Can we seize the chance?

Why is this drama called Love All Play when even the subs say Going to you at speed of 493? I guess it is easier to remember but it is such a boring title: makes you think of all those insipid c dramas....

Love All Play is not a drama about badminton. It features badminton heavily but if you hope to learn something about the sport, the rules and the gameplay: go watch something else! The badminton training centre serves just as the backdrop for a slice of life story of a redemption of a fallen prodigy.

There are too many characters called Park here so I won't even try to mention them here. It took me about half of the drama to sort the main leads out. They are both damaged individuals.

The FL made a mistake a few years earlier which made her a pariah in the badminton community. But her love of the game was too strong to keep her away so she is willing to suffer all kinds of bullying and rejection in order to win the right to train and play. She's overly cheerful, replying to insults with a big smile which seems frustration and annoying until she declares to prefer to smile when she wants to cry! Her tenacity finally wins her teammates over. She used to be best friends with another woman from the team, she loved her and at one point she declared that her friend was her first love. The FL is bi?

The ML grew up in the domineering shadow of the star, overly talented big sister so much that he felt neglected by their parents. With his sister away due to an injury it is finally time for him to shine.

The story is well written, the topics dealt are balanced and fairly treated: guilt, redemption, love, talent, family. Unfortunately, nothing is outstanding in this drama.
The acting is correct though the chemistry is missing across the board.
There is a slight "criticism" of korean society or rather the repetition and confirmation of usual society norms: the whole family is responsible for a mistake committed by one of its members (the FL), a divorced woman with a child is not allowed to get into a relationship because she's THE MOTHER and therefore it is unseemly, a father getting berserk because his 25yr old daughter wants to date, across the board virgins who never dated (because family and sport, of course!).....I wish someone would show us the current generation of Koreans rebelling against these awfully strict and coded societal norms. This is not the case here!
The badminton matches were filmed with brio but we could not actually see a match just the players running and beautifully jumping in order to catch the shuttlecock. Moreover, the venues where the competitions were held were completely void of the audience. So it is either COVID restrictions (the drama takes place in 2022) or they didn't have the budget for extras. Whichever may be the case, the empty seats were gloomy and ridiculous!
The music was boring: one funky song playing endlessly but luckily it is not a song good enough for it to be memorable.

This was not a drama to be remembered: even though I binged it and the actors were cute, I'd recommend it as a light slow burn watch.

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Japan strikes again!

Trust the Japanese to come up with a novel twist to the usual BL story. They do know how to surprise us with their choice of topic: here it is a May to December romance between an older man who is a cooking writer and his editor, half his age.

Ishida is a lost 27 yr old man, bored doing a job he does not like. On the cusp of resigning, he is suddenly sent to see a cook who writes a monthly column for a women's magazine. The cook feeds Ishida who is immediately smitten by the quirky character and his cooking. But there are a lot of obstacles on their way, the main being the age gap.

And the total lack of chemistry!

I just could not feel the attraction, the emotions. So I tried to figure out why he would fall for a father figure but we find next to nothing about him (raised in a loving family with 3 other siblings! Apparently!). I did not find the romance convincing. While the cook was dignified and calm like a sage man, Ishida was all over the place: jumping around, his thoughts showing on his face for the world to see. But, as they say, opposites attract!W

But, when the Japanese talk about the food, everything else, the storyline included, is left behind!

What this drama has going fot it is its length (very short!), nice music and cinematography (well, they are filming food preparation!), some beautiful photographs at an exhibition, the dog (what a great actor!) and.....that's it.

An easy watch which will be remembered for its topic: an age gap romance....

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Wish it were longer

I am trying to figure out why this has such low ratings. It is definitely not a groundbreaking BL but it is cute and simple, a nice Sunday night watch when you do not want to see anything heavy.

