Scatterbrained Musings

So what have I been watching?

Like any other jdrama viewer, I tend to watch an ongoing series from time to time. Black Pean was a show that I watched religiously for weeks during its 2018 spring release until I found myself one episode short of completing it. After the penultimate episode, I just couldn't muster the interest to see it. It was just too repetitive for my liking and the central debate posited about human skill versus technology did not only feel moot and academic, but it was driven up to extreme illogical reasoning. I also couldn't shake off the feeling that the revenge plot was borne out of a misunderstanding, making that storyline one empty, dissatisfying tidbit. Of course, I could be wrong about this but I'll find out eventually if and when I finish it. 

In contrast to the disappointment that was the ratings juggernaut for the spring season, Aino Kekkon Soudanjo turned out to be an amusing, quasi-musical oddity. I personally found it to be quite entertaining and I attribute this to the fact that I saw it without any expectations whatsoever. Furthermore, actor Yamazaki Ikusaburo was rather exceptional in keeping the same level of energy in each episode, regardless of his co-stars' performance and no matter how silly the scenario.

Another welcome surprise was Ossan's Love. As the lengthier remake of the television special bearing the same title, the series had more meat in its story, in my book being the first BL story to get mainstream treatment with Tanaka Kei and Hayashi Kento playing the male leads. With there being more LGBT[Q] characters in Western television than ever before, jdramas have slowly followed suit featuring members of the said community in a more positive light. They've been represented well in dramas like Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu, Kuragehime and Tonari no Kazoku wa Aoku Mieru---a far cry from the tortured and beleaguered characters in Last Friends, Sunao ni Narenakute and progenitor, Asunaro Hakusho. There's one more season to go, but for this year, in my humble opinion, the best of the lot would have to be NHK's Joshi teki Seikatsu. Brazenly realistic, touching without being melodramatic, the mini-series has a rather progressive take on the life of a transgender woman.

Opting to dig into my drama archive, I likewise saw Anata no Koto wa Sorehedo,  which is about an extra-marital affair pursued by childhood acquaintances. The show chronicles how the betrayal and the lies impact the marriage of two couples but the supposed love which triggers the illicit relationship does not take as expected. This was a terrible misstep for the likable Haru, who was outperformed by Naka Riisa at every turn. Programs like these are often regarded as guilty pleasures but this series felt more like a tedious viewing exercise.

Rounding off this list is the Japanese drama remake of the 2016 Korean series Signal. A crime thriller with a bizarre twist courtesy of a portable radio transceiver, the premise appears to have been culled from the 2000 movie Frequency but it slowly establishes a difference agenda, playing with the idea of the possibility of changing events in the past and how such changes can affect the future. Detectives from different time periods converse as the clock strikes at 11:23pm, encouraging each other not to give up hope but I was rather of the mindset that the show was headed towards a dismal conclusion. Fast-paced and engaging, it's bogged down by histrionic performances and an ambiguous ending.

Will I be writing full reviews of any of the foregoing?

I really can't tell. Right now, the first order of business is to put my Kaito Yamaneko and Meishi Game reviews to bed. I'm trying to streamline the reviews and cut down on screencaps so this might take a while.

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Writing Sucks

Getting back into blogging is harder than I thought. After taking a break from watching Japanese dramas and East Asian movies for about a year, I was at a loss of where to begin. There's a wide selection of shows available and that doesn't even include the older dramas that I have yet to watch in their entirety or the ones that I need to revisit in order to finish writing draft posts that have remained unpublished for the past six years. 

Those fairly familiar with this blog know that I don't post reviews of anything that I haven't seen fully which means regardless of whether the series is good or bad, I hold on to the bitter end before I even consider to write about it. But you see, writing has always been particularly difficult for me, so unlike the truly gifted ones who manage to consistently provide quality content, words don't flow as easily. As years go by, I've realized that I have equal trouble writing about the shows that I love and despise---extremely cautious not to oversell the former while not too dismissive of the latter, fearing my inability to give a show or series the fair shake that it deserves. Even though I try to be as objective as possible, these drama reviews will always have a subjective element to it. Like they say, it's all a matter of taste.

