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rhysianaI have finished watching a shocking number of shows all at once, so a round-up post seemed in order.
The Joy of Life group watch just ended on Monday, and we are all in a state of shock, even though I knew it ended on a cliffhanger. So much happens in that show, and I was somehow unspoiled for most of it? That rarely happens! From the description and everything I'd seen on Tumblr, I assumed it was just a historical drama, so the initial set-up of it as a screenplay being written by a frustrated grad student tired of being told he applied too much of a modern lens to the analysis of historical documents was delightful, and then all the intentional anachronisms? The completely unexpected sci-fi twist that shows up more than halfway through? The fact that it ENDS RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLOT??? Anyway, they say filming of S2 is supposed to start this year (although it's Chinese TV, so who knows what that means for actual release), and I'm going to be very sad if they don't get Xiao Zhan back to play his character who took on *massive* significance right there in the last five minutes, but he's also waaaaay more high-profile now than he was then and had four projects announced at the latest big media announcement spectacle, so it'll be understandable if they can't. Fingers crossed, though. (I do have to say, it was kind of whiplash-y when his character finally showed up dubbed by a VA with a voice I wasn't expecting, and then have the episode end with XZ singing the closing title song in his real voice, which we'd all been hearing for the last 35 episodes because the group watch didn't believe in skipping opening or closing credit songs.)
I actually finished The Imperial Coroner before JoL, but apparently I'm just writing this as things occur to me rather than chronologically. I thoroughly enjoyed this show. Were the mysteries the most tightly written plots ever? No, but that wasn't the point. I feel like the show stayed focused on the main core group of characters all the way through, I enjoyed watching them interact the whole time, and there was no surprise MCD, so all in all it exceeded my expectations for cdramas lately. I have seen some criticism of Chu Chu's character in various places on the internet, and I get where it's coming from, with people finding her too cutesy and not as much of a main character by the end of the show, but I actually didn't have any of those problems with her. I honestly like the fact that they let her be cute in addition to competent at her job all the way through, and no one ever questions her competence because of her cuteness/innocence. There are some shitty old me who question her ability because she's a woman, sure, but no one ever questions her findings because she wears her hair in a butterfly style, and I don't think that's a thing I've regularly seen in TV from anywhere. Especially when Chu Chu talks more and more to her friends about how ostracized she and her family were, I think her character becomes even more interesting in retrospect, given how compassionate she chooses to be toward all of humanity, even though the best interactions she's ever had with anyone not her family or the "witch doctor" have undoubtedly been with the dead. I dunno, I just really liked how the main four characters all knew each other's strengths and had absolute faith in one another to get things done. I also cackled when Chu Chu offered their wedding as a final trap for the bad guy, Prince An objected on the grounds she deserved something more romantic, and her response was just, "Okay, so what I hear you saying is that it would definitely work." They were made for each other, tbh.
I then investigated Viki's Japanese offerings, because I was in the mood for something I could understand without looking at the subtitles constantly, and found Hey Sensei, Don't You Know?, the most low-stakes TV show I have ever seen, with Eiji Akaso (aka Adachi from Cherry Magic) as the male lead. Premise: A workaholic manga artist realizes on her way back from a meeting with her editor that she has neglected herself so much during her latest deadline crunch that she can barely recognize her reflection in a shop window, so she heads to the nearest salon to get her hair cut. The hairstylist who takes pity on her despite her lack of appointment falls in love with her pretty much immediately, finding her workaholic tendencies both admirable and relatable. (The show is only 6 not-quite-30-minute episodes, they don't waste any time here.) It is, from start to finish, complete wish fulfillment dating fantasy, and while I think that would get overwhelmingly saccharine if it went on at length, this is short and sweet and basically like a live-action rendition of a fanfic. The guy is the one who pursues (not the usual case in Japanese dating, or at least so I was told when I lived there), the one who texts first, the one who brings food, the one who cheerfully understands when a new work deadline hits and she starts accidentally ignoring his existence again, and every time it seems like there's going to be some big dramatic crisis in the next episode, things get resolved through *gasp* communication. We also get to see things from the male lead's POV in each episode as well, and he's not just humoring her, he really does like her and consider himself lucky to be with her, and it turns out every previous girlfriend he's had broke up with him for being a workaholic, so he gets it. Anyway, I watched the whole thing in one evening while knitting and it was very soothing.
