Alas, a missed opportunity

This "Kekkon Surutte, Hontou Desu ka?" had all the ingredients it needed to be a very good - if not outright a great - dorama...but failed miserably due to the main characters being written as a pair of robots. It's even more infuriating, considering that the leads, Aoi Wakana and Sato Kanta, can both act very well but weren't allowed to show their potential, compelled as they were to portray those two expressionless characters (such a waste of talent!). And adding insult to injury, it's not like the writers can't write either, as they also showed their potential here and there, when the situation allowed - alas, too briefly. The rest of the cast, the "packaging" and the music were all pretty good, so with differently written main characters this would've really been interesting!

The way *I* would have written it (very "90s style", LOL - roles that could've been written for the 90s' Sorimachi and Takeuchi, if you know what I'm sayin'): I would have had the ML as a male chauvinist philanderer, and the FL as a staunch, borderline man-hating feminist. And then I would have had them change and grow bit by bit, due to many (often outrageous and funny) happenings, until their final realization that they both would be way better, stronger and happier together, in mutual love and respect.
Cheesy and unoriginal? Yep, you bet. But a gazillion times more entertaining and fun to watch than this yawnfest! ^___-

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Total let down, as far as I'm concerned

I had great expectations for this movie, but alas, it was a real let down, as far as I'm concerned.
The only really good part was the subplot involving Haru, the beautifully tragic (or tragically beautiful) character portrayed by Morikawa Aoi. If they had made a short movie using only those scenes, I would've given it a 10!
Unfortunately, everything else was either "meh" or else just plain bad, imho.
For once, instead of my usual "honorable mentions", I'll go for some well-deserved "dishonorable mentions":

1) while Miura Haruma managed to give a decent performance (nothing spectacular imho, sorry...but at least it was okay), the rest of the male cast was - again, imho, take no offence - plainly terrible! O___o

2) the sound guy(s) should be fired: the audio was annoyingly deafening whenever SFX, music or shouts were involved, and then almost totally inaudible whenever the normal dialogues were taking place. And adding insult to injury, the parts "in English" only got Japanese, but not English subs (which of course would not be a problem normally, but here - hence my quotation marks! - the "parts in English" were actually either in "Japanglish" or in a thick Scottish accent - imagine listening to a speech by Sir Alex Ferguson with only Japanese subtitles to help you decipher what the hell he's mumbling! >__<)

3) last but certainly not least (and as I previously mentioned, apart from Haru's subplot), the script was as bland, plain and uninteresting as they come: a bunch of random scenes and sequences thrown together don't make for good storytelling - at least, not in my book.

As I said, a real let down.../.__.\

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I was drawn in by my passion for Mahjong (although I'm no big fan of the Japanese version aka "Riichi" "depicted" here). What to say? I'm afraid that it will result impossible to follow by those who don't know Mahjong (and I mean the REAL Mahjong, not that stupid solitaire so popular in the West - BTW, I keep asking myself: the guy who had the @#* idea of taking a great game like Mahjong and turning it into a lousy solitaire, what does he do when he sees a chess set? Piles the pieces randomly on top of the chessboard and then starts playing Mikado?!?)
Back to the dorama: the problem is that even Mahjong lovers like me most probably won't appreciate it because it's horribly "shonenjumpesque" and so far removed from reality it hurts (compared to this, even the Hong Kong trilogy of "Kung Fu Mahjong" seems like a realistic depiction!). Hamabe Minabi and Furuhata Seika are both very cute and good actresses, but alas, that's definitely not enough to save this dorama.

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I really loved the first season and the SP episode of this adorable "Zetsumeshi Road". and I'm happy to be able to say that quality wasn't lost in this secon season, which is just as good as the previous one if not even better - hence the raised grade!)
Hamatsu Takayuki is simply great in his role of this salaryman with the hobby of roaming through Japan's less-beaten roads in search of "endangered restaurants". It's nice also to see again Kaburagi's character. And my beloved Sakai Wakana playing the wife is, last but certainly not least, so lovely! In fact, I actually wish her role would get more screentime, 'cause I find they're such a nice couple indeed (for example, the short scene with them and the fireworks felt nicer and more authentically romantic than all those "CEO+Eyelash-batting-secretary" dejavu-fests put together! ^____-).
Some beautiful scenery and a fantastic OST complete the package!