2Wish is a short follow-up to ReminderS in which Two and Wish met and started dating in university. Here, they have graduated and moved in together. And while Two's career is taking off, Wish is stuck at home, unable to land a job and therefore running in circles and overthinking things. His insecurities show and then when a girl makes a move on Two, Wish completely loses all confidence and leaves.

This 50min short film in two parts, deals with their first steps as adults in a real world. The more Two tries to reassure Wish, the more Wish feels useless and a burden. He feels incompetent: unable to find a job and unable to look after the house and cook. Due to its length, the problems and misunderstandings were solved mercifully quickly and it is a big positive in favour of this drama.

As I managed to figure out, there are mainly two reasons people do not like this:
1. this is not LBC and the characters are not Tin and Can: are these actors allowed to play other characters? Mean is so cute and really an excellent actor here, showing the character's depth and maturity. Plan played a depressed boyfriend hiding behind his bangs well.
2. nothing happens, no depth, no connection with reality: the story is too short to have depth but they managed to convey the young people's struggles when starting out, the doubts that a change in a power balance brings to a relationship, they even touched upon how fame changes influencers. But most of all, this is a BL i.e. a romance, a fantasy which does not bear any likeness to reality!

The only problem I had with this one, beside its length, is the sound recording and editing which was bad. More often than not, we could barely hear them speak either because of ambient noise (crickets were very loud!) or the boring stock piano background music which was too loud.

I wish I could see more of Mean: he is a talented actor that we do not see in main roles enough.

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Mission to find love...in a Mall!

Marry's Mission is a mini drama promoting a shopping mall through a story about a girl looking for love.

Marry is a young woman running a café/flower shop and hoping to expand her business with the financial help of her grandfather. He agrees under the condition that she gets married by the age of 30. The catch is, her 30th birthday is only 30 days away. So with her friends' help, she starts dating. Unfortunately, each new man she meets is worse than the one before.

This was cute and fluffy. No big life questions, no bad guys, just a simple romcom, sweet and a nice quick watch when you want to empty your head of accumulated stress and get to be familiar with a shopping center in Thailand. The characters are all clichés especially the potential boyfriends: a shopaholic, a health freak, a self-centred actor, a sweet but taken chef, a gay youtuber and a salesman. After meeting all of them she gives up completely unaware that there has been someone in the background helping her and observing her with kindness. Her friends were fun to watch. And while I really cannot stand those shrieking trans characters, the bl couple working for her were so cute. I want a series just with them, please!

In conclusion, this ad drama needs more love because it is better than the majority of such productions, it is funny, sweet and short.

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Kinou Nani Tabeta? GL

Finally finished it!The only thing I liked about it were the subs so thank you very much Furritsubs: if anyone else had made the subs, I would have dropped this snoozefest immediately.

I started work after a long holiday, so I was looking for something short and easy to watch. This came highly recommended. Still, I was reluctant to watch it since I did not like the first season at all. The relationship between the two women was so hetero cliché ridden that it was uncomfortable to watch. This is true of many BLs as well. This drama is the GL version of those norms: a smaller, finer woman taking on the "wife" part i.e. cooking while the stockier and bigger woman ("butch" type) is the husband here, working hard and eating a lot under the adoring wife's gaze who has the appetite of a bird. Their behaviour and attitudes align perfectly with the heteronorms.

This drama is smooth sailing: nothing happens! They do touch upon, fleetingly, on the rigidities and the too demanding japanese society: the pressure the traditions and families exert on women by the all powerful males. But there are no male characters in this drama: a father we hear on the phone, a coworker who has a couple of lines and a real estate agent. This is a fully female centered drama. We were introduced to a few new characters, representative of japanese society's struggles: a girl bullied in school by teachers, a women rejected because of being ACE and a wife getting a divorce because fed up with her husband's parents demands. I found each case interesting but I was at the same time disappointed by the lack of real drama: "these problems exist in the society and it is on each person to find the solution" seems to be the message.

