Hitsudan Hostess is a short dorama which brings on the screen the life of Saito Rie, who managed to become Ginza's (and therefore, Japan's) number one hostess despite being deaf since age 2, wrote a bestselling autobiography and later (though this has happened after the dorama was made) became the first hearing-impaired person ever to be elected as a local assemblywoman in Tokyo. The story is really moving, the acting very good (particular praises to Kitagawa Keiko, the late Tanaka Yoshiko and Sasano Takashi - plus, it's always a pleasure to see Toda Naho) and the message conveyed so heartwarming.
Wakui Emi (as soon as she cuts that dreadful "ramen hair" she sports at the beginning of the series ^_-) goes back to being the same, absolutely adorable actress who had previously graced the audience in "Pure", and she delivers a solid performance throughout the entire dorama. Talking about great performances, Takeda Testsuya's would deserve a standing ovation, period. The problems lie with Sorimachi (who seems a bit out of place here, imho), with Hosho Mai (I liked her a lot in "Shomuni", but here she's just irritating, sorry), and most of all with the scriptwriting, which has its moments but also many faults - particularly the last episodes which are imho plainly silly. Too bad, it could've been much better than this...:/
Very funny dorama with some touching moments. Great characters (Ucchi is by far the funniest!), elaborate plots and great performances by the whole cast. Nice music too. It reminded me a bit of "Lock, Stock, etc.", with a Japanese twist. I don't give it a full 10/10 only 'cause I think it could've been developed better here and there, but it's still a great dorama! p.s. After the dorama, they also made two movies, titled "Nihon Series" and "World Series", respectively; whereas the latter is ok, even funny at traits, the former is embarrassingly bad!
One of the best doramas I've seen, unfortunately partially tainted by an unispired last episode; without giving anything away, let's just say that after a 10-eps-long emotional rollercoaster (you laugh, you smile, you think, you cry...the whole 9 yards, really! Huge congrats to the writers!), the ending feels suprisingly plain, flat and dull. Too bad, 'cause it would have deserved a full 10/10 otherwise. Who does deserve a perfect 10 anyway is the lead (seriously, Nakayama Miho could make even reciting a shopping list an interesting watch; when, instead of a shopping list, there's a beautifully written script, the result is just superb of course) as well as the supporting cast (those adorably funny scenes portraying the trio of brother+kohais!). Solid score, great scenery. A must watch! :)
Very simply put: J-Dorama at its best!!! Bittersweet, romantic slice-of-life, pure minimalistic poetry...just like a well-written haiku. It may not be the most original plot ever, but...who cares? It works like a clockwork and that's what matters! And - something that doesn't happen too often - it has a perfect cast: every single actor/actress is simply perfect for his/her role. Particular congrats to the leads, Tsumabuki & Shibasaki, but also the supporting cast did just great! Well-deserved 10/10!
Kanno Miho's performance was very good, but not even that is enough to save this dorama. Poorly scripted, unoriginal, predictable, cheesy. In a romantic drama the audience is supposed to root for the leads, but that's very hard to do here since the main male character is such a selfish, weak, spoilt and despicable 1st-class a-hole. And the way the elderly characters are written is just a disgrace: bidimensional characters, almost caricatures...one is little more than an ornament, always wearing a traditional dress and a faint smile and watering flowers or serving tea or such things, the other's a drunkard who speaks like a punk (those family scenes are supposed to add some comic relief, but they're just embarassingly bad). What a waste of Kanno Miho's talent! :/
Very well done light comedy with some deeper, even thought-provoking bits. Shinohara Ryoko is gorgeous as always, Abe Hiroshi's very good (anf funny as ever, of course), but two other actors actually steal the show here: Miyasako Hiroyuki is just great, and Ando Sakura (the lil' Rie) is so good! (actually, to act that well at 6...man....it's even scary, seriously! There are quite a few grown-up actresses, with many doramas in their CV, who could still learn a trick or two - or more! - from this child!)
Having watched this while I was finishing watching "Chiritotechin" - and since both shows focus on rakugo - it would have been hard for me not to compare the two. And what can I say? "Tiger & Dragon" wins hands down!!! Not only is this hilarious (a very short synopsis could be: "Nagase Tomoya plays a yakuza who wants to become a rakugoka - hilarity ensues"), but moreover I think that the whole concept of intertwining the original rakugo stories with funny events - reminiscing of those very same original stories - involving the characters of this brilliant dorama, thus presenting us viewers with a very original take on the classics, well, is simply put a fantastic idea! Apart from being brilliantly written, this dorama is then equally brilliantly acted by the always über funny Nagase Tomoya - with honorable mentions also for Nishida Toshiyuki and Kiritani Kenta. Furthermore, Ito Misaki and Aoi Yu are both as gorgeous as they come (too bad the latter doesn't get enough screentime here!). Oh, and last but not least, "Crazy Ken Band" play the opening credits song! All in all, a perfect 10!
Very interesting concept, and I want to praise the writers for managing to squeeze some deep, thought-provoking stories in those tiny 35' eps.! Unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, the last two episodes ended up being just so-and-so (due to main characters I had a hard time relating to, and also due to endings I didn't really like), and that was quite a bit of a let-down after the first two eps. which were instead absolutely great. So, the first 2 would deserve a 10, the last 2 a 6...let's meet in the middle: 8/10 ^__- p.s. the 2nd season, not having imho any weaker ep., gets a full 10/10
The original manga by Urasawa Naoki, despite having its flaws, was still an enjoyable read. Unfortunately, when you take 23-tankoubon worth of manga and try to squeeze most of it in a 3-hours double special episode, the result is bound to be crappy, and that's exactly what happened here. Aibu Saki and Miyasako Hiroyuki (who were both very nice casting choices, being surprisingly reminiscent of the respective manga characters!!!) delivered nice performances...but everything else basically sucks...