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I picked up this drama both for the intriguing plot and for my beloved Sun Qian, and I'm happy to say I wasn't let down. Quite the opposite, the series exceeded my expectations, and although perhaps not absolutely perfect, it's still one I can wholeheartedly recommend!
The premise was nicely developed, the setting very nice, and the production value pretty high.
The whole cast did a marvelous job, seriously. My hat goes off to all of them! Honorable mentions for Sun Qian, for Luo Yu Tong (who grew on me so much that by the end of the drama I was liking her even more than the FL - and that's saying quite a lot!!!) and for Tao Hai.
The script was very good and I particularly appreciated how well they accomplished character development and how nicely they managed to convey a wonderfully positive, ethical message.
The only reasons I'm not giving this a perfect 10 are, on the one hand, that I really didn't like how they set things up for a potential second season (I'm talking about the very last scene with the never seen before character - totally unrelated to the rest of the series), and on the other hand, that I found a coupla scenes a bit weak/forced. But then again, perhaps the machine-translated subs (that at times one had to *interpret*, rather than simply *read*) are to blame for that? Whatever, beggars can't be choosers and machine-translated subs are still a whole lot better than no subs at all, of course. 9/10

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So much more than just a food drama!

This "Atari no Kitchen!" captured me right away with that lovely, uplifting, terribly catchy opening credits song, then kept wooing me, episode after episode, with the sheer quality of its script - and let's be honest, also with the sheer (both inner and outer) beauty of the eponimous main character, whom I fell desperately in love with - Gods, please give me a time machine so I can go back to my youth, and let me meet someone like her, LOL! ^_^;
Jokes aside, this is really a wonderful series, and so much more than just the Nth food drama! Sure, food has a relevant part in the story, but rather as *soul* food: the FL uses it to bring joy to those lucky enough to taste it, and to us viewers too in the process. Delicate and deep at the same time, chapeau to the writers!
And then a virtual standing ovation to the adorable - and tremendously talented - Sakurada Hiyori! Perfect 10!

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This "Shoujiki Fudousan" was an entertaining watch altogether, with some good points and some minor problems though. All imho, as always.

First things first, what I've liked:

- The story was a clean one, with a nicely proper, ethical message (exactly what I would expect from an NHK production, and that was comforting in itself ^__-)
- The female cast was very good; I'm quite a fan of Fukuhara Haruka so I knew I was gonna get a great performance from her, but also Kurashina Kana and Daichi Mao were great, not to mention the lovely Izumi Rika!)
- The music and the "packaging" were totally OK too

On to the things I wasn't enthusiastic about:

- The male cast; I must confess not being a big fan of Yamashita Tomohisa, but I'll say this: he still was, like, the only male who gets a passing grade here, imho; the rest were all below par (though in all fairness, I couldn't say how much of that was the actors' own fault and how much actually depended on the script - I'm willing to give the actors the benefit of the doubt and blame it on the scriptwriter and/or on the original manga authors
- The hair stylists; this is a problem this drama shares with many other J-dramas adapted from a manga: crazy hairstyles that work on paper get too faithfully portrayed in the live-action, resulting simply too weird; take for example this drama's villain, he was supposed to be scary and all, but due to the hairstyle being a kinda mix between Elvis and a Leningrad Cowboy, the guy ended up looking just ridiculous, imho. (oh, and that hairstyle on Kurashina Kana was a crime against humanity, seriously...T_____T)