In the same vein of manga adaptations, I found that Viki also has the live-action Princess Jellyfish, and I am now unexpectedly full of feels. I'm also never really sure if I can recommend it to other people? There are definitely things about it I think would put other viewers off, because it stayed *very* faithful to the manga/anime origins, and, uh, some of the physical acting that resulted is a bit uncanny valley. I mean, kudos to those actresses for their physical acting abilities, but it does toe (and perhaps cross) the line of secondhand embarrassment until you get used to it. OTOH, I don't feel like any of the characters are treated disrespectfully, which is the real point of the show. They're all people who the world considers too much, too weird, too eccentric, which is why they all started living together in the first place and they staunchly refuse to judge each other for it. Amamizukan is such a fandom utopia fever dream of a house, and it's really no wonder Kuranosuke doesn't want to leave once he accidentally stumbles in. The actor who plays Kuranosuke really did a phenomenal job, and I absolutely love his character's complete unwillingness to look askance at any of the Amars. He gets them all immediately and admires them for their dedication to their interests, even if they don't return the favor until later. Truly, he is the best Manic Pixie Dream Girl friend they could ever have unexpectedly appear in their lives. (Also, there's just a lot of gender there to unpack? Which the show never does explicitly, but also never makes fun of? It was more delicately done that I was worried it would be.) I'm not explaining any of this very coherently, mostly because it left me with more thoughts than I was ready for. (Does this need a cut? None of this is particularly spoilery, so I'm going to say no.)
And then in English-language stuff, we also finished watching Counterpart, a thing M randomly found on Prime that I knew nothing about ahead of time. It's sci-fi in that very male way of "we are fascinated with this premise and are going to explore it down to the nooks and crannies," which, as it turns out, is why it was canceled, because apparently Starz looked at the fanbase and decided it was skewing too male for what they wanted their target audience to be? I have never heard of that happening before, but fortunately they seem to have given the writers enough of a head's up about cancelation that the end of the second season feels tied off. This all probably makes my opinion sound negative, but it's not. It's a parallel universe show, but with a bridge between them that allows passage back and forth, all very consciously drawing on an East vs. West Berlin theme (it is in fact set in Berlin, and we eventually learn the universes diverged just before the wall came down), and the cast do an excellent job playing multiple versions of themselves. I don't think I would have ever chosen to watch it by myself, but for something to watch with M while knitting, it was a more solid choice than I was initially concerned it would be based on the trailer, which makes it seem more grim than it turns out to be. Not as candy-colored as I've preferred my sci-fi TV to be in recent years, but also not as desaturatedly hopeless as, say, BSG.
The Joy of Life group watch just ended on Monday, and we are all in a state of shock, even though I knew it ended on a cliffhanger. So much happens in that show, and I was somehow unspoiled for most of it? That rarely happens! From the description and everything I'd seen on Tumblr, I assumed it was just a historical drama, so the initial set-up of it as a screenplay being written by a frustrated grad student tired of being told he applied too much of a modern lens to the analysis of historical documents was delightful, and then all the intentional anachronisms? The completely unexpected sci-fi twist that shows up more than halfway through? The fact that it ENDS RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLOT??? Anyway, they say filming of S2 is supposed to start this year (although it's Chinese TV, so who knows what that means for actual release), and I'm going to be very sad if they don't get Xiao Zhan back to play his character who took on *massive* significance right there in the last five minutes, but he's also waaaaay more high-profile now than he was then and had four projects announced at the latest big media announcement spectacle, so it'll be understandable if they can't. Fingers crossed, though. (I do have to say, it was kind of whiplash-y when his character finally showed up dubbed by a VA with a voice I wasn't expecting, and then have the episode end with XZ singing the closing title song in his real voice, which we'd all been hearing for the last 35 episodes because the group watch didn't believe in skipping opening or closing credit songs.)
I actually finished The Imperial Coroner before JoL, but apparently I'm just writing this as things occur to me rather than chronologically. I thoroughly enjoyed this show. Were the mysteries the most tightly written plots ever? No, but that wasn't the point. I feel like the show stayed focused on the main core group of characters all the way through, I enjoyed watching them interact the whole time, and there was no surprise MCD, so all in all it exceeded my expectations for cdramas lately. I have seen some criticism of Chu Chu's character in various places on the internet, and I get where it's coming from, with people finding her too cutesy and not as much of a main character by the end of the show, but I actually didn't have any of those problems with her. I honestly like the fact that they let her be cute in addition to competent at her job all the way through, and no one ever questions her competence because of her cuteness/innocence. There are some shitty old me who question her ability because she's a woman, sure, but no one ever questions her findings because she wears her hair in a butterfly style, and I don't think that's a thing I've regularly seen in TV from anywhere. Especially when Chu Chu talks more and more to her friends about how ostracized she and her family were, I think her character becomes even more interesting in retrospect, given how compassionate she chooses to be toward all of humanity, even though the best interactions she's ever had with anyone not her family or the "witch doctor" have undoubtedly been with the dead. I dunno, I just really liked how the main four characters all knew each other's strengths and had absolute faith in one another to get things done. I also cackled when Chu Chu offered their wedding as a final trap for the bad guy, Prince An objected on the grounds she deserved something more romantic, and her response was just, "Okay, so what I hear you saying is that it would definitely work." They were made for each other, tbh.