There's a handful of sites that provide drama recaps but I have always been partial to those that provide reviews and analytical essays. People may readily agree to disagree on the merits of a particular series but I do believe that reviews serve a purpose in the sense that they can be at times instructive, pointing out things and matters which one may have overlooked, and also affirmative in so far as a praise or critique may also align with one's personal observations. As conceited as it may sound, I believe that reading about other people's thoughts enrich the viewing experience, so dear accidental and/or sporadic reader, if you can spare the time, please do read on.

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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 get a handle on how to keep this thing going. With work and graduate school taking up most of my time, I haven't been able to write as often as I would want to. Nevertheless, I wish to thank those who drop by once in a while to check new posts and all those who stumble upon such random posts even during my long hiatus.

Rundown-zoo was set up as a predominantly jdrama review site, so regardless of its number of readers or followers, it will remain as such, hopefully for years to come. I'll try to incorporate both new and old dramas, including a couple of specials this year; schedule permitting. As such, readers and guests should be guided accordingly:

1. Reviews are written only after watching a series in full.

2. Effort is placed to make each review spoiler-free with fanboy/girl raving kept at a minimum,

3. This year's posts will carry some conceit with the incorporation of a 5-star rating system.

4. The rating accorded is highly subjective and serves no other purpose than to reflect my personal preference.

5. Some posts will be antedated because the screencaps were prepared ahead of the actual review.

Thanks again and happy viewing. ;)

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Blogging: Year Two

Was checking on long forgotten draft posts that lie buried under a list of published material on my dashboard and realized that this blog has unbelievably managed to hobble to its second year in the blogosphere. So hurrah, rundown-zoo just turned 2!?!

Curiously enough, that's about the same amount of time it took me to finish watching the k-movie Psychic Haunters which---let me tell you right now---if you don't like seeing a scraggly-haired, bug-eyed Kang Dong-Won dueling with an unbreakable dunderhead played by Go Soo, then you can skip this movie altogether.

Forget about camera phones being used as protective visors and the image of people plunging to their deaths under a hypnotic trance, I'd like nothing more than to say bring on year 2 but I know that there's no way that this blog will ever produce up-to-date posts in the near future. And no, I don't feel like reviewing the aforementioned movie EVER. All I got from that is the accompanying image for this post with a school of fish swimming to and fro. Swim little fishies, go!

A quick view of my posts summary will tell you that I'm a pretty inconsistent blogger with only 56 published posts to date and about 32 draft posts still waiting in the wings. Yes, I know how ridiculous that all sounds but I have this rather nasty habit of taking screencaps, writing down notes (with all the intention of creating a new post) and getting hopelessly bogged down by real life concerns, if not distracted by 101 more irrelevant diversions. I loathe the idea of abandoning this blog completely but life has been rather hectic lately, so blog posts will be as infrequent as rain in the Sahara desert.          

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Copyright Wars

Now, for the first time in history, we have the technological capacity to save all those works in digital form at a tiny cost and, through the Internet, easily put them at the fingertips of everyone, anywhere in the world

- Pat Choate, Hot Property

About this time last week, I was making a list of the fall jdoramas that I didn't have the time to see and was doing an inventory to check whether or not I had all the episodes to the dramas currently languishing in my computer's hard disk. I also made a mental note to set aside some time for dramas that weren't on my to-watch list but were nevertheless already subbed in their entirety only to hold off obtaining a copy, thinking I could easily gain access to them through direct download links... oh boy, was I wrong to think this.

Looks like I have to wait a little longer before I can watch Kame morph into Kokey's distant relative or see Chiaki Kuriyama play wife and spy by varying the application of her eye makeup. I should also give up the idea of ever getting to watch Sakurai Sho play butler to a rail thin Kitagawa Keiko, whose acting, by the way, cannot possibly get worse after landing the role of a pouty, anemic, Plain Jane in Paradise Kiss. How do I waste my time now without all these (ahem*) quality shows?

Ah, 'tis a shame, indeed.