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This "Borderless" is a joint production (in the American comics I'd sometimes read when I was a kid - thus wasting time and money on horribly poorly written cr@p, but that's another story - it'd be called a "Team Up") between the three Sakamichi idol groups: Nogizaka46, Hinatazaka46 (formerly known as "Hiragana Keyakizaka46") and Sakurazaka46 (ex- Kanji Keyakizaka46).
The main cast is composed of seven members of the different groups, namely two each from Nogizaka and Hinatazaka, and three from Sakurazaka. Fans of any of those groups will surely find some added value in seeing how some of their favorite idols performed as actresses. For example, being a fan of Hinatazaka and Sakurazaka, I knew I was gonna get some good acting by Saito Kyoko and Kobayashi Yui, but I wasn't honestly expecting much from the other girls, and was therefore positively surprised by their performances - particularly by Hamagishi's - whom I hadn't pegged for one capable of acting as she did here. Kudos, Hiyotan! ^__-
Now, not being a Nogizaka fan I had no idea what to expect from Hayakawa Seira and Endo Sakura, but they did quite well too, especially the latter. All in all, the idol main cast was more than okay; alas, the same can't be said of all the supporting actors and actresses, from whom we got mixed performances instead.
The production value of this dorama is pretty high, even more so for Japanese standards.
The real problem - and the reason behind the low rating I'm giving it - lies in the script.
Although it has some (rare!) good moments, those are literally drowned in an abundance of mediocrity; the dialogues are often unnaturally verbose and the scenes frequently boring (weren't it for the musical score keeping up the tension, I would've fallen asleep more than once!) or even nonsensical - as is, for example, the way the different storylines are brought together: a moment I was looking forward to, but that instead let me down completely. Just as the "mystery" solution, which was plainly terrible imho. But the worst thing was, for me, the ending: when you write your villain as such a despicable person, the viewers deserve to see him/her *punished* at the end, NOT *rewarded* with a happy ending!!! >______<
5/10 because I don't want to be too hard, given how the girls performed.
But I'm personally blacklisting the writer as we speak.
p.s.
The best part (BY FAR) are imho the 10' or so of "Making Of" scenes, shown at the end of each episode! (LOL at least the writer couldn't ruin those! ^__-)

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Weaker than the previous seasons

Maybe it's due - at least in part - to the fact that I'm getting bored by the whole "food drama" concept, or maybe it depends on the fact that I honestly find Japanese cuisine to be a bit overrated (in that aspect, just as in mahjong, I'm all for China, LOL), but, whatever the reason, I must confess I found this "Wakako Zake 3" weaker than the previous seasons. Takeda Rina is always nice to watch, but let's face it, seeing her eating & drinking, drinking & eating, rinse & repeat...it's getting kinda boring in the long run.
It's still an ok drama to watch, especially while having dinner, so that if what she's having is better than what you're having, you can let your imagination roam free, LOL...but also the opposite can be a nice thing, LOL - when what you're having is better than what she's having! - and that's happened to me quite often during this third season (I hope you'll forgive my food chauvinism...I am Italian, after all, it's like the national pastime! ^___^;;;;;....)
(Talking of which, a heartfelt warning to my countrymates: for your own good - and mental sanity - maybe you'll wanna skip the first half of the 4th episode, as what they do to our beloved pasta in those few minutes is bound to give you nightmares! O___o I won't go into details, but I'll tell you this: MAYONNAISE! ...'nuff said! >______<)

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Poor script + too much focus on unappealing characters

I was drawn in by the first episode, which was by far the best, and by my love for choral stories, focused around a large group of characters. And indeed, the parts I really liked were the ones regarding the different families leaving on this Mayang Street, their daily lives and struggles, etc.

Too bad, after a few episodes, the focus started shifting, slowly but surely, to the relationship between Tan Songyun's and Xu Wei Zhou's characters, and that deeply annoyed me for a coupla reasons: first and foremost, their characters are, imho, really unappealing (particularly the guy, whom the writer tried waaaay too hard to make us like with huge doses of lazy writing - how many times do they show us some Mayang Street person getting in trouble, only to have him/her so conveniently saved at the last moment by Xu Wei Zhou's "Deus ex machina" character? - a character whom I really despised BTW - such a selfish person, sacrificing others and their feelings only because he wanted to be an undercover cop - and then again, had it been so as to stop some terrorists or other types of reeeeally dangerous criminals, I might still have had some sympathy for him...but no, all that just to stop a bunch of *smugglers*...how can that be even remotely worthy of provoking his own granny's death and bringing grief to everybody else around him?!? Sorry, but I don't get it...). Secondly, I have the feeling that those actors are the weakest ones in the cast (please note I haven't watched anything else with them, so it may very well be that thy're not so bad and my impression just depends on the poor script and on the director's orders, who knows...but judging solely on what they showed here, I'll have to borrow a deliciously caustic definition the brilliant Youtuber "AvenueX" used for other actors and say that "one's a vegetal, the other one's a mineral". The former has the expressivity of a plant (always with that annoyingly faint smile or a faintly sad expression - in both cases veeeeeery faint, almost imperceptible...it gave me the feeling someone's scared of getting wrinkles otherwise, URGH), the latter as expressive as a rock (dude, poker might be a better career option than cinematography, seriously). They're both good looking, I'll give 'em that. But good *acting* is something else, in my book. Like, something else *entirely*.

