Nice and original procedural!

Please allow me to start with a premise: I've read a fair share of messages bashing this series in forums, social networks etc., all due to Higashide's scandal. Now, I must confess not caring much about actors' and actresses' private life, and let me explain why: I've met several artists in my life (though in my case musicians and writers, rather than tv or cinema people) and I gotta tell you, most of them were, to put it bluntly, shitty people; ego-maniacs dumb as rocks who'd stomp on anything and anyone for just a little more fame. And yet, they were great at their jobs. So the lesson I've learned from those personal experiences was that it's better not to know the person behind the artist, and limit ourselves to appreciating the artists for their art. That said, Higashide might even be a rotten human being (and then again, maybe not...after all we'll never know the whole story and that's probably better), but that doesn't change the fact that he's a good actor, and he proved that once again in this "Keiji to Kenji" (portraying that silly, childish but at the same time kind prosecutor) - together with the rest of the cast...all of them did a great job, seriously, from the always überfunny Kiritani Kenta (as the loud and big-mouthed Osakan high-school teacher turned cop) to the lovely Higa Manami, who could be the poster girl for "Classic Beauty" (personally, I'd gladly follow her not only to Portugal, but even to Cleveland or Detroit, LOL - sorry Clevelandites and Detroiters, I know y'all must be sick of those jokes, but you gotta admit they work every time just the same...gomen gomen! ^_^;...)
I really liked this series and I think it'd be a pity (besides being a tad disrespectful towards all those who took part in this production and weren't involved in any sordid scandal) if people were to miss this only because of the "boycott the cheater" movement.
Apart from the afore-mentioned great performance by the whole cast, I think this dorama stands out for the profound humanity (pettiness and flaws included, LOL) with which the screenwriter infused both the characters and the plots. If you're, like me, fed up with the robotic, bidimensional characters of most Western "Police Procedurals" and their cold, heartless, all-action-and-zero-empathy plots, then there's a high chance you might really appreciate this series too!
I agree with fellow reviewer Joe Shiren that some of the comedy parts were really too much, though. The comic relief had been good, even very good throughout the whole series imho, but in the last episode they really went overboard! More generally, the last episode was way weaker than the rest under all aspects (plot, dialogues, acting etc.)...too bad, otherwise I'd have given this an even higher grade!

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Differently from the first installment in the "Ring" series, this time around they were much more faithful to the book ("Rasen" being the best of the lot, imho). Of course, minus the changes that had already been previously done and thus needed to be kept for coherence. I know that most people tend to overlook this "Spiral" or to underscore it , but I beg to differ. Consider this: the two movies were brought to the public's attention at the same time. Why? Simple: they're to be seen as a whole. The first part was just the introduction, THIS is were the story gets interesting, and all the pieces of the puzzle finally come together to show a picture which is terrifying not because of easy horror-clichés, no...this time the horror is much more psychological, and it comes from the realization that, in the main character's shoes, we might have done just the same. Superb performance by Sato Koichi! As for Nakatani Miki, she's just perfect for this part. Impossible not be charmed. And impossible not be terrified, all things considered. I don't give it a 10 because of the small changes they did to the original story. But it's close...^__-

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Lovely regional dorama

It's the first time I actually appreciated Kanjiya Shihori's acting! Since I couldn't honestly ascribe that to my getting softer with age (leveling with y'all, I'm afraid it's more like the opposite and I'm getting grumpier, LOL), this means she actually WAS good in this dorama SP! And so was Endo Kenichi! Also thanks to a beautifully written script which managed, in such a short time, to touch some big issues like the neverending love/hate relationship between city and countryside, the different approaches people may have to work and work ethics, and more in general, the respect we should always have for others in order to fully function as a society. Once again I ended up totally loving a "regional dorama" - gee, I wish there were, like, a list of those somewhere, so as to make it easier for us fans to find these lil' gems!

