As threatened promised previously, here's the first installment of What Does It All Mean? aka searching for meaning in Korean music videos. Korean MVs make me happier than MVs from other countries, and I don't really know why, but I'm just going to roll with it.

Anyway, this is pretty much as early Big Bang as you can get. I knew it had to be from the beginning of their career but I just looked it up on wiki and it was their first single. You can really tell - GD looks about 12, TOP's decked out like a gangsta and Tae Yang's hair is something to either admire or recoil from, I'm undecided. Interestingly, the female vocals are performed by Park Bom, and she's quite good.

Unlike this music video.



( Well. )

Next up...more Big Bang!

Say it with me now – yay for sick days! I just went to the doctor to see why I keep getting epic gastro and throwing up all the time (possibly the least amount of fun I’ve ever had, and I’m seriously doing it once a week now) and since I'm always poor and had to come to the university doctor, I thought I'd take advantage of internet (INTAWEEEEEBS!!! HOW I HAVE MISSED YOU!!!) in the uni library, and post an entry I've been meaning to do for a while.

As a preface, generally I don’t watch tragic dramas. I stick to the lightweight or slightly angsty ones, because I can sit through almost anything as long as I know that the hero and the heroine end up together at the end, hugging loosely and kissing chastely and promising that they’ll love each other until the end of time, secondary love interests and interfering mothers be damned. My current favourite lightweight/slightly angsty drama is, to no one’s surprise, You’re Beautiful, but the wait between episodes became too much for me (WHERE IS EP 9?) and I looked for something, anything on my hard drive that starred either JGS or PSH because I want their babies. Or just for them to have babies together, because they would be beautiful.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the only drama I had was Tree of Heaven, an unequivocally traumatic cryfest starring a younger but just as beautiful Park Shin Hye alongside a strong and silent-ish Lee Wan. For those who haven’t seen it, it tells the story of cheerful, naive Hana, who lives in Japan with her Korean mother. Eventually her mother remarries and brings to Japan her new husband and his strange son, Yoon Suh, who doesn’t talk, walks barefoot in the snow, and lurks in shadows staring at Hana ALL THE FUCKING TIME. (Seriously. He just hides in pools of darkness and behind doors and across streets while staring intensely at Hana. No one does creepy incestuous stalker staring like Lee Wan, FO’ SHO).

Anyway! Stuff happens, Hana is ridiculously nice to her new oppa, even when everyone else quite rightfully decides he’s a freak, and after a bit feelings emerge on both sides. As they’re not related by blood AT ALL this somehow poses a problem and the rest of the drama consists of Hana crying and saying, “Yoon Suh oppa~~~”, Yoon Suh lurking in the fucking shadows, the secondary guy being stupidly steadfast, the secondary girl being a gigantic bitch, more crying, supercharged emotional moments where Hana and Yoon Suh HOLD HANDS or HUG, and several baths in which one or more participants were fully clothed.

I’m so torn as to whether I can recommend it as a drama or not, because on one hand, I strangely enjoyed all the crying and the dramatics and the OMG FORBIDDEN LOVE!111!!!! but on the other hand the series is 10 episodes long at one hour per episode and Hana cries for about 6 hours of accumulated screentime. It also contains the second most brutal wedding ever (what is with my luck with stumbling across terrible wedding scenes in stuff?! It’s not like I’m looking for it!!!), so if you don’t mind spoilers and are still wondering if Tree of Heaven is for you, click on the cut.

And then have a nice, stiff drink.





( I'm glad I wasn’t invited to this wedding. SPOILERS FOR TREE OF HEAVEN )

Argh, I need to soothe myself with another episode of You're Beautiful, or if I can't have that, whatever happened to my promised Ella drama? I've been hanging out for that one for months, and the thought of Ella is the only thing that will keep me going after You're Beautiful winds up. DO WANT.

The continuing adventures of that top five meme!

For phrenk: ( Top five people you want to see REUNITE for a drama. )

For beckerbell: ( Top five dramas you'd recommend to newbies. )

Also for beckerbell: ( Top five j-actors you'd follow into anything they did )

For aliaspiral: ( Top five scenes (drama) )

Also for aliaspiral, ( Top five Johnnys )

For boycottbananas and aliaspiral (who both asked similar questions): ( Top five girls/Asian actresses )

I AM TIRED NOW. Will do the rest tomorrow.

