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Helen-25
Reviews
Beautiful Life (2000)
Great show!
This was about the most popular show around last year. Nearly half of the population of Japan watched the last episode, and everybody talked about it every week. I totally dug this series. I did not miss a single episode - even when I came back to the U.S. for a 2-week trip, my VCR was set to record the shows I would miss. It lasted 11 or 12 episodes, standard for Japanese dramas.
This show, a little clumsily, addresses issues relating to disability, with the main female character in a wheelchair because of a mysterious (but quite serious) disease. Her overprotective brother is particularly good.
Kimura - or Kimutaku as everybody calls him - lives up to his title as Japan's Sexiest Man in this movie. Great hair, reasonable acting, plenty of standing around looking nonchalant.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone who understands a little Japanese - you don't need to understand everything to follow the very sweet story. The short version is: boy (hairdresser) meets girl in wheelchair (librarian), they fall in love, she gets sicker, things progress, blah blah. But darn it, it's so sweet.
Full House (1987)
The pain! The horror! Make it go away!
I actually never saw this show while growing up, and saw it for the first time here in Japan, where it's on once a week in the afternoon. I was shocked! Disgusted! Amazed! How could something so dull and sickly sweet be _so_popular_ for so long? Ugh! For a while I watched it sometimes anyway, just because it's in English, but I gave up even on that, it was just too painful. I wonder if switching over to the dubbed-in-Japanese audio channel would make it any more bearable?
Hotaru no haka (1988)
I cried and cried.
I have seen several other Miyazaki films and loved them. I was shocked when I realized this was about the World War II - those are my country's planes dropping fire on that city. It was one of the best movies I have ever seen, and I'll never watch it again.