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I must confess I started watching this "Iyashi no Otonari-san ni wa Himitsu ga aru" only out of my love for Tanabe Momoko, who's my #1 fave of the current generation of Japanese actresses (and considering that she has some fierce competition there, that's saying quite a lot, isn't it?). And indeed she was once again perfect to a "T", gorgeous and tremendously talented as always.
On the other hand, I didn't have any expectation at all about the drama itself: I was actually expecting the Nth crappy hollywoodian story of "the good guy next door seems nice but actually is a psycho, so beware of other people, stay alone and unhappy 'cause that's how we want you to be"...but it ended up being, much to my surprise, quite the other way around!
The writers aren't keeping from us that the ML is a "psycho"; I mean, seriously, they portray him right from the beginning with a demented grin on his face, and on top of that, humming the European Union anthem! Hard to be crazier than that, right? >___<
(...yeah, I know it's Beethoven's "Ode to the Joy", but the EU using it has ruined that completely for me, sorry...)
Back to what I was saying (and more seriously!), what the writers did here was to actually orchestrate an intricate "double play": on the surface, we have the FL finding out, slowly but surely, that the ML ain't what he seems...but on a deeper level, we viewers take just the opposite path, finding out precisely that he's not as crazy (nor as "stalkerish") as we initially thought him to be! So in the end the message is a completely non-hollywoodian "the next person might be a lot better than you think, so open up and be happy", which is pretty damn nice, coming to think about it!
The music is good, the "packaging" too, the scenography great (I want an apartment like that! Of course as long as I could share the balcony with Momoko-chan, LOL).
But the absolute best part is the acting. ALL the cast did marvelously, with virtual standing ovations for both leads!
The only reason I'm not grading this as a "Perfect 10" (SPOILER ahead) is that I've found the stabbing scene with the subsequent endless monologue really forced and overall annoyingly clichéd; had they done that more nicely, it would've been perfect. But it got close.

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It took me ages to finish it 'cause I stopped watching it after a major plot twist in the middle of it (no spoilers, I'll just say I really disliked it and was at the same time shocked and pissed off). I picked it up again after a few weeks and slowly watched it until its conclusion, but by then the magic had gone, as far as I'm concerned. The cast did just great throughout the whole series (BTW, Natsukawa Yui and Yamada Maiko, each in her own way, are both to die for - though I realized I've become older and wiser, as I'd have chosen Nagasaku Hiromi's character instead! ^_^), and the directing and photography are also top notch. Too bad for the plot, otherwise this would've been a perfect 10...:/

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Plasticky...watch it only for the cast (they did a good job!)

Were I to use only one word to describe this "Please Classmate", that word would be "plasticky".
Fake and shallow as a tv commercial. But at least, those last 30", tops. This, instead, 24 looong episodes.
But, first things first - what I DID like, i.e.:

The Cast
True, a coupla actors were below par imho, but overall, the whole cast did a good job (heck, in some cases even a very good job, given the material they had to work with!). I have watched this for Dai Lu Wa and she didn't let me down. Honorable mentions also for Siwaige and Gao Xuan Ming.

The Music
Not really my cup of tea, but I'll admit it's mostly catchy, and it goes well with the genre, so all in all it gets the passing grade.

And now on to what I did NOT like:

The Story
Sorry to sound so harsh, but to me the writer didn't do a decent job, like, *at all*. It felt like an Asian-drama version of the meta-soap from the movie "Pleasantville". Take all the clichés of the genre, mix them together, and what you get is a cheesy, obnoxiously unoriginal, indeed plasticky yawnfest.

The "Packaging"
Photography, editing etc. contributed highly to that "tv commercial" feeling. The always tremendously fake lighting most of all!

