Way better than I expected because I'm usually not a fan of those "fated partners" dramas, but I would've liked at least half an episode from her perspective towards the end. Nonetheless very enjoyable, even if you're not into time travel or fate.
Man, this could've been a real good Asadora, if it weren't for the second half. It seems like they lost their reasoning all at the same time. I never thought the romance in an Asadora could be forced even more than in Teppan and that the writing could kill the characters over it almost as gruesome as in Mare. It's like "the sisters are in their mid 20s and even though they're both successful and independent they need to have a man by their side, regardless of how stupid he is or if he was the elementary school teacher when they were in 3rd grade". It's also like they never heard about contraception, but that's nothing new in a Japanese drama ("I don't want to go on a trip alone with him because I don't want to get pregnant"... what the hell, it's the early 2000s and you're 24, buy a condom!).
It seems like everyone here in the comments wants to see a shaky version recorded with a smartphone and subbed through the google translate app. Bluray release is Jul 19th, don't know why it would be available anywhere before that date.
If you think of it as a 1960s drama, you'll definitely enjoy this one. After I just put it somewhere in that time frame in my head I at least quite enjoyed it. The main couple and siblings of Ao were quite likeable as well. The little cases they solved were also quite fun, but I wasn't a fan of their internal struggles and problems. But if you expect something with modern values or anything like that, I definitely advise against watching. It absolutely glorifies the traditional multi-generational family with "traditional" gender roles, keeping old values, discrimination and pure marriage. It seemed like it's more valued that the main couple didn't lay a hand on each other before they're married than them even knowing each others names.
There's nothing particularly good or bad about this Asadora, it's just... boring. Hitomi is boring, the topic was boring, the side characters were boring. I don't really care about dancing, but Asadora's aren't really about the topic for me, it's about the characters and especially the development of the heroine. But nothing happened with her. She moved, she lived there, she took lessons, she entered a contest or two and then there's two or three weeks about a festival I couldn't get myself to care about. If I have to say one bad and one good thing: The bad is Nishida Toshiyuki. It's like he can only play characters one way, regardless of who the character's supposed to be. The good would be Hitomi's friends, they weren't particularly interesting, but they brought a bit of desperately needed modern flavor into all the old fashioned elements (the town, the values, etc) of the story.
Why are the conversations always so disconnected in every Thai YouTube series? It's my 4th or 5th, and it's like that every time. It's like they read from cue cards and the person holding them snaps their fingers when it's the actress/actors turn to talk, but always half a second after the first person stopped talking. It's super distracting and I instantly get the urge to skip forward so I don't notice the gaps.
Dropped after 10 minutes into the first ep.Seems to be another "who has the biggest god complex and is able to most disrespect every other person working in a hospital" competition between doctors. I'm sorry, but if Japanese hospitals were all like they're depicted in dramas, I don't think there'd be 5 people interested in working as a nurse or non-surgeon, except for some hardcore masochists.
Even if I wouldn't know the anime, I'd think this was pretty half-assed. No explanations, they jump directly into the story, then they show a bit of struggle, 2 minutes of their success, two minutes of failure and the movie ends. They left out very important characters and made Eiji into a kind of antagonist and it seems like they were both orphans because they worked themselves to death while in high school and nobody intervened in the slightest.
TLDR; If you can't compress a story into a movie, don't try to.
I don't understand why Japanese people are so obsessed with highschoolers. Is it so hard to write a love story…
Only my opinion, but I think so many Japanese movies, dramas, novels, mangas, you name it, are about high school because that's the time they are the most free and they enjoyed most in their lifes. Their schedule, their decisions, the people they associate with, everything's much less regulated than after you join the work force. If they graduate high school/college and get a job, they work all day long, they often only have time to associate with colleagues or clients, everything they do and decide needs to be consented by the company they work for, etc. Well, that's if you're male, if you're female, high school's probably the only time for many that they're "on the same level" with their male peers.
as you've watched many asadora may i ask for some recommendations pls i have only watched carnation and i liked…
That depends on what you're looking for. Man, I'm getting bonus points for being super obvious today... I didn't check how versed you are with JDramas, but if you have a favorite actress or one you really like that played an asadora heroine, I'd suggest you give that one a shot (if you're in luck and someone actually subbed it). If not, my overall favorite would be Natsuzora, it's rather light hearted overall, but has its serious moments and storylines, the acting is really good and the characters are (almost) all likeable. It's also realistic, seeing as it's based on Okuyama Reiko, one of the first female animators in Japan. But if you want something with more comedy and a heroine and story that's a bit more "out there" and less realistic, I'd say Amachan. If you want something more serious that feels like it could be the life story of anyone, Hanbun Aoi, but this ones bound to give you whiplash because it has really funny moments. If you want something more historic, Asa ga Kita, which is also based on a real person. If you want something that's set in and deals with problems of our current times, then Okaeri Mone.
