Jmovie review: Lupin III: Strange Psycho-Kinetic Strategy

Title: Lupin III: Strange Psycho-Kinetic Strategy Release date: 1974 Genre: Action Comedy Cast: Yuuki Meguro, Hideko Ezaki, Kunio Tanaka, Shirou Itou Plot: Hijinks ensue when Lupin (Meguro), the world's greatest thief, meets Fujiko (Ezaki), a female thief. What is good: Lupin versus Zenigata (Itou) is always funny. What is bad: Too much slapstick. Letter rating: D+ Overall: For some reason, when I added this to my Netflix queue, I thought it was an animated version of Lupin. I was a little surprised when I popped in the disc to see a live action version instead. Regardless, it's still Lupin and I always enjoy Lupin movies. Well, now I can change that line of thought. Where Lupin tends to be silly, he always has a serious side. This version failed to show his serious side. We saw "Funny Lupin," "Horny Lupin," a little tiny bit of "Clever Lupin," but never once was there "Serious Lupin." In my opinion, this is where the movie failed. They relied way too much on "Funny Lupin" to carry the movie. Perhaps this would have been satisfactory in 1974, but it just doesn't stand the test of time.

JDorama review: Blood: The Last Vampire

Title: Blood: The Last Vampire Also known as: Last Blood Release date: 5/29/09 Genre: Supernatural action Cast: Jun Ji-hyun (Gianna Jun), Allison Miller, Koyuki Plot: Saya (Jun) is a half-human-half-vampire that hunts and kills other vampires while searching for Onigen (Koyuki), the head vampire. What is good: Koyuki is gorgeous as Onigen. What is bad: The cinematography was weird. Letter rating: C+ Overall: I enjoyed the Blood: The Last Vampire anime, so I was intrigued to see how it would be translated into a live action movie. For the most part, the movie was entertaining. However, the fight scenes (and there are a lot of them) seemed tired. Even when Saya was fighting a huge mob of vampires, the entire fight was pretty predictable. It was a decent movie to watch. Just don't expect anything overly impressive from it and you should be fine.

TV review: Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Now I've finally had the chance to watch third episode of Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I think I might be ready to talk about it. I've never been a big fan of the Terminator movies. As a matter of fact, I only classify the movies by their bad guys: "Arnold is the bad guy," "That shape-shifting one" and "The chick is the baddie." Beyond that, I don't know a lot about them. Keeping that in mind, I have found the television series to be pretty interesting. I'm not worried about continuity. I just want a show with some kickass chicks beating bad guys up. That's not too much to ask for, right? Well, I can say that it definitely delivers for me. Summer Glau makes an absolutely awesome protector-Terminator. (Protectinator?) And thanks to the Firefly franchise, we all know that she can definitely kick some ass when she needs to. I'm not too thrilled with Lena Headey as Sarah though. She seems a lot more fragile than Linda Hamilton was in the movies. (Yes, I will let them play with the timeline of the movies but c'mon, these are supposed to be the same people!) The writers also seem to be playing up the maternal role and making her less willing to do whatever she needs to do to protect John.

Ah, John. Thomas Dekker isn't terrible in the role. Though I think I'd like to see John be a little less emo. Yes, his life sucks but, at some point, you just have to suck it up and accept it. I hope that he'll get to that point in the series.

So, overall, it's not completely terrible. I suppose it might upset you if you are a big fan of the movies but the writers did try to explain their way out of a few things. We're just going to have to wait to see where it goes from here.

JDorama review: Akihabara@DEEP

Title: akihabara@DEEP Broadcast date: 6/19/06 Number of episodes: 11 Genre: Action and Adventure Cast: Kazama Shunsuke, Ikuta Toma, Himura Yuuki, Hoshino Gen, Matsushima Hatsune, Kosaka Yuka, Honjou Manami, Kitamura Kazuki Plot: A group of otaku come together to form a troubleshooting company. They try their best to solve the problems of the people in Akihabara. What is good: Kitamura Kazuki is an awesome villian What is bad: Maybe it's because the concept of Japanese otaku is so foreign but they seemed to overreact to just about everything. Letter rating: A+ Overall: I went into this series expecting something along the lines of Densha Otoko. However, I think this is so much better because it doesn't revolve around the life of one person. You have six people, each with some sort of oddity. Each of them turned to a website, Yui's Lifeguard, in order to help them live their daily lives. It's through this website that they come together and become friends. It was really awesome to watch these people grow into something more than just otaku. They really become close friends.

On the other side, you have Nakagomi Takashi (Kitamura Kazuki) as the bad guy. Kitamura played the bad guy in the latest Densha Otoko special. I think he may be getting a little too close to his otaku side! While Nakagomi is a creepy character, Kitamura plays him perfectly. He really was my favorite character here.

I would recommend this series to anyone interested in the otaku culture. You may not understand a lot of things if you don't have at least a tiny grasp of what otaku means to the Japanese people. "Otaku" in America is very different from "otaku" in Japan. If you can make that distinction, I think you would really enjoy the series.