In all fairness, though, even without the packaging, it would have given the same fake vibes, due to the script's faults. Again, if you've watched "Pleasantville", this is really like that "meta-soap": everything feels fake, whatever problems the characters face, they're not realistic at all. A coupla examples? (spoilers ahead, consider yourselves warned and jump to the conclusion if you want to avoid those)
In this drama the characters have to face the Gaokao, but it's all done in a few minutes with a few scenes edited together, and boom! they all got good grades apparently, like that, magically.
The FL thinks she might be suffering from leukemia, like her late father? Don't worry, it's just anemia.
The ML bombs the race upon which lies his future? Don't worry, someone retires last minute and he'll get another chance.
The SML misses his programming contest, gets found out, and is set to change schools? Don't worry, everything sorts out, his father does a U-turn and becomes suddenly reasonable, and a "flash-mob" by his school-mates will convince his icy mom too.
The love triangle isn't enough to run for 24 episodes? Don't worry, the lousy scriptwriter will add a third male lead who's a long-lost childhood friend of the FL and a teen idol on top of that.
Seriously, 24 episodes of this. It took me *ages* to finish it. I should've dropped it and forget all about it (matter of fact, that's precisely what I've done with many dramas; my "Dropped" list containing but a tiny minority of the dramas I actually dropped - normally, those that I felt were so bad that they deserved a mention for future reference) but I kept hoping it would get better at some point. It didn't.

Conclusion
I noticed that my opinion differs from that of basically everyone else here, so take it for what it is: my humble opinion an nothing more. Perhaps I'm too old for this kind of things (if the world doesn't end in the the next coupla years, I might even turn 50, LOL). Or maybe it's just that I really dislike dramas giving these überfake, plasticky vibes (hence my lack of interest for K-dramas, for example: I tried watching a few, they all gave me that feeling, I dropped them all and didn't even include them in my list - sorry K-fans, that's my personal experience and opinion - although I might not be absolutely alone there, as I've read several comments of people who've abandoned K-dramas and moved on to C- and J-dramas, apparently for precisely that reason - but anyway, as I said, only my humble .02, which might not mean much - if anything at all! - to most of the rest, so take no offense, peace! ^___-)

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Nao deserves a standing ovation, WOW!

First things first: Nao alone would've deserved a "perfect 10" with a standing ovation on top.
I'm impressed, seriously. I had already appreciated her talent and beauty in the movie "Mio's Cookbook", but getting the leading role here really allowed her to shine; such a magnificent actress!

Unfortunately, there were a coupla details about this drama that I personally found a bit "meh", which explains why I'm not giving this the afore-mentioned "perfect 10"; it's still a pretty solid 8, though! ^___-

Considering the similar premise (a group of weird avengers à la "Leverage") and the identical last name of both FLs (Honda Tsubasa there, Honda Nao here - although she goes by first name), it was pretty obvious for me to compare this with "Cheat", and I'd sum it up as "this is, like, the more adult version of that one".

And here comes indeed my main problem with "Enjiya": I think the serious parts were by far the best ones (for example, the second story - episodes 3 and 4 - and its terrible, yet so powerful, ending), whereas the "comic relief" was at times excessive and felt out of place here and there (I hope Kasahara Shinji's fans won't resent me for this, but I really think the drama would've worked better without him, sorry...).
The other thing that disturbed me was the CEO's character; I didn't pay him too much attention the first time he appeared, as it was part of the whole "let's start with a BANG!" strategy, and I honestly couldn't say that it didn't work (quite the opposite!), so I was more than willing to overlook the (imho) disturbing detail. But since they chose to have him back for the finale, I couldn't overlook it anymore; even more so as the series had shown, as I mentioned above, to really shine at being more serious, adult and mature (both in the plots and in the delicate topics touched); given all that, I couldn't help but think that the guy shouldn't be indulged, but rather put away: sorry for not being a fan of the whole "he's loaded, so he can afford to hire people to enact his homicidal fantasies without actually hurting anybody". What will happen when he runs out of money? Or if the urge strikes him while he's thousands of miles away? Or when the act won't satisfy him anymore?
Sorry, but that guy's a ticking bomb and, as far as I'm concerned, he belong to an asylum.