What do we have here then?
A couple of women becoming friends and more through cooking and eating.
Fluff, fluff, fluff and more fluff.
Slow formal speech and extreme politeness by everyone: people seem to be perfect in an almost ideal society. Everything is monotone, no one raises the voice, there is no passion, no drama, no contrary feelings. They don't seem human but as I understand it, that is the way the japanese society works mostly?
The misunderstandings are resolved immediately, thank heavens!
Zero chemistry between the women. The reminded me of the couple from Kinou Nani Tabeta?: two men brought together by their mutual love of good food.
Do couples in Japan sleep in separate rooms? The two women, once they started dating, went house hunting for an flat with two bedrooms!
The cook was not very modest about her own cooking skills: she'd barely taste a spoonful of her dish before starting raving about it (oishii!!!)... Everything she ate was oishii and yukata: must have heard it a million times throughout this short drama. So, if I never hear it again ,it will be too soon!!!
Nishino Emi definitely stole the show! She was amazing as a woman whose growth was stunted by toxic masculinity. So much so that she almost became one herself: tough, strong and hard.

For a westerner like me, this representation of japanese society is rather scary. I do not know if it is true or not but according to this drama, it seems to be chock-full of traumatized and repressed individuals. Wrapped in fluff. Go figure....

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Pretty sunsets and...that's it!

Well, this is just another thai bl under my belt which I probably will not remember in a week. It was pretty : the scenery and the sunsets are stunning. And that's it.

The plot is fairly basic, made to pull on heartstrings, very maudlin! The drama tells the story of a rich violinist who goes to the countryside and falls for a poor painter. But the painter has a heart disease, so he breaks up with the violinist very quickly (noble idiocy and all that!). Some time after, the violinist discovers a childhood connection, and goes back to the countryside looking for the painter but cannot find him.

The writing and the acting are bad, really awful. The writing is a series of tropes badly presented. At one point, after having spent a lot of time together, the painter kisses the dozing violinist who just gets up and disappears for a few days. When he comes back it is as if nothing happened, they do not talk about it and just continue on the merry road of romance. Then of course there is the noble idiocy break up because of an illness and finally the ultimate trope: they knew each other as kids. And the ending is: what? Is the painter dead or gone abroad or hiding somewhere: no body knows and they all seem very sad when they mention him. And the violinist stays put waiting for him to return or does he just live in memories?
Now another problem connected to the writing are the subs: they are very bad so maybe my impression of the bad script comes from that. But not only!
But I would not have minded all of the above if the actors brought something extra with them, like more chemistry?!? Because the two main actors are completely without acting skills at the start of the drama: the lines' delivery is monotone, without any expression one way or the other. To be frank, they improved towards the ending, I could actually see some fleeting expressions of emotions. Also, I have the impression that the actor playing the musician can actually play the violin (unlike the actress playing the mother!).

So what are the good sides of this drama: nice cinematography, nice music, actors who are not afraid of skinship and who have a tiny bit of chemistry. And last but not the least: short duration!

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Devil is in the details!

While watching the last episode, it had all of a sudden dawned to me: every single makjang that has ever been made originates in The Count of Monte Cristo. Just like Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice is the blueprint for every enemies to lovers romcom ever made (and Darcy is the original tsundere heartthrob!), Dumas' Monte Cristo is the same for the revenge dramas!

The book is a classic I read many times. I have also seen many adaptations for cinema and tv. So I wondered if the japanese would manage to give it that particular japanese flavour. Unfortunately, they failed in this.

They faithfully follow the major plot points and that's what is wrong with this adaptation: it is not japanese enough. The first thing I found grating was the name: Monte Cristo. Why did they keep it? That name passes all right in Europe but it sounds
weird in Asia.

The next was the fake country and a terrorist organization. And even though I enjoyed immensely the first episode, the terrorists and then finally the name managed to make me completely lose interest.

Another huge problem were the subs which, from the episode 5 to the end, were badly timed and showed up before the characters spoke or even appeared.

