Different Worlds Apart

Contrary to common belief I have seen the first two eps of both Meteor Garden and Hana Yori Dango and I didn't like either version of it. Additionally, I liked the manga only slightly better ... however ...

OMG!!!! The Korean version is soooo good. I have seen now ep1 and 2 and I can't wait to see the next. This is ohhhh sooooo good.

Off to see if they are any icons out already.

I normally don't post pics of myself, but this one was taken after the umpteenth time His Hubbiness ™ took pics of me and the dogs and I got fed up. LOL

I think one of the best features Cenour likes about me is that I have long hair. He deliberately plays with it, whenever he gets the chance.



( I'm happy that Cenour is okay again and also runs around like before )

Karei-naru Ichizoku

summary:
The drama follows the life and loves of one industrial family, the Manpyo clan. Daisuke Manpyo who led his grandfather's small bank to greatness leads his family like he does his business - ruthlessly. He treats his family like an extension of his business; marriages are mere business mergers for him and personal feelings have no say. His eldest daughter was married off to his right hand man; his eldest son had to marry the daughter of a business partner, despite his obvious love for another woman. For his two youngest children he already has similar distinguishable marriages in the works. His own marriage, born out of love rather than business is completely void of any feelings from his side. He had a live-in mistress who runs the family estate with a firm hand.
( read more - spoilers ahead though )

At last I'm getting around to review this dorama. It was my first Japanese one and introduced me to Kimura Takuya (apart from SMAP) and boy, I was instantly hooked. Not only was the quality of the files very good, JTV did the subs and this is one of the best fan subbing groups out there, but the story was very good and the characters interesting.

summary:
Pride is about a corporate owned ice hockey team that has to struggle through the loss of their beloved coach Anzai. The Blue Scorpions are a good team, with three star players, Hotta Yamato (Sakaguchi Kenji) - the goalie, Ikegawa Tomonori (Ichikawa Somegoro), a defense player and Satonaka Halu (Kimura Takuya) the center star player. Anzai influenced them all but especially Halu who idolizes Anzai without realising that the coach restricted his game playing by never letting him develop his own play but molded him into a second Anzai. Anzai was also the very person who told Halu that a true iceman never falls in love and that love/women should be treated as a game.
( She must be a lady from the last century ... )

BEAUTIFUL

COLD-BLOODED

PURE

REBELLIOUS

CALLOUS

SEXY

LOST

These are the adjectives that come to mind when I watch Kimura Takuya as Ryo in One Million Stars Falling from the Sky.
( pls beware of spoilers )
x-posted in my journal

... is as sweet as the chocolate bar and as disturbing as the God of war.

How do I love Mars? Let me count the ways...

Summary: Chen Ling (Vic Zhou) and Han Qui Luo (Barbie Hsu) attend the same college. Where Chen Ling is a reckless, sometimes even ruthless young man with a devil may care attitude, Qui Luo is introverted and afraid of her own shadow. Those two unlikely people meet when he is asking for directions and she scribbles them on the back of a drawing of a mother and child she did in a park.
From then on, their lives are never the same and a love drama enfolds of Shakespearean proportions.
( The following may contain spoilers )
My own take:
I love this series. Nothing has gripped me so hard quite like it in the last couple or so years. The only two series similar where I had to watch all eps and not miss a little thing, might have probably been Space: Above And Beyond and Farscape.
I have to admit I don't Angst too well, especially if the Angst of the OTP comes from within themselves due to quarrelling and petty behaviour. I think that is one of the reasons why I don't like a lot of Western shows, because somehow the Angst always seems to be superficially thrown in. In Mars the Angst comes from the outside and from events in the past, the choices ppl have made and it is refreshing to see that though the OTP bickers and fights sometimes, it always presents a united front against the outside world. They don't break up over something minor as a misunderstanding, they break up for a day because Ling thinks she cannot trust him. But only for a day, because he and Qui Luo cannot exist without the other. The couple's problems are solved quickly, not too quickly or artificially, but with a care a loving couple might also do in RL. That makes the whole series believable, even though I have to admit that Taiwan sure seems to have a lax justice system ;)
Mars is one of the best series I have seen in the last ten years and I desperately wish they'd get the whole crew together for a follow-up of the series, like Ling's and Qui Luo's years as a GP racer and her as a painter who becomes famous for her race-track paintings. As that is not likely to happen I wish they'd release an English dubbed version of the series (preferably with the actor's own voices) and available overseas. Heck, I'd even settle for a dumb German dubbed version airing here in Germany to spread the greatness that is Mars.

This is no teenage idol happily-ever-after fare like some other Taiwanese series. This is high drama where you root for the main leads and laugh and cry and Angst with them to the very end.

x-psted to dorama_chat