I had to go and do some stuff in the city today, but before I left I wrote down the top fives you guys gave me and worked on it on the train and at uni. IT WAS AWESOME.

Especially awesome was phrenk's suggestion of Top five pairs for a fantasy drama! Like ... I would like to see these two people work together: ___ AND ____. I think everyone should do this! It's crazy how carried away you can get (hint: I GAVE THE FANTASY DRAMAS PLOTS.)

I'll get to the others soon, but this one was AMAZING.

1. Talented pianist Eikura Nana crossdresses as a boy to get into an elite music school. She's taken under the wing of aloof piano teacher Mizushima Hiro (shut up, I know they've worked together before) whose icy facade begins to crack when he realises he's growing feelings for his male (?!) student. Things are complicated by the arrival of Nana's evil stepsister, Kuroki Meisa, who is out to ruin Nana's life. She starts by making moves on Hiro! Can Nana guard her secret, succeed at the piano and find love in the unlikeliest of places?!

2. Bumbling salaryman Ohno Satoshi learns he is the heir to a yakuza clan! He goes to fulfil his duty and faces off with older, more experienced second-in-command Abe Hiroshi, who undermines him at every turn. Clever law student Naka Riisa helps him and along the way, they fall in love?!

3. Former rich young master Kame's family goes bankrupt, and his parents run away to Australia! A series of unfortunate situations sees him forced into becoming a servant to a wealthy family very different to his own, where he learns friendship and kindness from the young master Sato Tomohito and his sister Ueno Juri. Also, love?!

4. Cold-hearted businesswoman Ayase Haruka cares only about her job, and has no time for relationships. A business trip takes a dramatic twist when a hotel mix-up means she has to share a room with scruffy hentai mangaka Nagase Tomoya. An impossible love occurs?!

Also starring a bespectacled Oguri Shun as Nagase's harried editor!

5. Struggling musician Okada Masaki has only a beatup guitar and a few yen to his name. One day, as he gathers up the coins he's earned by busking, he finds a strange object that, when activated, turns him into Kamen Rider Sekime, a plastic-suited warrior of justice sworn to protect the Earth from the evil Melodites, aliens who use musical energy to bend humans to their will. Along the way he meets allies and enemies - Iwasa Mayuko, a mysterious girl who can see the future, Sakurai Sho, a clumsy pastry chef who is also a Rider, Nakama Yukie, the sexy scientist with a secret of her own and Yamapi as Kamen Rider Moob, whose suit fires twin lasers from the nipple area. A shocking love?!

ILU phrenk. BEST FUN EVER.

So last night I had to physically burn the Kabuto movie off my harddrive to stop myself from taking even more screencaps (I already have about 500 in a folder) and talking about it any more. It's a sad day when such an awful movie inspires such a reaction in me and I HAD TO DRAW A LINE SOMEWHERE BECAUSE OTHERWISE I WOULD META IT FOREVER.

Anyway, I'm now watching Yukan Club which is silly, uninspiring and utterly forgettable, but Taguchi Junnosuke is actually excellent and I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to him for inexplicably hating him for so long. And lol at Jin's character bursting into tears all the time. I find Jin nice-looking but ultimately not that arresting, and he's not even in my top three KAT-TUN members (Kame, Koki and Nakamaru, if you were wondering) - he suffers from what I call NICE FACE, which means that he's pretty all-over but has no real defining features. Other boyband members with NICE FACE include Aaron Yan and - don't kill me - to a certain extent, Nino. (Nino was the last member of Arashi that I was able to point at and name).

With those confessions out of the way, I'll make this post worthwhile by stealing that top five meme from half of my friends list.

Ask me my fannish Top Five [Whatevers]. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! And I will answer them all in a new post.

HENSHIN!

As promised, here's the second part to the Kabuto movie picspam, now with 100% more tragedy!

Again, spoilers for the movie under the cut, but SURELY you don't actually want to watch it?!



( act four: the unravelling )
( act five: the unspoken promise )
( act six: the climax )

I'm going to have a really hot shower now, because I need to SCRUB AWAY THE PAIN.

I mentioned last post (the one where I raged over the overall crappiness of the Kamen Rider Kabuto movie) that the film boasted the most brutal wedding scene I'd ever seen, and anenko innocently commented that she was, "horribly curious about that scene."

