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TimiZero
Bolehland
This review may contain spoilers
Tokyo Overrated Vice!
Reading some reviews on IMDB makes me wonder am I watching the same show...LoL
I think this series is way too overrated. I had to wait until ep4 to really get into it. The first 3 episodes were boring as hell, with no significant plot development. It felt like they were mostly fillers of random disjointed things being put together. The real story only started at ep4. It was the turning point for me. We have the "I want it that way" joke as well as Kawakami Nanami fanservice in this episode....haha otherwise I could have probably dropped this.
Apart from that, the major letdown of this series in my opinion is its protagonist. The premise of the show is a white guy who got a job at Japanese newspaper. The main story should be about him, but this character wasn't getting major involvement in the series. Most of the events happened without him around. Throughout the series he was shown as someone who's barely working, wasting money on Kabakura, impatient and clumsy, but acted like some big shot and quite rude considering he's living in Japanese culture. Ironically and luckily , the side characters and the side plots were the one that saved the series for me.
They were also some unrealistic, illogical, and contradicting things in this series as well. One of these is the fact that the real Jake Adelstein only do "the exposure" after some time he worked in Japan. In the series however, the protagonist got involved with Yakuza from day 1 he joined the company. It wasn't clear what motivated him to do that though ..,which makes thing illogical and laughable. After some time in the series, for some strange reason his superior (Kikuchi RInko) had to listen to his whatever selfish request....There are many others but I don't want to write a thesis.
On the positive side however, we can see some real talent from Japanese actors like Kasamatsu Sho, Ito Ayumi (Tozawa's mistress) and Yamada Jundai (fixer who's eyeing on Samantha). Most people only focusing on Watanabe Ken, Kikuchi Rinko and Ito Hideaki, so they tend to overlooked at the actors I mentioned above. It's also worth mentioning that Yamada Jundai's English was the best among all Japanese actors in this series. I wish he will get more international job offer in the future.
The production value of this series was as good as what you could get from an American production. The music was okay but nothing great to talk about.
In summary, I don't say this series is bad...it's watchable (although not bingeable for me). But definitely it wasn't that groundbreaking as what some people on IMDB might have claimed it was.
I think this series is way too overrated. I had to wait until ep4 to really get into it. The first 3 episodes were boring as hell, with no significant plot development. It felt like they were mostly fillers of random disjointed things being put together. The real story only started at ep4. It was the turning point for me. We have the "I want it that way" joke as well as Kawakami Nanami fanservice in this episode....haha otherwise I could have probably dropped this.
Apart from that, the major letdown of this series in my opinion is its protagonist. The premise of the show is a white guy who got a job at Japanese newspaper. The main story should be about him, but this character wasn't getting major involvement in the series. Most of the events happened without him around. Throughout the series he was shown as someone who's barely working, wasting money on Kabakura, impatient and clumsy, but acted like some big shot and quite rude considering he's living in Japanese culture. Ironically and luckily , the side characters and the side plots were the one that saved the series for me.
They were also some unrealistic, illogical, and contradicting things in this series as well. One of these is the fact that the real Jake Adelstein only do "the exposure" after some time he worked in Japan. In the series however, the protagonist got involved with Yakuza from day 1 he joined the company. It wasn't clear what motivated him to do that though ..,which makes thing illogical and laughable. After some time in the series, for some strange reason his superior (Kikuchi RInko) had to listen to his whatever selfish request....There are many others but I don't want to write a thesis.
On the positive side however, we can see some real talent from Japanese actors like Kasamatsu Sho, Ito Ayumi (Tozawa's mistress) and Yamada Jundai (fixer who's eyeing on Samantha). Most people only focusing on Watanabe Ken, Kikuchi Rinko and Ito Hideaki, so they tend to overlooked at the actors I mentioned above. It's also worth mentioning that Yamada Jundai's English was the best among all Japanese actors in this series. I wish he will get more international job offer in the future.
The production value of this series was as good as what you could get from an American production. The music was okay but nothing great to talk about.
In summary, I don't say this series is bad...it's watchable (although not bingeable for me). But definitely it wasn't that groundbreaking as what some people on IMDB might have claimed it was.
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