I then investigated Viki's Japanese offerings, because I was in the mood for something I could understand without looking at the subtitles constantly, and found Hey Sensei, Don't You Know?, the most low-stakes TV show I have ever seen, with Eiji Akaso (aka Adachi from Cherry Magic) as the male lead. Premise: A workaholic manga artist realizes on her way back from a meeting with her editor that she has neglected herself so much during her latest deadline crunch that she can barely recognize her reflection in a shop window, so she heads to the nearest salon to get her hair cut. The hairstylist who takes pity on her despite her lack of appointment falls in love with her pretty much immediately, finding her workaholic tendencies both admirable and relatable. (The show is only 6 not-quite-30-minute episodes, they don't waste any time here.) It is, from start to finish, complete wish fulfillment dating fantasy, and while I think that would get overwhelmingly saccharine if it went on at length, this is short and sweet and basically like a live-action rendition of a fanfic. The guy is the one who pursues (not the usual case in Japanese dating, or at least so I was told when I lived there), the one who texts first, the one who brings food, the one who cheerfully understands when a new work deadline hits and she starts accidentally ignoring his existence again, and every time it seems like there's going to be some big dramatic crisis in the next episode, things get resolved through *gasp* communication. We also get to see things from the male lead's POV in each episode as well, and he's not just humoring her, he really does like her and consider himself lucky to be with her, and it turns out every previous girlfriend he's had broke up with him for being a workaholic, so he gets it. Anyway, I watched the whole thing in one evening while knitting and it was very soothing.
In the same vein of manga adaptations, I found that Viki also has the live-action Princess Jellyfish, and I am now unexpectedly full of feels. I'm also never really sure if I can recommend it to other people? There are definitely things about it I think would put other viewers off, because it stayed *very* faithful to the manga/anime origins, and, uh, some of the physical acting that resulted is a bit uncanny valley. I mean, kudos to those actresses for their physical acting abilities, but it does toe (and perhaps cross) the line of secondhand embarrassment until you get used to it. OTOH, I don't feel like any of the characters are treated disrespectfully, which is the real point of the show. They're all people who the world considers too much, too weird, too eccentric, which is why they all started living together in the first place and they staunchly refuse to judge each other for it. Amamizukan is such a fandom utopia fever dream of a house, and it's really no wonder Kuranosuke doesn't want to leave once he accidentally stumbles in. The actor who plays Kuranosuke really did a phenomenal job, and I absolutely love his character's complete unwillingness to look askance at any of the Amars. He gets them all immediately and admires them for their dedication to their interests, even if they don't return the favor until later. Truly, he is the best Manic Pixie Dream Girl friend they could ever have unexpectedly appear in their lives. (Also, there's just a lot of gender there to unpack? Which the show never does explicitly, but also never makes fun of? It was more delicately done that I was worried it would be.) I'm not explaining any of this very coherently, mostly because it left me with more thoughts than I was ready for. (Does this need a cut? None of this is particularly spoilery, so I'm going to say no.)
And then in English-language stuff, we also finished watching Counterpart, a thing M randomly found on Prime that I knew nothing about ahead of time. It's sci-fi in that very male way of "we are fascinated with this premise and are going to explore it down to the nooks and crannies," which, as it turns out, is why it was canceled, because apparently Starz looked at the fanbase and decided it was skewing too male for what they wanted their target audience to be? I have never heard of that happening before, but fortunately they seem to have given the writers enough of a head's up about cancelation that the end of the second season feels tied off. This all probably makes my opinion sound negative, but it's not. It's a parallel universe show, but with a bridge between them that allows passage back and forth, all very consciously drawing on an East vs. West Berlin theme (it is in fact set in Berlin, and we eventually learn the universes diverged just before the wall came down), and the cast do an excellent job playing multiple versions of themselves. I don't think I would have ever chosen to watch it by myself, but for something to watch with M while knitting, it was a more solid choice than I was initially concerned it would be based on the trailer, which makes it seem more grim than it turns out to be. Not as candy-colored as I've preferred my sci-fi TV to be in recent years, but also not as desaturatedly hopeless as, say, BSG.
