Hideyoshi could have easily be the best Taiga Drama, but it failed hard during the second half of the series in my opinion. In summary, the drama can be divided into 2 parts, the Oda-reign part and the post-Oda part.

Oda-Reign Part
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This is the best part of the whole series, even better than most of the Taiga Dramas that I have watched. One reason is the overwhelming story of Hideyoshi's rise to success. After all it's always nice to watch "from zero to hero" kind of story.

Second reason is the nice blend of drama elements into the story, with everything was told from the perspective of his mother. In early life of Hideyoshi, he was a useless guy with no money and always accused for something bad due to his not good looking physical feature...yeah "monkey-like" to be exact. The nice part is to see how the mother was keeping believing in him. A lot of motherly loves portrayed during this time and you could easily feel like want to have a mother like Hideyoshi's too...haha.

The romance between Hideyoshi and his wife O-ne was also done beautifully during this first part, and O-ne's way of supporting Hideyoshi looked much more convincing in here.

Thirdly, the writer spent a bit more effort in other characters particularly, Takenaka Hanbei, Akechi Mitsuhide, Hachisuka, Sen no Rikyu and Ishida Mitsunari. Most of the important events were also included although some were just explained through narration.

Post-Oda Part
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The drama was a bit draggy during the first few episodes after Oda's death. Just imagine an episode with mostly flashback....LoL. After that, things got back to normal but the writer made mistake with contradicting writing especially on the mother and O-ne characters.

Furthermore, Hideyoshi's character was suddenly made indecisive in this second part, with most of the actions were initiated by people surrounding him. This is in my opinion to avoid anti-climax considering many unpopular decisions made by Hideyoshi in history during this time. The writer simply put the blames on others by sacrificing consistency.

Other than that, many key events were excluded and ironically I learned better about Hideyoshi rule from other Taiga Dramas of the same era.

Overall
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Despite all that I mentioned above, Hideyoshi is still in my opinion a Japanese historical drama that you can't missed. The family interaction in the drama was very interesting to watch. The chemistry between Hideyoshi with his brother, mother and wife was spot on.... Ichihara Etsuko performance was out of this world and her role as Hideyoshi's mother deserved a "Mom of The Year" award!!

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The Kiyosu Conference is a movie adapted from history based novel "Kiyosu Kaigi" which tells how in the world the power for ruling Japan has been shifted from Oda family into Toyotomi family. It's exactly as written in history so the basic of the plot is already "spoiled" without the needs of spoiler tag.

If you're not familiar with history, you might be a bit lost at the beginning. Plus there were also couple of events skipped (just explained through quick dialogues) for the sake of time. The writer also assumed that viewer already understood the characters background and their relationship prior to the "Conference". Therefore, a little basic knowledge would be helpful if you want to watch this.

We know the plot. We know who will get the power at the end. So, what is the highlight of this movie?

Yes, the acting!! and how the actors portrayed their given roles are what making this movie a worth watch! Even Gouriki Ayame did an amazing job despite her short character appearance on screen. Let alone the other seasoned actors especially the outstanding Saru performance by Oizumi Yo and the "just right" portrayal of Shibata by Yakusho Koji.

The comedy was light but not the type that will make you ROFL. Rather was more on tension relief and to make the otherwise boring characters appeal more to the audience.

On the downside, The Kiyosu Conference was poorly CGI-ed. Some of the Kiyosu Castle building felt so fake and looked obviously done just recently (at time of filming). However, I must say that the wardrobe department did a good job in this so it kind of balanced out what it was lacking. The music was okay but nothing spectacular except for the final song during the ending credit.

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I Turn is not a fancy and flashy drama as it is aired for the midnight time slot. If you have watched any other dramas in the same time slot you should know what I mean by that. It's also has minimum number of eye candies and what would make certain viewers stay away from it is the fact that the story is revolved around a mid-age "salaryman".

But, don't jump into conclusion just yet. While the story is a bit cliche for a yakuza theme, the directing is the highlight of this drama. Overall, it felt more of a movie than a drama. The acting was also excellent especially from Muro Tsuyoshi, Furuta Arata, Kuroki Hitomi and Tanaka Kei. Other support casts also did a good job for their roles.

What I like about I Turn is, it has that (stupid) comedy moments and at the same time it also has serious moments. You will easily get hooked by the serious part even though if you're not in love with the comedy style of this drama. Each episode is intriguing enough and you will get curious to know on what would happen to the main character.

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Problem with history-based drama is that, we already know what and why things happened. So it's the matter of writing the stories and characters to tally with those historical facts.

In my opinion Gou is lacking in that aspect during the first half of the series, resulting in non-consistent characters writing in the second half. However it managed to cautiously being truthful to history, especially after the death of Hideyoshi (around Ep31).

Over writing the child character of Gou was the worst thing I have ever seen in Taiga Drama. Some exaggeration is forgivable, but writing non-logical child actions and reactions is a fatal mistake for a professional writer.

Furthermore, some important characters have been sugarcoated to make them appeal more to audience, while few others were overlooked and didn't get proper writing, namely Ishida Mitsunari, O-ne and Chacha.

All in all, this is definitely not the best Taiga Drama as a whole. But it is watchable if you could close eyes on Gou's childhood story arc.

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This was on my PTW list for a long time. The synopsis sounds interesting, but it was my mistake not to check on the manga first (at least to see the drawing).

That said, the only amazing thing about this drama is cinematography and the beautiful settings. Even the thrown photos on the floor looked so beautifully scattered. LOL. In short, the main theme of this drama is beautiful-ness (instead of dark-ness). Not sure about the story in manga but the drawing looks very pretty too.

Other than that, the pacing is super slow. It feels more like watching a movie to me, but in movie everything will be wrapped in 2 hours. While this is only 24 minutes per episode, it feels like a 1.5 hours watch for each....haha because the progress of the story is so painfully slow like snail! And to make things worst, our director is a fan of slow-motion scenes. There were countless of slow-mo throughout the drama.

While the production team were focusing on how to make things beauty, they forgot the most important thing, emotion! Seriously I did not feel anything from both of the protagonists. Some part of story-line also did not make any sense to me. Again I don't read the manga so not sure who to blame here..

As I already mentioned, the strong point of this drama is cinematography. There are couple of interesting techniques used in this drama that are worth to check for. I won't write it here to avoid spoiler. And just because of that I rated this 8. Otherwise this should have been around 7 or 7.5 only!

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A conspiracy theory related to 3rd shogun appointment. Although, history records say 2nd shogun only died few years after Iemitsu has been appointed as shogun. And during this early time of Tokugawa Shogunate, the system was consist of retired and active shoguns, a dual rule system with the former has the actual power. So there was no issue in choosing an heir to begin with.

On the movie itself, this is my first time watching classic samurai movie so it's hard to objectively evaluate it. It is however full with action and sword fight, but of course the special effects like human flesh and blood looked extremely faked to the eye of person who watch this in 21st century.

Story was not so difficult to follow, but characters come and go to the point it feels their existence pointless. Even Sony Chiba's character did not have many screen time despite being the main attraction of this film. Cinematography was more Hong Kong-ish but sadly the BGM was not the best.

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