In the end it all depends on what you think is interesting. But even if it's a story you think won't interest you, the heroine's character and the actress who plays it can make a rather uninteresting topic into a really good story, like it was for me and Carnation, which is also why I suggested to watch an asadora with someone you like. I'm not the least bit interested in clothes or fashion, but with Ono Machiko, the character of the heroine and how she portrayed it, it could've probably been about rice planting and I would've rather liked it in the end.
This is the very epitome of a whiplash drama. I liked the comedy part and I liked the serious part, but I really didn't enjoy the swings, twists and turns basically every 2 minutes. I mean, why do they joke like they're doing a silly comedy routine in one scene and then show stuff like kidnapped teenage girls getting drugged and readied to be sold off as slaves in the immediately following about 10 times per episode.
It's officially marked as dropped because there's no sign of life from the subber for 6 months or so. Another Asadora that'll probably never be completed because someone started it and nobody wants to finish something someone else started.
dropped - no hope in watching this. Last episode came out in sept and still not subbed. Best to move on. Get mad…
That's JDrama for you. The creators themselves don't give a shit about anything that's not domestic, so we need to rely on fans to do it for free in their own time. Which is kind of absolutely inadequate if you think about it in times of streaming and everything being globally available. That's why I never start a drama that's not fully subbed yet, regardless of how interesting I think it could be. Got about 5 or 6 of them from 2022/23 and a few Asadoras in my bookmarks with probably no hope of ever being completed because once it's started and abandoned, nobody will ever touch it again.
Unexpectedly really liked it. All the characters are really likable and well acted out and it's a rather unique take on handling a disability. Slightly different and more light-hearted role for Kiyohara Kaya who's usually the gloomy, traumatized, a-lot-of-baggage type character and probably the best actress U30 for that kind of role in Japan at the moment. But it had a lot of light-hearted moments and I'd really like to see her in more of those roles in the future aswell. Just two things that bothered me: Why does she keep mentioning "I'm not feminine at all" and even needs to be reminded that she's a woman, especially in the beginning, when she always wears fashionably coordinated and feminine clothes and pretty pronounced makeup? Are we in a KDrama? It doesn't fit the character at all. And where did she get the money for all that when she just dropped out of college and doesn't have/just started a job? The other thing, there were way too many "look at me, I'm a super melancholic ikemen musician" shots of Mamiya Shotaro. It kind of got really annoying around the third or fourth episode and I often just skipped over them .
As my 22nd Asadora I think it's only fitting that I loved the first 22 weeks (with Ono Machiko), but it had the same problem Beppin-san had in the end: it ran way too long. Well, it's a biography, so the length was pre-determinded, but they either should have let Ono-san play the whole Asadora (she was still believable at age 60+) or condense the last 4 weeks into one or two. It's not that Natsuki Mari was bad or anything, but the sudden change in actresses really threw me off and I have to say that I didn't care as much for the last four weeks because of it. Ono Machiko's performance was one of the things why I really liked it as a whole, she played the character of the very headstrong and probably scariest Heroine of all time really well through the joys and struggles of the Shouwa era. I haven't seen much of Ono-san's work, but if Carnation is an indication of her talent, I definitely need to change that fact. But all of the actors and actresses did a good job. I wish they would have taken 3 weeks of Itoko's later life, after the actress change, and dedicated them one each to her daughters, to show their work and family life a bit more because we only see very little of them after they start their own careers, and then only when they interact with their mother. All in all I gave it a 8.5, Ono Machiko's part would be a solid 9, but because of the last weeks, which would have been 6.5 to 7 at most if they were standalone, I deducted half a score.
