The domain for TGW has been renewed for yet another year. This month marks the second anniversary of The Geek. OK, technically, the anniversary was back on June 1. Way back in 2007, I was migrating all of my reviews and things over from my Vox account. I haven't been watching nearly as many jdoramas since then and that is something I need to fix. So here are some plans for the future: * Watch and review more jdoramas. Even the sucky ones need to be talked about. Possibly retool the format for jdorama reviews.
* Talk more about music. I love music and I've gotten away from talking about it.
* Get back to reviewing video games. I haven't played a lot of games lately. Though I shouldn't just talk about the ones I play. I should talk about the ones my husband plays too.
I will gladly accept any ideas for any other topics you'd like me to talk about. I'm currently into Asian BJD (ball joint dolls) so I can always talk about my experience with various types of dolls.
Title: Shimotsuma Monogatari
Also known as: Kamikaze Girls
Release date: 2004
Genre: Slice of life
Cast: Fukada Kyoko, Anna Tsuchiya
Plot: Momoko (Fukada) is a Lolita girl. Ichiko (Tsuchiya) is a delinquent. This is the story of their friendship.
What is good: The cinematography is beautiful.
What is bad: Tsuchicya's acting seems very forced and fake.
Letter rating: C
Overall: As a general rule, I'm excited to see live action Japanese movies get licensed in the United States. Unfortunately, for every Death Note, there's a Kamikaze Girls. The movie isn't completely awful. I did manage to get through it entirely. However, it is dragged out and dull. While you would like the characters to better themselves, you don't really care about them and, for the most part, you'd prefer if they just left each other alone for once. The ending is very sweet...it just seems to take forever to get there. 
Title: Mop Girl
Broadcast dates: 10/12/07 - 12/14/07
Number of episodes: 10
Genre: Mystery Comedy
Cast: Kitagawa Keiko, Tanihara Shosuke
Plot: Momoko (Kitagawa) starts her new job at a small funeral services company. She soon finds that she has the ability to go back in time when she touches a precious object of someone who was wrongly killed.
What is good: The interaction between the characters was pretty cute.
What is bad: The ending felt unfinished.
Letter rating: C+
Overall: I started watching this because Kitagawa played my favorite senshi, Sailor Mars, in the live action Sailor Moon series, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. She's not a fabulous actress but she is definitely getting better as time goes on. Unfortunately, the role of Momoko is dull. She's klutzy and beyond dumb. There are many times when she could have solved a problem on her own. Instead, she ran to Otomo (Tanihara). Then, at the end, when they show the surprise relationship between Momoko and Otomo, the story doesn't go anywhere with it. It actually gets ignored completely. On one hand, I'd like to have a special episode to tie everything up. On other hand, the story isn't really worthy of an extra episode.