gerl that plays Momo seems a little too shy.
Momo wasn't shy... she was kind.
Ugh. >.<

[Mnemosyne]

hrm... i wish someone would sub it...

Momo looks a lot older here than she did in the anime, though... a younger Momo-chan kind of fits the "girl god of death" theme better...

[BBOvenGuy]

Originally Posted by Mnemosyne

hrm... i wish someone would sub it...

I've seen a group claiming that they plan to - but they don't say when, and of course I didn't ask.

[BBOvenGuy]

Episodes 7 and 8 are a two-part story, which we also saw in Episode 3 of the anime. A boy named Kanta goes on a journey after his recently deceased grandfather leaves him a "treasure map." He's accompanied by his (childhood?) friend, a girl named Tomato.

(And yes, that really is her name, and it's apparently supposed to mean the same thing in Japanese. At the end of each episode, there's a child's drawing - presumably made by Daniel - depicting something that happened in the story, and this time Tomato is drawn with a bright red fruit for a head.)

I thought these were the best episodes of the series so far. I already liked this story in the anime, and the live-action does some things even better. In the anime, Momo and Daniel are in disguise most of the time, and we don't really get to see what they're doing. In this version, they're much more involved in the action. We see them in a couple of scenes where they're playing video games with the grandfather before he dies. They also get to play some tricks on these two teachers who are chasing Kanta and Tomato.

Speaking of the two teachers (a man and a woman), they were the one part of the story that I didn't get. They're not in the anime at all, and I'm not sure why they were chasing the kids. There's also a scene in the bath at the place where Kanta and Tomato spend the night, where Kanta and the male teacher run into each other and neither seems to realize who the other is. I guess I'll have to wait for a translation to figure that part out.

I was also very amused by the "suspense-filled cliffhanger" at the end of Episode 7. They end the episode with Kanta in the bath and Tomato walking in wearing only a towel. Dun-dun-DUN!!!!

[BBOvenGuy]

After several weeks without another episode being posted, during which I started to wonder if we'd get to see the rest of the series, Episodes 9 and 10 are now up. And the series has taken a surprising turn.

Episode 9 is about a man whose young daughter dies of an illness. I got the impression that Momo was trying to help the man carry on with his life, but the episode ends on a downer, with the man wailing in grief in the middle of a zoo while Momo watches and cries.

Episode 10 is about a boy who can see Momo and Daniel because he once watched his mother kill his abusive father, and he saw a shinigami reap his father's soul at the time. He discovers that a girl he likes is being abused by her father, and he finds Momo waiting for the girl to die.

Then...

Spoiler:

Momo sends a psychic message alerting the boy that the girl's father is about to kill her. He rushes to her home and stops it, saving her life. But now Momo is in trouble for meddling. The other shinigamis show up, surround her, and bind her in chains!

It looks like the next episode will be about...

Spoiler:

...the attempt to "reeducate" Momo and Daniel back into the shinigami fold. There was one clip where a shinigami rips off Daniel's bell, and then he's wearing a black bow tie like the other familiars wear. There's also a shot of what looks like Momo wearing a typical black "grim reaper" robe instead of her usual white outfit.

[BBOvenGuy]

About half of Episode 11 is a "clip show," re-using footage from the previous 10 episodes. That was probably done to compensate for the cost of all the special effects needed for Shinigami HQ.

Momo has been sent off to face the consequences of her actions, and Daniel has been reassigned to another shinigami, one who goes about his reaping duties with what's considered the proper sense of detachment. When he's not out on an assignment, Daniel hangs out in the "familiars' bar," where he shares his troubles with a girl familiar who's also there. He also goes and revisits all the characters from the previous episodes - the people left behind by those who died. All are getting along well in life now, presumably thanks to the way Momo interacted with them.

Daniel also goes to see this old man with long white hair and a white beard who's working at Shinigami HQ. He didn't call the man "kami-sama," so I'm guessing it wasn't supposed to be God, but he did seem to have some sort of authority. Alas, unless someone subs this series, I doubt I'll ever know what their discussion was about.

Then at the end...

Spoiler:

Daniel and his new shinigami are on an assignment in a hospital, when Daniel sees another shinigami take the soul of a little girl. The shinigami turns to face him, and he can see under the hood that it's Momo!

The next (and final) episode, which runs this Monday, looks like it's about...

Spoiler:

Daniel trying to bring Momo back to her old self.

[BBOvenGuy]

And now, the finale...

Spoiler:

Unfortunately, it was hard for me to understand exactly what was going on in the finale, because a lot depends on conversations that Daniel has with various people, and I couldn't understand those.

Basically, Daniel is in bad shape after seeing what the shinigami powers-that-be have done to Momo. She has no memory of who she used to be, and has essentially become a cold-hearted reaping machine. I'm not sure, but I think she may even be reaping people she's not supposed to reap, and at one point she even turns her scythe on other shinigamis who are trying to stop her.

Meanwhile, Daniel runs around talking to several people. The guy with the long white hair and beard gives him a book that leads him to this big building. Inside is a former shinigami chained up in a prison cell. In flashback, we see how the shinigami and his familiar got too close to a hospitalized girl he was supposed to reap - presumably that's how he ended up in the cell.

Anyway, through all of his efforts, Daniel figures out how to save Momo, which he does, and then we get a happy ending with them back on their rooftop, where they always stand and look out at Tokyo Tower. All is well. The end.

I don't know how many people have been reading these summaries, but I hope you enjoyed them. Maybe someday this series will get subbed. We can hope, right?

[Zu Ra]

I haven’t watched Shinigami no Ballad anime but out of sheer curiosity I ended up watching the live action. I am not a Japholic but an anime otaku but it was intriguing and interesting to watch how daily life is in Japan yeah I know any form of media depiction is over glorified and veers away from reality but fun to watch none the less

I must say the show is really nice they have used emotions well i.e. the scene where he breaks down after his dad tells him to follow his heart and play baseball. Momo the shinigami has acted well same cant be said about the child actors they look to stiff and just repeating lines without putting much of emotions in them . Momo needs a wig change current wig looks to plastic too artificial.

As the show is a drama and it gets full points for handling that well . I can even go to say it’s a great drama they could have screwed it up in many different ways making it a total sob story but the director has handled it extremely well

Torrents for Episode 1

[Zu Ra]

Before I post my take on the awesome second epsiode I will post these gifs which I had made on Sunday .

Also a request to [Skewed-S] can you post the Screen Capture from Ep 2 ( 00.1) minus the Skewed-S tags . I badly wanted that drawn picture of Momo and Daniel . Thanking you first hand .

Spoiler for Savin Space:

Spoiler for Savin Space:

[Zu Ra]

This serial leaves you depressed : (

[Haruyasha]

So now.. out of curiosity...

Spoiler for Episode 1:

Isn't it Momo's fault for killing the guy in episode 1? I mean if she didn't interact with him, then it wouldn't have lead up to the events that caused his death.

In the beginning Daniel mentioned that he will be hit by a truck... Gee and whose fault is that?

She's killing people without realizing that her interference is what causes their death.

Other than that.. it's a pretty corny show. (Acting and audio-wise)
Not sure why they didn't use an external mic for vocals.. the tape noise is very audible.

And there are other minor flaws I noticed.

Still enjoyable nevertheless.

[Miko Miko]

I am really enjoying this so far, I have just watched episode 5! I haven't watched the anime and I do not plan too, but I think this live-action is rather good,

[Miko Miko]

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