 *   *   *

Just when I though that the online community scored one for the team when the U.S. Congress decided to postpone any action over the proposed legislation against online piracy, the Feds and the Justice Department managed to strike back by cracking down on the filesharing site mammoth, megaupload, thus strongly sending a message that the fight is far from over. And although the owners of the said site deserve little or no sympathy for amassing millions based on a business model that clearly violated copyright laws, I can't help but feel bad thinking about all the material that fansubbers and raw providers have guardedly made available online, now lost and inaccessible. These storage sites have become an integral part of the Asian drama community in the past few years, they provided an alternative to peer-to-peer file sharing which can take a while if you missed out on the swarm.

I may not have been following the issue closely (I'm sure there's a student out there preparing a thesis on this very topic), but it's interesting to note how recent moves to enact SOPA/PIPA/ACTA appear to be nothing more than the latest installment of what some critics and commentators would refer to as Hollywood's continuous attempt to protect the interests of copyright holders (i.e. their right to make money and have sole discretion over certain works). Watching the Keiser Report episode on SOPA made me realize how today's debate regarding the controversial bills reflected the same core issues identified with the film and music industry's fight against piracy---from the early days of the VCR, to the rise and fall of Napster, up to the successful lobbying of studio execs  for the Bono Act, which in turn extended the copyright term of commercially viable works.

As delineated by author of Hot Property, Pat Choate, this really is an ongoing saga of two clashing cultures and belief-systems, a battle that is alternately fought in the federal and international stage. In an age where information can readily be obtained at the click of a mouse or a mere touch of a keyboard, copyright holders would like nothing more than to regain absolute control over the distribution of their work, while public domain advocates, in contrast, would like nothing more than to protect the untrammeled exchange of ideas in cyberspace to foster innovation.

It's a dicey situation for sure, one which might not readily find a solution, however, at the moment, extending the breadth and scope of intellectual property rights enforcement as suggested would mean imposing a form of regulation which can easily border on censorship and negate the established concept of fair-use. I think people in general are not opposed to the idea of protecting intellectual property rights, it's just that technology in itself is quite the game-changer, and as such, the old rules don't apply. The challenge therefore is to come up with a new model, a new system, hopefully one that works without having to take us a step backward.

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Falling by the Wayside

お久しぶりです! I know it's been months since I've updated this thing but ever since I got a part-time job teaching college kids, I just never seem to have the time to sit down and blog properly (if there is such a thing). That second job pretty much sucked up all my time and energy that I even forgot basic stuff like renewing my driver's license. To top it off, I still have about a half dozen or so draft entries that annoy the hell out of me every time I log into this thing; oh and it also just occurred to me that this blog of mine turned a year old last April and I didn't do anything to commemorate it---which just all adds up to me being a lousy blogger.

Just when I thought I was making headway finishing up the dramas I dropped and missed out on in the past two years, I find myself falling behind at the tail end of 2011. I don't know, it might be possible that I've gotten more picky and impatient when it comes to my drama viewing but most of the stuff I've seen are not exactly worth writing about while the few that I really liked are kinda difficult to write about.

There's also this little thing called "writer's block" wherein you lose your train of thought and run out of inspiration which, if you're prepping a draft post, is equivalent to the kiss of death.... Sounds a tad dramatic, I know, but more often than not when an idea behind the post falls into a vegetative state, the blogger might eventually manage to revive it by clicking that publish button but seldom does it come out without any infirmities.

So what happens now?

Here's the thing, I have a little over a week before I go back to my so-called [tortuous] "teaching career" so I'll try to do what I can with the little time I don't spend sleeping. There's going to be a slight change in the format such that the posts might not be as long or elaborate; most, if not all of them, will be antedated so that they will be presented in the order intended; and I'll probably scrimp on the screencaps since it takes a lot of time to pick them out and have them uploaded.

I'll also have to push back reviewing Nino's kandou dramas---I've managed to watch all three and have prepared notes and whatnot but I'm not in the mood to work on them at the moment (can't capture a decent screencap, Nino looks atrocious in them). I'm not really sure how much of these draft entries will eventually get released in the blogosphere but I'm gonna give it a shot.

So till next time, dear reader. 