If you want a comparison, I think it's pretty fair to do that between Carnation and Beppin-san, seeing as both are biographies, play in the same time frame, in the same city and both are more or less about clothing. But I have to say I enjoyed Carnation a lot more. The biggest gap in enjoyment between those two are definitely the characters: I really didn't like most of them in Beppin-san, they were way to melancholic, weak and indecisive starting from the Heroine, all the way to the kids of the main ladies (except for the one played by Tanimura Mitsuki), while I really liked pretty much all of the characters in Carnation because they were relatable and were a lot more pronounced. You could get excited about what they will do next because they were in full control of their own will, while in Beppin-san you'd think "I hope they will take charge and not let the situation they're in dictate their actions again" all the time.
It's just a guess, but maybe they don't want to overload their server even more with new members streaming in daily. But it's definitely worth the wait if you plan to keep watching JDramas in the future.
This poster kind of looks like a voyeur spying on a lesbian couple about to kiss... or am I the only one? Giggles aside, from what I've seen on social media it seems to be quite fun, thanks to SARS-fansubs for subbing, looking forward to it.
But if you expect something with modern values or anything like that, I definitely advise against watching. It absolutely glorifies the traditional multi-generational family with "traditional" gender roles, keeping old values, discrimination and pure marriage. It seemed like it's more valued that the main couple didn't lay a hand on each other before they're married than them even knowing each others names.
I don't really care about dancing, but Asadora's aren't really about the topic for me, it's about the characters and especially the development of the heroine. But nothing happened with her. She moved, she lived there, she took lessons, she entered a contest or two and then there's two or three weeks about a festival I couldn't get myself to care about.
If I have to say one bad and one good thing: The bad is Nishida Toshiyuki. It's like he can only play characters one way, regardless of who the character's supposed to be. The good would be Hitomi's friends, they weren't particularly interesting, but they brought a bit of desperately needed modern flavor into all the old fashioned elements (the town, the values, etc) of the story.
TLDR; If you can't compress a story into a movie, don't try to.
I didn't check how versed you are with JDramas, but if you have a favorite actress or one you really like that played an asadora heroine, I'd suggest you give that one a shot (if you're in luck and someone actually subbed it). If not, my overall favorite would be Natsuzora, it's rather light hearted overall, but has its serious moments and storylines, the acting is really good and the characters are (almost) all likeable. It's also realistic, seeing as it's based on Okuyama Reiko, one of the first female animators in Japan.
But if you want something with more comedy and a heroine and story that's a bit more "out there" and less realistic, I'd say Amachan. If you want something more serious that feels like it could be the life story of anyone, Hanbun Aoi, but this ones bound to give you whiplash because it has really funny moments. If you want something more historic, Asa ga Kita, which is also based on a real person. If you want something that's set in and deals with problems of our current times, then Okaeri Mone.
In the end it all depends on what you think is interesting. But even if it's a story you think won't interest you, the heroine's character and the actress who plays it can make a rather uninteresting topic into a really good story, like it was for me and Carnation, which is also why I suggested to watch an asadora with someone you like. I'm not the least bit interested in clothes or fashion, but with Ono Machiko, the character of the heroine and how she portrayed it, it could've probably been about rice planting and I would've rather liked it in the end.
Just two things that bothered me: Why does she keep mentioning "I'm not feminine at all" and even needs to be reminded that she's a woman, especially in the beginning, when she always wears fashionably coordinated and feminine clothes and pretty pronounced makeup? Are we in a KDrama? It doesn't fit the character at all. And where did she get the money for all that when she just dropped out of college and doesn't have/just started a job? The other thing, there were way too many "look at me, I'm a super melancholic ikemen musician" shots of Mamiya Shotaro. It kind of got really annoying around the third or fourth episode and I often just skipped over them .
If you want a comparison, I think it's pretty fair to do that between Carnation and Beppin-san, seeing as both are biographies, play in the same time frame, in the same city and both are more or less about clothing. But I have to say I enjoyed Carnation a lot more. The biggest gap in enjoyment between those two are definitely the characters: I really didn't like most of them in Beppin-san, they were way to melancholic, weak and indecisive starting from the Heroine, all the way to the kids of the main ladies (except for the one played by Tanimura Mitsuki), while I really liked pretty much all of the characters in Carnation because they were relatable and were a lot more pronounced. You could get excited about what they will do next because they were in full control of their own will, while in Beppin-san you'd think "I hope they will take charge and not let the situation they're in dictate their actions again" all the time.