The pacing of the drama was also off: too fast but at the same time too slow, too much time spent on certain characters (like crazy wives) and not enough on others (Dan and Airi). On the other hand they successfully managed to transpose the 19th century story to modern world. The actors were exceptional, Dean Fujioka was the best by far and his transformation from the happy go lucky fishermen to a cynical billionaire was amazing. And he sings!

You know when you watch a piece of fiction, the question is not whether the story is true but whether they managed to make it so believable it sounds true. Here they failed completely and only because of a few details they did not but should have changed.

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Fear girl & temptation guy

We all know that there is one thing that is next to impossible to see in korean dramas, in particular, korean BLs : real kisses. Oh boy, and do they go for it here!
I watched the free, cut version on youtube. If the uncut version has more explicit NC scenes, I refuse to pay for it because those scenes most of the time add nothing to the plot. As we have seen with many recent thai bls, excessive NC content is not the recipe for a good drama. People fall for it a few times but then afterwards, when they'd finished being titillated, they want some other content (i.e. a story, solid writing and acting!) beside shiny abs. At least, I do!

Blue Boys is a drama about two high school friends NamYi and JaeMin who reconnect as adults. The sparks fly and they start dating. But the honeymoon period is of short duration when and wannabee girlfriend scares one of them off. As soon as they make up, there is a temptation in the shape of another man. Throughout the drama, they keep getting together and then breaking up mainly because of JaeMin and his lack of trust and self confidence.

This short web drama is a typical korean fare: low budget which shows. No cinematography to speak of (cold colours, classical feel: though on second thought, it might be on purpose since the title has blue in it!), sound recorded in a cave (echo is terrible in the scenes filmed inside), no extras. Only when they film scenes outdoors, the feeling is mellower.

As for the writing: the background story of characters is missing. We know next to nothing about where they come from except that one is rich and the other one poor (though he has a Mac laptop, keeps sitting in cafés and never seem to work in order to pay for his nice flat!). Well, I think that we are not supposed to think of all those details but when the plot (wannabee girlfriend blackmailing) insists upon it, it is somehow hard to do it. The topic of the drama is the first gay love: one man has only dated girls so far while the other one has not dated anyone yet.

The biggest problem this drama has are the bad, bad subs. I had to rewatch the second episode a couple of times because the phone conversation makes zero sense. Another translation made everything look extremely creepy: NamYi wrote an article for his blog about the first gay experience and he called his partner a child, as translated by the production. That could not be any worse as a translation in this context. I was just happy not to have paid for the VIP membership: with such horrible subs, I would have regretted it for a long time.

The temptation guy, TaeHa is the star of his own BL: Bad Guy.

The rest was correct: the actors had correct chemistry, the acting was correct, the two side characters suspicious from the get go. A typical korean web drama just a bl. Not bad but memorable only for those sincere kisses which earned them an added point in my ratings. It is short and watchable. Go for it without any expectations, and you'll spend 90 min resting !

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Exes with a future?

Do you want to be yourself or do you want to fit into little boxes as decided by the society? That is the conundrum Tae Ha faces. On the cusp of getting married, he contacts his ex boyfriend to let him know about it. But that is just an excuse: he is obviously forcing himself to be someone else and that is taking a toll on him. Meeting Jiwoon makes that crystal clear and he cannot stay away from him any more. He breaks off the engagement but that is not without consequences: his fiancée knew everything about his past and was testing him by meeting his ex.

No matter how many BLs and lgbt themed films and dramas asian countries produce, they are definitely not the best indicator of how tolerant and accepting the society really is. I'd guess that there are many in real life like Tae Ha, who is the prime example of such a man: lost between his real yearnings and the instilled notions of what is really acceptable. This is actually a tragic tale: even though they do end up together, the ex fiancées threats promise to wreak havoc in their lives. You know what they say: "Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned!". The ending can be considered open: either they get to live happily ever after or the ex make their lives a living hell (which is easy in the society they live in!) and they end up giving up. We do not know!