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Once again a SP episode ends up being...nothing special! :/

I tend to be a little wary of SPs done after successful dramas, as in the past I've noticed many of those being way below their respective main series' level (and more generally, way below par!)...and this "Tokyo Tarareba Musume 2020" was no exception, unfortunately.
Whereas with the original series I had liked more or less everything but the last episode(s), here I kinda like the last 50' or so, but on the other hand I couldn't help but finding the first 45' terribly boring (the definition "yawnfest" comes to mind) and borderline annoying.
The cast did well though, all things considered, particularly Yoshitaka Yuriko and Oshima Yuko (who's been nothing short of brilliant in everything I've seen her in so far!).
If you asked me about the music - despite the fact that I've watched this, like, less than 24 hours ago! - I'd have to reply that I don't even remember the music in it (which means it wasn't terrible, but also not very good).
All in all, once again a SP episode ends up being...nothing special! :/

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In my very humble opinion, Japan produces every year (and even more so did in the past) a very decent number of good to great manga. It is therefore quite frustrating, to this humble reviewer, to constantly see how so many dramas decide instead to adapt a manga which doesn't belong to the aforementioned "good to great" category, but rather to the "meh to nope" one, as is the case of this "WataOji".
A bunch of tremendously immature adults who keep acting in a tremendously immature way 99% of the time for what is supposed to be "comedic effect" but instead ends up being just embarassangly annoying - as I always put it in such cases: ridiculous rather than hilarious.
The other 1% of the time, the script pretends to go deeper but again fails miserably, resulting instead in an awful "going through the motions of getting deeper, all while remaining as shallow as your regular poodle instead".
The acting also suffered from the terribly poor script, and even actors I like (as Okada and Endou) got negatively affected - and as for the rest of the cast, sorry but they were mostly abysmal imho.
The music is the only very good thing in this drama, but that ain't of course enough to grant it a passing grade, alas.

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First, a premise: as I've written more than once in other reviews, I'm no particular fan of the "romance" genre, or, as I like to put it, of "what passes for romance these days". Nevertheless, I do happen to watch this or that drama out of my interest in this or that actress, and I'm always open to be positively surprised by any drama that, despite not giving me many expectations in the first place, manages to entertain me.
Alas, it certainly wasn't the case with this "Usokon", which I watched for Nagahama Neru who used to be one of my "oshi" in Keyakizaka46: in a nutshell, the drama is so trite it hurts, all the genre's tropes are (ab)used over and over, and despite some good acting, decent music and better-than-average "packaging", it felt as "plasticky" and fake as a TV commercial.

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I liked all but the last episode

Given how I am quite a fan of the genre (meaning, Japanese horror), I just *had to* watch this "Kotodamasou".
And upon completion, I'm happy to announce it was quite a satisfying watch, except for the very last episode, which left me with a bitter aftertaste - more on that later).
First things first, what I liked:

1) The script (again, apart from the 10th ep.) was of pretty high quality; no cheap tricks, intriguing and subtly scary without being obnoxiously trying too much (if you're reading this while being in California and you hear a giant sneeze, well, it's because I'm thinking about Hollywood right now, LOL)

2) The cast: in all fairness, I bet most of the male audience would move to that residence right away, regardless of the fact that's haunted; I mean, Nishino Nanase, Hotta Mayu, Miyoshi Ayaka, Ishii Anna, Uchida Rio, Nakamura Yurika and Morita Misato all under the same roof? Count me in! Right? ^__^;;;
Honorable mention also for Eita's younger brother, here blissful among women...^_^

3) The production value: definitely pretty high! Directing, editing, photography, music...all very nice!

