The summer season of dramas is here and I just got back into dramas again. Completely skipped the spring season so excited to be at it once again. I'm now noticing that, at least with subtitles, I can comprehend the gist of an episode better. Still hard to keep up with dialogue speed without subs, however. Anyway some quick reviews of what I've seen!

「VISION 殺しが見える女」
This was rather bad. A somewhat interesting concept in that a woman can see how a victim has died, but terrible acting with a poor script lead me to thinking I may download a second episode if only for the novelty of it all. It's worth downloading to see the ridiculous intro. Has a "Days of Our Lives" feel to it all. Not recommended.

「トッカン」
Downloaded this simply because Inoue Mao is adorable. Good enough reason, right? It turned out to be okay. I had a lot of difficulty enduring the moments where it tries to throw emotion into it. Do you ever feel as if Jdramas try so hard to stuff emotion into certain parts of the dialogue that you need to pause to breathe lest you immediately delete the crap you're watching? A couple of those exist in トッカン but it seems promising. I'll give it another shot next week. Recommended.

「東野圭吾ミステリーズ」
Pretty satisfied with this drama. The 11 episodes are different short stories of the mystery novelist Higashino Keigo. I've never read any of his books but that's just information that may be of interest to you. The mystery in the first episode was interesting enough with a good script. Recommended.

I think 「ゴーストママ捜査線」 looks dumb but I downloaded it anyway and will watch it once the Japanese subs are timed and downloadable. Since Aibu Saki is my favorite actress I also can't wait to watch 「リッチマン、プアウーマン」. On the fence about 「GTO」 and considering 「主に泣いてます」.

@TheVinster,

Since it's your thread, can you ask one of the mods to change the title to Summer 2012 JDrama Discussion. This can help as there are other threads on seasonal JDrama discussions

Anyway, I like threads like these as I don't usually watch dramas till later and I can't stand reading the threads on the JDrama fan sites. There they tend to rate dramas solely on who's starring in them. Here, there's seems to be much better discussion on the overall merit of a show (story, plot, acting, sets, etc.). On top of that, IceCream had posted how easy it was to follow the dialogue.

Perhaps an idea for the future is create a sticky for a season's drama discussion, then unsticky it a month after the season is over. With that, you get a nice archive of discussion to help people decide what can be a good recent drama to catch up on.

Thanks for your reviews. I also liked 東野圭吾ミステリーズ.

Yeah Nukemarine I'll message a mod later. Or if a mod sees this he's free to change it to Summer 2012 JDrama Discussion.

There doesn't seem to be much interest in either the summer dramas or discussing them, but I'll go ahead and give my reviews of some others I watched the past week.

「Rich Man, Poor Woman」
It has a decent amount of potential and the first episode was good enough for me to start watching it weekly from now on. It seems it'll turn out to be a fairly predictable romance story of two opposites and a possible love triangle. I recommend it because don't get me wrong it still seems like it has some substance.

「GTO」
I've never seen any other GTO stuff (old dramas, anime, etc.). With that being said it is fairly interesting and ridiculous enough. As expected each episode covers a different student(s). I'll recommend this.

「主に泣いています」
Lame. One of those try-hard dramas that takes the manga/anime theatrics and throws it in a live-action show. Good dramas know where to stop. Also the main character isn't even that cute. The reason I say that is because the whole story revolves around her being so beautiful everyone instantly wants to marry her and such. She has to wear disguises to avoid this. And the main character also lies and says he's gay which, from the previews of the 2nd episode, means an actual gay character will show up for "comedy relief". Not recommended.

GTO IS SWEEEEEET

i loved the 2002 version. my favorite drama of all time. 2012 is different and likeable in its own way.

There's a new GTO? I guess I'll have to watch that.

TheVinster Wrote:「VISION 殺しが見える女」
This was rather bad. A somewhat interesting concept in that a woman can see how a victim has died, but terrible acting with a poor script lead me to thinking I may download a second episode if only for the novelty of it all. It's worth downloading to see the ridiculous intro. Has a "Days of Our Lives" feel to it all. Not recommended.

Yeah, it's bad, but I can't stop watching. The acting in the third episode was particularly terrible (the guy's just gonna sit there and let himself get strangled to death? 本当？). But I like some of the lead actors, it's good campy fun, and it's provided some good subs2srs material.

(Disclaimer: I love 美少女戦士セーラームーン. Apparently I have a thing for Japanese camp.)

UPDATE: 来栖玲奈 actually sees the killers, not the victims, which makes the show more than a simple case of "I see dead people". The 犯人 all have some strange, unspecified relationship to 来栖玲奈; their rampages are triggered by seeing her photo, and most of them state that they're killing to "protect" her. In a play on her name (くるせ　れな), the killers call her クリスティーナ, which is supposedly 玲奈's "dark side".

It's intriguing enough to keep me hooked despite the drawbacks. 矢柴俊博 is pretty good as the skeptical supervising detective.

The male Japanese actors are particularly hard to follow (for me, at least); 字幕　recommended.

Haven't watched any other dramas yet, as I've been geeking out on 謎の彼女Ｘ．Hoping to watch an ep of 東野圭吾ミステリーズ　tonight.

なにわ少年探偵団 is pretty goofy, but I'm kind of into it. It's about a trainee elementary school teacher in Osaka who's obsessed with mysteries, and three of her students who form a Junior Detectives Club. (It's also, incidentally, based on a Higashino Keigo book. Does it seem like half the dramas on these days are based on a Higashino Keigo book?)

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:

TheVinster Wrote:「VISION 殺しが見える女」
This was rather bad. A somewhat interesting concept in that a woman can see how a victim has died, but terrible acting with a poor script lead me to thinking I may download a second episode if only for the novelty of it all. It's worth downloading to see the ridiculous intro. Has a "Days of Our Lives" feel to it all. Not recommended.

Yeah, it's bad, but I can't stop watching. The acting in the third episode was particularly terrible (the guy's just gonna sit there and let himself get strangled to death? 本当？). But I like some of the lead actors, it's good campy fun, and it's provided some good subs2srs material.

(Disclaimer: I love 美少女戦士セーラームーン. Apparently I have a thing for Japanese camp.)

UPDATE: 来栖玲奈 actually sees the killers, not the victims, which makes the show more than a simple case of "I see dead people". The 犯人 all have some strange, unspecified relationship to 来栖玲奈; their rampages are triggered by seeing her photo, and most of them state that they're killing to "protect" her. In a play on her name (くるせ　れな), the killers call her クリスティーナ, which is supposedly 玲奈's "dark side".

It's intriguing enough to keep me hooked despite the drawbacks. 矢柴俊博 is pretty good as the skeptical supervising detective.

The male Japanese actors are particularly hard to follow (for me, at least); 字幕　recommended.

Haven't watched any other dramas yet, as I've been geeking out on 謎の彼女Ｘ．Hoping to watch an ep of 東野圭吾ミステリーズ　tonight.

I keep watching VISION too, but with the guy being strangled did you mean the first guy that got killed just sitting there and doing nothing? That's because he was handcuffed. I suppose even then he could've kicked her or something haha. The campy feel is definitely drawing me in, although I hate the main actress because... well... she just looks dumb, I guess? I hate her face.

Yeah Higashino is still pretty great. The narrator who is dead I've been noticing a lot. He seems to be pretty popular. Interestingly enough he always seems to be the guy that's dead or dies.