I watched this as a compilation on the producer's youtube channel without the18+scenes and frankly they are not necessary. The actors start kissing and then cut to the next morning with them sleeping in the same bed. The rest is left to imagination and most of the time, it is for the best. The make out scenes bring absolutely nothing to the plot since we know they slept together. The only jarring thing I noticed is that they slept fully dressed the morning after: I mean, one guy slept with jeans and a belt on. It must have been really uncomfortable and it made for a less convincing "we spent the night together" kind of vibe!

The actors were good and have decent chemistry. I just could not stop looking at Luke Park, the actor playing JiWoon, who beside excellent acting skills has the straightest and the finest nose I've ever noticed. Production values are the usual korean web drama style: empty sets and hollow sounds but the acting and the writing were good so it kind of balances out.

Who is the bad guy here? Is it TaeHa selfishly looking for his ex boyfriend and subsequently breaking off the engagement? Or is it Ji Woon who cannot or does not want to say NO to his ex? Or maybe both? Probably both on a different level. But still, both...

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Basketball is so...2022 BL!

I wish I knew why I like Meen and Ping so much that I am willing to gobble up every bad drama they make with a huge smile. And ask for more! I fell for them in their first outing Ai Long Nhai which surprised me with unusual characters: Meen's was unapologetically adult and open while Ping's was cute and deceptively immature without being a doormat as ukes usually are! Through their subsequent two dramas they kept the characters just changed the setting (mafia, high school).

What I liked:
- the chemistry
- the players especially being supportive of Shogun
- the grandma
- the original title song which was so different from the usual funky fare
- basketball games particularly with the imaginary ball
- the poor third wheel Atom
- unrequited love by Que
- cinematography: urban landscapes and the rain were breathtakingly raw!

What I did not like:
- the setting: why high school and not the university: it would have made for a better drama
- mountains of plotholes and illogical events (they have money for the big houses and the latest flip phones but are struggling financially and need scholarships?!?)
- Lin: annoying busybody
- the mother: I still think she's the villain behind everything
- gay basketball mafia clan
- ridiculous last scene

Apparently there are more thing that I liked than those I did not but what I liked are just the details. The biggest problem is the writing which is all over the place. This is a kind of drama you watch while doing something else, stop to look at Ping's puppy eyes and sweet smile and basketball games for a couple of minutes and then go back to doing something else while this is playing in the background! It still is a fun summer watch....

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Pudding loving yakuza idiot boss

Well, I never expected to finish this since I almost dropped it 10min into the first episode. But my laziness got the better of me and I forced myself to finish the first episode. Before I knew it I was at episode 5, enjoying the drama a lot. And then suddenly, I was bored and annoyed....

The plot is original: a 27yr old yakuza heir, more brawn than brains, is forced back to high school. He has to pretend to be 17 and he has to graduate. I liked this premise and once the school started, it was fun and interesting to watch. The events moved forward very quickly, a bit too quickly sometimes. I found the pacing off. So much so, I lost interest in the second half because of the repetitiveness and the overacting.

The best part of this drama is the cast of secondary, support characters: the gardening aficionado school principal, the embroidery aficionado yakuza, the mysterious nurse uttering the words of wisdom and, of course, a whole classroom full of different types of characters.

The worst part of this drama is the main lead. I don't know if he was written like this or if this was the interpretation by the director and actor but he was just awfully overacting. I have to give it to the actor, he has incredible facial muscles and his jaw moves in mysterious ways. The mafia voice, the grimacing and the jumping around is worth of the best manga adaptation. Apparently this is not one of those. Still, they used many of the manga tropes. The actor, when he stops making faces, is so handsome, to die for. But those goggly eyes, twisted mouth, protruding jaw were weird. What I find the most incomprehensible, is that nobody found his jumpy, grimacing behaviour strange and weird!
The burgeoning romance was cringy at best, completely lacking any chemistry but it helped to confirm the main character's lack of maturity: he is basically an unruly child in an adult's body. And even though he matures through learning, he reverts to his primal state every time he dons his yakuza attire.