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Spring Cleaning Blues

A new season's approaching which means another batch of jdoramas will be gracing the small screen and yet I don't even remember catching any of the ones that came out earlier this year. Can't really say I'm excited about the upcoming dramas because blurbs tend to be misleading and as experience would show, watching a drama on the basis of who's in it doesn't always do the trick. So I've decided to lower my expectations and watch things at my own pace, let all the hype and hoopla die down, before attempting to review whatever I've seen in earnest. I can no longer afford to watch anything and everything like I used to, in fact, I find it increasingly hard to motivate myself to sit through any drama just for the sake of watching a drama.

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The Second Plague

"And the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants."

- Exodus 8:4

Just when I thought that things couldn't get much worse than seeing the month of February come to a close with  still more than half a dozen unfinished blog entries, I get to log into my blogger account to discover that a plague of frogs had descended upon the blogosphere for days, as every  blog post (published or otherwise)  that had images hosted on Imageshack showed the image of a frog frozen in a block of ice. Apparently, the powers that be decided that the domain in which these images were supposed to appear  in must be registered, so off I went to the hosting site to get things fixed, unfortunately, the registration link didn't work.

Good thing when I checked this morning, things were back to normal and so the world was spared from hearing my own rendition of Oh! Let My People Go, which brings me back to my main problem---that of coming up with a decent blog post.

The good news is that I've been able to watch a few dramas that took forever to finish. And I'm not talking about just a few weeks or months, but a matter of years. There are some that I lost interest in and didn't care to finish, some that got buried for one reason or another and others that I simply forgot about with the changing of the seasons. The bad news is that unless I make it a point to write something everyday [which is highly unlikely], it'll be impossible to get everything I've seen in this blog and stay sane and/or gainfully employed. Besides, I don't think I'll be able to come up with anything intelligible anyway, so posts for this blog will have to remain as unpredictable as Kimutaku's next project or as sporadic as Nino's gay pervy antics. As part of my ongoing attempt to stave off the growing number of unfinished dramas that now lay siege on my desk, I'll try to come up with some notes on them just to strike them off my list. Now if only the frogs stuck around a while longer, I'd have a valid excuse to put off working on my draft posts...  

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New Year's 2011

I remember spending the eve of 2010 watching Part 1 of the 20th Century Boys movie with my family while waiting for the clock to strike 12. This year turned out to be slightly different, in a sense that we managed to avoid watching a sci-fi adventure movie; opting for a frilly romantic comedy that didn't leave you wondering what the hell happened to its protagonist. The best part of it was that it didn't have an apocalyptic spin to it, so we didn't find ourselves distraught over the ending of the movie. All in all, we were better off closing the year on a light, positive note, contrary to how we started it.

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Holiday Buzz and Extra Clutter

Well, the holidays are here and I thought that I'd get more time to finish up all those draft blog posts I have had pending for a little over a month now but I could not have been more wrong in this assessment. As soon as December kicked in, life was abuzz with work, holiday preparations and Christmas shopping-- there simply wasn't enough time to mull over recent drama exploits especially when you're in the company of family and friends, let alone sleep as one should.  That being said, I do still plan to close the year with a few antedated posts which will be accompanied by some ill-conceived and sloppily constructed blurgs (provided I get some fansubbing assignments out of the way). For now, allow me to wish everyone the best this holiday season. And of course, for those who might be interested in expanding their drama collection or are simply planning on placing a few more shows on their viewing roster, here's an updated list of the stuff I have that's available for trade or "adoption".