Another huge fault of this dorama is, as I briefly mentioned earlier on, the poor script: inconsistent, incoherent, cheesy, lazy. Always taking the easy way out, always giving me the strong impression the writer couldn't care less for *conveying* messages but rather chose to *force feed* them down the viewers' throats. It was really hard, for someone like me who can't stand poor writing, to keep on watching it till the end, seriously. I think I should have trusted the gut feeling I had while watching those überbland opening credits and steered away from this.

Anyway, the only redeeming points (and the reasons why, a) I kept on watching after all, and, b) I don't give it a lower grade) are, firstly, that the rest of the cast did a pretty decent job (particularly considering the poor material they had to work with!) - and here I want to give honorable mentions to Niu Jun Feng and Li Mu Ran: such nice characters, and so nicely played, that they had me smiling inside every time they were on camera; secondly, as I mentioned at the very beginning of this review, the choral parts of the script weren't bad after all, so those kept me hooked enough that I wanted to see what would happen to the other characters; thirdly, after the (again, imho) total yawnfest of the middle part of the dorama, I kinda enjoyed the last few episodes (the ones after the time skip - those that most other MDLers seem not to have enjoyed, BTW) that brought some closure and - as far as I'm concerned - what I'd define a "happy" ending (given how much I disliked Xu Wei Zhou's character, the fact that he was finally removed from the picture felt like a happy ening to me, what can I say...^_^;...had that character been totally expunged from the series - and had they chosen another actress for the FL's role - I might've liked this much, much more.

As is, nevertheless, the passing grade is beyond reach of this drama, imho. 5/10

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As good as the 1st season ^___-

I'm normally a bit wary of Specials and sequels, as in my experience I've noticed, time and again, how these unfortunately tend to be not as good as the original stories. Every rule has its exceptions, though, and I couldn't help being very favorably impressed by this "Yuru Camp SP", where I found all the things that made me love the original drama in the first place: a lovely cast of good-looking and talented actresses (just as for the drama, my special mentions go to Fukuhara Haruka, Tanabe Momoko and Ohara Yuno), the beautiful scenery, the relaxing atmosphere. Can't wait to watch the 2nd season now! ^__-

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Nice lil' dorama that shines due to a pretty well-written script, some endearing characters and some great acting by Morikawa Aoi (no surprise here, she's been nothing less than brilliant in everything I've seen her in so far), Takahashi Issei and Hizuki Hana (too bad her filmography is so limited!). An über-simple premise and a minimalistic approach work just fine. The only reasons why I don't give it a ful 10/10 are: 1) there are two minor characters (the richo brat and the tranny) who are totally useless here and imho feel like totally alien presences in this story; 2) the landlady's character isn't fully developed and that's a pity imho.

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This "Sabae to Yattara, Owaru" ("If I do it with Sabae, I'm done / it's the End") is a light comedy with a pretty silly premise that luckily gets more or less nicely developed into a series that ends up being somehow less shallow than said premise would make you think at first.
What I really liked is the fact that all characters, even the sillier ones, are still depicted as decent people (so there's literally no angst here and that's relaxing by itself, no despicable characters, no "villains", etc.).
The OST is also quite nice, and the cast did OK but nothing worth calling home about (let's be honest, the plot being what it is, it ain't like they could've given award-winning performances anyway, LOL).
All in all an OK watch, 7/10 in my book.

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