The drama stresses the importance of education and how Makio, reluctant at the start, realizes the advantages good education can bring him as a yakuza boss but mostly as a person. The representation of yakuzas does not seem very credible. They mostly look like comedy relief characters in a comedy: ridiculous and, again, over the top with their special salutations and costumes (black suits gang vs. hawaiian shirts gang). The most ordinary looking were finally the kids bringign a sort of balance to the outrageous comedy. Which I did not find funny. At all!

I liked the pudding though I was shocked that a school would not order enough for all who wanted it or allow its pupils to fight over it. Once they dropped the pudding from the plot, the drama somehow lost its flavour.

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Gritty, twisted and unapologetic!

I needed a drama for my Back To The Past challenge, and this one seemed interesting with the added bonus of being short.
Well, this was something different, definitely not what I expected to watch though when I found the first episode on a porn site, I should have started wondering.....

Thank you, ParkMin for the title: I borrowed it from your short and to the point comment!

Temptation of Eve is an OCN anthology series of four feature length (90min) independent erotic thrillers featuring stories about the fascination women provoke in men and the lengths the men are willing to go for them.

The Good Wife - a wheelchair bound man asks a friend to follow his wife, suspecting her of cheating.
Kiss - a photographer is intrigued by the strange behaviour of the new neighbours, suspecting abuse.
Her Own Technique - a plastic surgeon, valuing beauty above all, is fascinated by a woman with a perfect body and a butterfly tattoo.
Angel - a policeman investigates the murder of a plastic surgeon's husband.

The stories are all twisty, twisted, and nothing is what it seems at first glance. Each ends with an unexpected twist. Though after the shocking ending of the first episode, I was just waiting to see how they were going to bring the twist around in others. And it was a surprise every time. So the writing of the thriller element was definitely top notch.

Now that I finished the four stories, I am trying to decide whether the writers of these are women haters or if they admire them. Because here, the women are perfect gray characters, they have the upper hand they hide perfectly well, letting the men think they are being macho helpful and protective. Men on the other hand are the primal selves, out there doing everything they can to protect the woman, who is apparently weak, innocent and abused. Nothing is further from the truth, though! The women here are presented as smart, beautiful, independent, wilful and intriguing, manipulating the men by pretending to be weak females. Here, the men are stupid, comforted in their position as a dominant gender of the species and never doubting the women.
So, I'd say that the writers are in awe and admiration of women but are also afraid of them! Their writing skilfully balances on the thin line between misogyny and misandry. And we are all left feeling uncomfortable. Because the main male characters in each story are not bad or evil people, just stupid, gullible and who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Women in these stories use sex to dissipate men's suspicions so there is a lot of love making and nudity here, though no full-frontal! Everything is tastefully filmed and is necessary for the stories since it shows how the women get to control the men., who in their presence behave like brainless idiots.

I watched this in low quality on ok.ru so I cannot say much about the cinematography, though some camera angles and play with shadows were interesting. The costumes and make up looked outdated. It was weird seeing all those flip phones but I liked the retro feel of not relying on mobiles as much as we do today.

Temptation of Eve is not for the faint of heart, nor for today's young adults: I can see them screaming at how not PC it is. I liked it though, exactly because of that: it shows the human nature the way it is in all its greyness, and not the way these young utopians would like it to be. So I would say this is for the 40+ crowd: no one younger should watch this: because if I started listing trigger warnings for them, it would take me a couple of hours!

Hell hath no fury as the woman scorned!

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Forgettable cutness and fluff

Well, this was ....watchable? A cute school romance, nothing more, nothing less. Unfortunately!

Maya is considered ugly in her school and when she confesses to her crush she is violently rejected. When the school heartthrob sees her unhappy, he offers to help her get over her crush by pretending to be in love with him. And it works better than they could have imagined!