Japanese Dramas

• Atsuhime
• Binbo Danshi
• Bloody Monday 1 & 2
• Byakkotai SP 2007
• Byakuyakou
• Cheap Love
• Code Blue
• Dr. Koto Shinryojo
• Fuma no Kojiro
• Galileo
• Giragira
• Gokusen 3
• H2 Kimi to itahibi
• Hanazakari no Kimitachi e
• Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora Live Action (Raw files)
• Hagetaka
• Jodan Janei
• Jotei
• Juui Dolittle
• Jyoou no Kyoushitsu 
• Keiji no Genba
• Kiken na Aneki 
• Koizora
• Love Shuffle (Raw files)
• Maou
• Minami-kun no Koibito
• Mioka
• Mother
• Muri na Renai
• Nanase Futatabi
• Pandora
• Prisoner
• Quiz Show 2
• Regatta
• Rescue
• Ruri no Shima
• Satomi Hakkenden
• Shoni Kyumei (Raw files)
• Sukeban Deka (Raw files)
• Tantei Gakuen Q
• Tokkyu Tanaka 3-Go
• Ushi ni Negai wo
• Uta no Oniisan
• Yamada Taro Monogatari
• Yoshitsune (Dvd format/avi)
•  Zeni Geba

Korean Dramas

• Bad Guy
• Bad Couple
• Cain and Abel
• Chuno
• Coma
• Crazy for You 
• East of Eden
• Evasive Inquiry Agency (DVD format)
• Goong S (a.k.a. Prince Hours)
• Iron Empress (a.k.a. Empress Chun Chu)
• Piano
• Return of Iljimae
• Robbers
• Snow Queen
• Star's Echo 
• Strongest Chil Woo
• Sungkyunkwan Scandal
• Taereung's National Village
• Thank You
• The Devil
• The Lobbyist
• Time Between Dog and Wolf (DVD format)
• Triple
• You're Beautiful

Chinese/Taiwanese Dramas

• Down with Love
• Fated to Love You 1-19 (RandomFansubs has the rest up on youtube)
• It Started with a Kiss 1-8 (incomplete)
• Mischievous Princess (a.k.a Bratty Princess)
• Romance in the Rain

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Bloody Backlog

Oh my poor neglected blog. Who would've thought that blogging would require so much work? It's rather hard to keep up when the world is so full of distractions... Guess it's high time I get my act together and finish all those pending reviews. Been working on bits and pieces without managing to focus  long enough on just one to bring it to completion. And  of course, September rolled in and I had to follow my weekly dose of Dexter and Merlin, which screwed up my one blog entry a week tenet (yeah right, wishful thinking) and by  the time October came, I had to finish my long overdue assignment of typesetting episodes of Sukeban Deka for SkewedStudios Fansubs and Scanlations (sigh*). So to make a long story short, I suck at multi-tasking, hence the sorry state of this blog.

Given that I haven't published anything in over a month, I decided to make an extra effort to get this thing updated. The gameplan was to take care of all my backlogged entries this November (or at least try to cut them down to half)  and abstain from starting on another series till I'm done working on my current line-up. Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, I could not have been more wrong. True to form, I already violated the said rule when I spent the past weekend sloughing through the mess that  my sister laughingly referred to as Buraddi Mandei. And here I thought Security Police had the over-the-top-anti-terrorist-scenario-trophy in the bag but it appears that Falcon and a bumbling counter-terrorist division known as Third-i, along with a bunch of misguided kids would have to take home the award. Which reminds me, our copy of Bloody Monday 1 & 2 is now up for adoption.

This drama has a virtual menagerie of birds and insects, sloppy assassins who can't even be bothered to use a silencer (let alone be expected to tie their rebonded hair), an incompetent government agency with an acronym that fails to command respect (PSST!), and children of a cult leader who like to go by a certain letter in the alphabet. Furthermore, pretty boys and seductive girls are abound, plus the clickity-clack of the computer keyboard's there to signify that the earth....errrr world... is safe and sound.

What more can you ask for? It's just twenty or so hours of non-stop plot twists that defy logic and explanation, apparently, the whole thing is too complex and only a mathematical genius can map out the equation... NOT! But who cares about such trivial things when people are searching for a cure to a virus and  life as we know it is threatened by a nuclear explosion? Right? RIGHT? Anyway, if there's anyone out there who would like to give this drama a shot, I'd be more than happy to leave the darned thing inside a toilet tank under lock and key. Details as to the stall number and the location of the public toilet where the said package can be picked up will be texted to you as soon as you pour your heart out online and pledge to join my army to restructure Japan and whatnot. Go save the earth, why dontcha? Reduce, reuse and recycle.

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