So, back to what I *didn't* like - namely, the last episode:

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(WARNING: huge spoilers ahead, ignore what follows if you don't wanna see them! ^___-)
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I know it's so common in horror stories, but the last twist, used to give that last cheap scare (and possibly *cough! cough!* to leave the door open for a second season?), was imvho not only unnecessary but also detrimental to the story itself, as was part of the explanation and of the solution of the haunting (I didn't like how the owner was portrayed - a ridiculous villain - nor how Sugai-san's deeds were so easily forgiven at the end - I could sum up the whole episode saying that it seemed written in Hollywood, indeed, as it had all the typical faults of a Western production - lousy wrap-up, morally questionable message, etc.)


Here's how *I* would've written the last episode:

a) I would've removed the owner's role altogether;

b) I would've had Sugai-san commit suicide right after Mitsuba-san's death (perhaps by jumping off a cliff or something, anything that might have explained how her body hadn't been found immediately - it could've been found later on, not recognized, and therefore she would've been considered to be still at large);

c) Sugai-san'd deeds shouldn't have been so easily pardoned in the end; she had still killed three people, hardly a behavior deserving of "and they lived happily ever after in the afterlife"!!!

d) instead of Ayaka-san coming back as a new evil spirit, I'd have written the last scene like this: the car stops at the seaside, the FL turns and sees Ayaka-san's ghost in the backseat, smiling and pointing towards a small house on a cliff; while the ML's busy with the engine, the FL leaves the car, follows Ayaka-san's hint and checks the house, which ends up being for sale/rent. The FL decides to take it and they move in; a few quickly edited scenes then show glimpses of the future, with the leads having a daughter and calling it Ayaka.
And THEY lived happily ever after, 'cause THEY deserved it.
Not the dangerous psychopath.

All imvho. Peace! ^___-

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This "Kanojo ga Joubutsu Dekinai Riyuu" was a pretty nice surprise for me; consisting of six episodes lasting roughly thirty minutes each, it can be taken as Nth proof that quality trumps quantity (although I did find it a tad too short - more on that in a jiff, bear with me ^__-).
The story was a clean, nice, delicate one - precisely the one you'd expect from an NHK production - and that was comforting in itself. Nevertheless - and without any spoilers, I promise - the conclusion felt a bit rushed to me, so as far as I'm concerned it wouldn't have hurt to have even just one more episode so as to be able to develop it a bit more smoothly. But it's a minor detail, really - and I know I tend to be pretty picky when it comes to scripts, so take it with a grain of salt.
The cast - I'm sorry to confess, totally unknown to me - did very well, and I particularly appreciated that the dreary but alas (stereo)typical portrayal of foreigners as funny weirdos, so common in J-dramas, was mostly absent from this series. Nice one, guys! (BTW, having a burmese-born ML portraying a burmese character was also a nice touch! I wish Hollywood learned to do the same - but then again, who cares, right? I would be none the wiser even if they did, given how I'm completely detoxed from their productions anyway, LOL).
Music and production value might not be top-notch, I'll admit, and that's why I'm not rating this as a perfect 10. But it got really close, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it! ^___-

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Masterpiece from the Golden Era!

I'll start with a standing ovation for Kimura Takuya.
And given how I've never been a big fan of his, I honestly think this carries a lot more weight than otherwise.
He was simply superb here, period. Well done, man! Chapeau!
But then again, the *whole* cast did marvelously. And what a fantastic cast, by the way! Okamoto Aya, Koyuki, Sakai Masato, Izumiya Shigeru...and then again, Ueno Juri, Kaho, Toda Erika, Oohira Natsumi...wow, just wow!
Of course a big role in this overall superb performance was played by the script, which was basically perfect and worked like a clockwork: *every single character* was tridimensional, *every scene* well thought and well written. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll think...the whole nine yards, seriously!
Some *great* music and a pretty high production value complete the package.
If you're in for a masterpiece from the "Golden Era" (early 90s to late Aughts) of Japanese Drama, give this title a chance. You might end up *loving* it just as I did! ^___-

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