This could've been a great movie (yep, I meant "movie" indeed, you'll see why right away), on par with "The Magic Hour" and such. How? They should've: 1) gotten rid of 4/5 of the dorama (which imho is filled with useless characters - the innkeeper, the onee-san and her husband, the fisherman, the japanese-guy-with-dyed-hair-pretending-to-be-Russian and so on); 2) re-written Aibu Saki's character as something else than this childish, selfish, insufferably spoiled brat; 3) added some scenes from Golden Era movies (either from real movies, like they did in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid", or if that hadn't been possible, at least with re-shot b/w scenes reminiscent of those old cinematic gems). Unfortunately they didn't do that, and what we're left with here is - once again, as I always point out in my reviews: IMHO - a waste of film (not to mention, an unforgivable waste of Nagase Tomoya's, Koike Eiko's and Fubuki Jun's acting talent!
Those like me who are big fans of Higashino Keigo and Meitantei Conan will surely like this. Nice plots, funny, non-intrusive comic relief...too bad they tried to really screw everything up with the last episode (so bad it hurts, seriously!), but they recovered well with the very nice special. Apart from the aforementioned crappy episode 10, the only thing that really bothered me was the absurdity of the "Galileo-starts-writing-formulas-on-some-crazy-surfaces" scenes, present in each ep.; c'mon guys, I understand that a bloc-notes and a pen would have been less dramatic, but there's a fine line between dramatism and idiocy, and those scenes went too far imho...
The main issue I have with this dorama is that, until ep.8, the only interesting things about it were the scenes with Romaya-sensei and the ever-changing BTS clips shown during the closing credits (BTW, great song, seriously!). Dull script, unappealing characters and an annoying plot (or rather lack thereof) made it a real pain in the you-know-what to keep on watching until that point. Luckily, though, I didn't give up, as things picked up very quickly from then on and the last episodes were like a fireworks display reaching its climax. Now, how to grade something like that? Seven painfully slow and uninspiring episodes would deserve a "3" or "4", 4 very good episodes could get an "8" or even a "9"...I'll go with something in between and give it a "6". Self-reminder in case I'll ever decide to rewatch it: watch the first ep., skip the next 6, and enjoy the rest! :)
Kamiji Yusuke is funny. Aya Ueto is beautiful, and so is Kuninaka Ryoko (though I must confess having been eerily attracted by Wakamura Mayumi and her impeccable blonde bob, here). The story is the Nth retelling of Cinderella's tale (or maybe I should write "stale", heh), this time with a coupla twists that actually made it a little less annoying than usual, for this humble reviewer: 1) he's poor, and she's loaded; 2) being loaded isn't the goal here - as a matter of fact, the dorama conveys the message that being loaded and being a decent human being are pretty much mutually exclusive (something that I appreciated - what with the "it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven" and all that, you know). Unfortunately most of the dorama is just "meh", often being silly rather than funny. Still, differently from other reviewers, I liked the last episodes a lot better than the previous ones, and as far as I'm concerned those last eps and the afore-mentioned message are the reasons why this gets a passing grade.
I could only find this unsubbed (and without the Special, BTW), but I still just HAD TO watch it, since it's based on one of my all-time favorite manga (published in English as "Steaming Sniper"). Unfortunately, my understanding of Japanese is limited to the simplest sentences, although I could still follow some eps - those which were (loosely) based on chapters from the original manga so with those I already knew more or less what was going on - and the 2-out-of-10 words I could grasp here and there also helped a bit; so all in all I won't comment on the dialogues, as it'd be unfair of me to do so. I'll still comment on the script, though, albeit admitting that, given the complexity (and the length) of the manga, there was no way one could manage to squeeze it into 12 short eps. (less than 30 minutes each, minus the opening and ending credits and the preview of next episode, let's say around 25 minutes each, actually). The only way one could have done justice to "Steaming Sniper" would have been to make an AsaDora out of it. Now, if you watch this dorama you'll think that it'd be absolutely impossible, given the sex and the violence which are in it! Well, this is where, fluency in Japanese aside, I have a real beef with whoever scripted this abomination, as it has very little to do with the original story, and that showed a lack of respect which I can't forgive. For instance, although targeted at a more grown-up audience, the manga ain't no freaking hentai nor a frigging gangster story "à la John Woo", for crying out loud! It's a "slice of life" story, dammit! Still, the dorama writer(s) specifically selected the manga chapters containing some sex & violence (which are minor ingredients in the manga chapters themselves, but became, like, the main dish here!) and even went the extra mile and added more sex and violence which weren't anywhere in the manga - and all this really pissed me off, to be honest. So, I'll stand by my opinion that this could've worked as an asadora, since "Steaming Sniper" doesn't revolve around sex and violence, and 99% of that could be expunged from the story without affecting its value at all (and as for the remaining 1%? Well, what's so bad in a good old fadeout here and there?), and with 16 volumes, each consisting of 10 or 11 chapters, there would have been enough material to write the around 150 eps. of an asadora. Had they done that, maybe they could've also afforded a better cast - and look, I'm not discussing the acting skills of the actors/actresses chosen for this; I'll only say they have very little - and in some case nothing at all! - in common with the manga characters! I particularly disagreed with the casting choices regarding Gen-san, the Okami and Tomoyo-san! (Ooohhh, that lazy and silly decision of using two different actresses for Tomoyo-san with or without makeup! Aaaargh...) Okay, I've written too much already: considering all of the above, I couldn't possibly give this a passing grade. The beautiful, jazzy musical score still managed to sweeten the pill up a bit, so I'll give this "only" 5 out of 10 and not 4 or even 3 as I was tempted to...
