Orient Kyuuko Satsujin Jiken (2015)

Agatha Christie's 1934 novel, Murder on the Orient Express, gets its first Japanese adaptation even though certain details are ill-fittingly transposed and dramatic tone is chucked out the window. The special works best closely following the lead of its 1974 cinematic version but the extended back story, which spans an extra two and a half hours of screentime, is arguably superfluous and does nothing to correct the unintentional injection of...

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Second Love (2015)

With nothing else but the relationship of its characters to focus on, Second Love is a throwback to what appears to be a dying genre---the renzoku renai of old. Bucking the trend of breezy, quirky romances and sensational melodramas, the series features two people, brought together by a strong physical attraction, struggling to find common ground to keep an extemporaneous relationship going. But perhaps more important than finding love,...

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Blog Update : Take Five

Oh my, how time flies. It seems like it was only yesterday that I decided to start a blog on a whim. If this blog were a child, it'd be running around in preschool by now.... But then again, it would also be severely neglected considering how bad I am at updating this thing. Bad analogy, eh? What I'm getting at is that it's been five years since this sorry blog made its debut on the internet. Five years! Can you believe it? And I can't still...

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Time Spiral (2014)

The idea of being able to move along different points in time, of having the ability to change untoward events and prevent the loss of a loved-one are just some of the possibilities associated with the concept of time travel. Time Spiral  builds on the same premise that maybe the past is not etched in stone and conceives of a situation where one man tries to alter events yet finds himself unable to change the fate of another person. The...

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Ando Lloyd

Kimura Takuya plays the dual role of genius scientist and futuristic android doppelganger in a CGI-laden science fiction series called, Ando Lloyd. Set in what appears to be an alternate version of present day Tokyo, the series takes on a clean, modern visual style which makes it feel different yet oddly familiar. With elements culled from a medley of works about sentient beings and technological determinism, it's a show that takes great...

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Hirugao

Hirugao provides a beguiling yet woefully trite profile of a Japanese housewife's life of quiet desperation, having for its subject matter the alleged popularity and propensity of domesticated women to engage in mid-afternoon trysts. Opening with a strong emotional hook, it effectively garners sympathy for its main character, playing out like an anatomy of an extra-marital affair. Be forewarned however, that the the story in itself is nothing...

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