In retaliation, I've spent the last three hours taking and resizing 150+ screencaps that cover the course of the relationship at the heart of the movie, from the gentle beginnings to that horrible wedding, and I'm driven to share them with you guys, whether you want me to or not. In the end, I had so many caps that I had to split my reaction into two posts because MY internet can't handle it very well.

I consider these scenes the 'good bits' version of the movie, much like the grandfather in The Princess Bride skipped all the boring parts and stuck to the fight scenes and the kissing bits. This is a Japanese movie, so there's no kissing to speak of, but there are a few touches and some meaningful looks and ARGH THE PAIN.

Anyway, spoilers for the Kamen Rider Kabuto: God Speed Love movie, but this should bother NO ONE as I seriously doubt you were planning on watching it anyway. And I don't feel that it spoils anything in the series, since the movie is set in an alternate reality and occurs before the events in the series, if that makes sense. LOL, SENSE. I MISS IT.



( act one: the overture )
( act two: the plot thickens )
( act three: the story unfolds )

The rest to follow tomorrow - it's after 1am, which means SLEEP. Also I'm kind of reluctant to post the remainder because ARGH THE PAIN.

So, as promised, after finishing Kabuto I watched the Kabuto movie, which was awkwardly titled God Speed Love. My expectations were perhaps not as low as they should have been - I find Japanese movies (almost all Asian movies, to be honest) suffer from poor pacing and are very much BYO context, but I loved the series and had some small hopes for the movie.

HI, BIG MISTAKE, WORST MOVIE EVER.

No, really. The "plot" was all over the place, Hiro looked like he didn't know what was happening (I really felt for him, because I didn't know what was happening either), all the characters were strange and I can't decide whether it would be better to have seen the series already, in which case you could spot the bit characters and entertain yourself that way, or if it would be better to know NOTHING about the series so that you'd have no hopes and dreams to be dashed. There were only three memorable parts to the film - the first was the most brutal wedding scene I've ever seen (and I never thought I'd put "brutal" and "wedding" together, but HOLY SHIT THIS MOVIE!!!), the second was an inexplicable torture scene, and the third was this:





( Kagami has NEVER looked hotter. )

Now that I've said it's horrible, EVERYONE PLEASE WATCH IT. I need some group therapy, or at the very least, someone to explain to me WHAT JUST HAPPENED. And I did lol a LOT during the movie, so at the very least it's entertaining, it's just...WHAT JUST HAPPENED.

I finally finished Kamen Rider Kabuto tonight, and I'm quite saddened by the fact that it's over. I know a few people felt that the last eps were a bit weak, but I quite liked them, and I still can't stop marvelling at the fact that I watched and enjoyed a 49-episode series about boys who fight aliens while wearing plastic suits in which they TELEGRAPH EVERY FIGHTING MOVE BECAUSE THEY SAY WHAT THEY'RE ABOUT TO DO BEFORE THEY DO IT.

( My thoughts on the series, including PLOT-RUINING SPOILERS, DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN IT )

So, yeah. There were ups and there were downs, but ultimately I really enjoyed it, and I feel a bit bereft now that I'm out of pretty boys in plastic suits to watch. I'd download Kiva or Den-O but there are four people sharing the net here, which cuts my quota down even more. Oh well, I'll watch the Kabuto movie. MOAR HIRO!

I've watched the first 35 episodes of Kabuto now, and it's most definitely love. There's plot, you guys, PLOT, with flawed heroes and evil organisations and aliens with a backstory and true friendship and secret relationships and crazy hijinks and finally everyone's true colours are beginning to show.

Oh, and did I mention the TIME TRAVEL?!

Anyway, I should really keep watching (I went out for dinner with friends tonight and mentioned to one that I was up to ep 35, and she was rather unimpressed and said that if she liked it as much as I profess to, she'd have finished the series by now. Yes, I'm getting through it quite slowly, considering that I'm on leave and have just been lying around the house, but I do keep taking time off to cap scenes and squee about them in comments and basically drive beckerbell insane by forcing her to be tight-lipped and unspoilery. NOT LONG NOW, OKAY?)

Before I go, though, another favourite scene, in which Kagami has to deal with another crazy Rider. I bet he wishes he had a better job. :(

( Tsurugi is quite possibly my favourite character )

Okay, finally going to watch ep 36 now. There's stuff and I want it to be resolved and ARGH TIME TRAVEL WHAT.