First: Maya is not ugly. The actress is very pretty and I checked the manga as well, she is not ugly there either. So I guess my western eye cannot understand the japanese notions of beauty. Maya is rejected because she is considered ugly by a boy who is actually ugly: both inside and outside.
Second: it took me some time to understand the point of playing the unrequited love game with the school top popular boy. It was his a bit sneaky way to get her to know him better because he had already noticed her before and wanted to get closer to her. I found this very weird but then again teens are not known to have smart ideas when hormones are raging!
Third: it is a shame that japanese mangas do not do cross overs. Sometimes in the last third there was another possibility of romance was hinted but unfortunately it rested on the bromance level. That would have been a surprising twist giving this film an edge. But, well, maybe next time? In my dreams...

The film has no depth either of characters or the plot. As usual when based on a manga, these teens have no parents present. The school is not too harsh an environment and Maya seems to be coping well with repeated humiliations (as in she does not really care or she cares for about 5 seconds!). Some people complained about the lack of expressiveness in ML but I did not mind his unmoving, stony face: he was supposed to be high above others, a king on his throne, unreachable and difficult to get close to and understand.

This film is a cute and forgettable piece of fluff, a perfect Sunday watch!

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Cute ad....

Well this was cute but basically plotless! It is an add for some kind of refreshing herbal inhaler. It must be a thai thing since it is the first time I'm seeing this kind of usage (we are all familiar with Vick's inhalers for stuffy noses! This does not seem to have a similar purpose!).

The plot, if one can call it that, is about two best friends (on to becoming more one day soon maybe?) visiting main tourist attractions in Bangkok (as if Thailand needed more promotion with the current overpopulated tourist spots worldwide!) which are beautiful and full of history (and tourists!). Bom and Tar seem to be reprising their roles from I Will Knock You! Bom is cute and sweet and looks 15 (when he is actually 28!). Tar has grown taller since the drama and in spite of being only 19, he looks and acts more mature than Bom. They have great chemistry together and I would love to see them in something else, together: something in costume would be nice since they both looked hot in thai traditional clothes in ep 2 & 3. It is just that Tar needs to fix his awful haircut and they both need less lipstick.

The ads purpose has completely failed for me: I have no wish to buy one of those inhalers and especially not to give it to anyone as a birthday present. But I liked seeing the sights of Bangkok where I will never have the chance (money!) of going....

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Curly hair mystery

As much as I was glad to watch Totono again, this film is a slight disappointment since it is missing everything that made the drama such an unmissable watch: Goro, curry and police! Well Goro does show up for 30sec at the beginning and the police are the extras in the last scene.... Still, definitely not enough! And the film is worse for it!

Totono is in Hiroshima (there is history there but we are not let on it! Yet!) and is dragged into a family inheritance mystery. Well, the mystery is unfortunately very predictable and the culprit is obvious the moment he shows up. Totono does his Sherlock Holmes thingy and the culprit is caught red handed and turned over to justice. THE END

The story behind the mystery involving "demons" and curly hair was quite interesting: showing the lengths the people are willing to go in order to gain and to keep the wealth over generations. There is another issue connected to the previous one and it concerns how the adults treat children who are, according to Totono like "wet cement": getting information from kids is like writing on wet cement, once it is dry, the marks remain and the kids are scarred for life! The young girl, who pulls Totono into this mess is an example of such damage having been done to.

Totono actually made this worth watching: with his quirks, his scarf and his dead pan revelations deliveries! I was also happy to see Machida Keita (Cherry Moon) being his understated extremely charming self and Higawara Riku (Utsukushii Kare) being a weirdly explosive self.

As usual I find the background music (classical) out of place in this film, just as much as I disliked it in the drama. The songs are nice but why do japanese like using western classical music so much?

Overall, it is a watchable film, well produced and acted but poorly constructed plot of the mystery. I'd recommend it only for th e die hard fans of Totono.

And finally, I would like to thank the Machida Keita fan who brough this to us with some amazing subs! Thank you so much!

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