i dont know why, despite all the hype, i simply seem to not have any patience/affinity/attraction to/empathy for the series of so-called 'pure love' japanese movies.

with the exception of 'be with you', which i found extremely moving and which i actually teared at [so i guess you can call it a tear-jerker since it really jerked my tears and my heart melted everytime takeuchi yuko smiled;] the other movies/drama series either seem

1. too fake, unrealistic
2. lead actress trying too hard to act pitiful
3. lead actress trying too hard to speak in an effortless-natural-cute-high-pitched-voice
4. draggy
5. mopey/soap-opera-ish.

it's like korea drama but you change the actors/actresses and put it in a japanese setting, which i totally cannot accept because it just doesn't gel well with the actors/culture/feeling. it's almost like they ran out of interesting love stories so they're like pirating from their korean counterparts. pft.

take for example, koizora.
okay, cute lead, check, pretty female lead, check, crumpy phone story that turned hit, check, result = box office hit.

tell me why i felt kind of disappointed when i watched the movie? that i felt it wasn't real, was too ideal, too childish, too dreamy? or maybe i'm too cynical, realistic, jaded? who would get pregnant and then just happily accept that she would get married at 18 with a guy she barely knew for a year? who would ask his girlfriend of barely a year pregnant with his child to marry him without a doubt and to keep the baby? it just seems so unreal to me. the most i could get out of it was the part he dyed his hair to meet her parents to ask for their approval and the worried look on their faces. that, is what i call a piece of life.

okay, never mind , we move on.

there's taiyou no uta, which has yamada san and sawajiri inside. i totally dislike sawajiri cause of her prima donna-ness, and the fact that J kind of adores her but doesnt openly admit irks me a little. the plot is like damn old-drop-teeth, if you get what i mean. haven't watched it but i dont think i have the patience to.



next up, everyone's favourite BUT MINE,
ichi litre no namida.

i really, really, really, really, really, really, do not get it. like really. i watched the eiga version, and my dad is incredibly exasperated at why i seem to lack affect/any kind of obvious crying/emotion/touched-ness after having watched the movie. no, it's not that im not touched. it was just like watching a documentary, for the eiga version.
for the drama, i don't know but i feel like it's worse. like they glamour-fy the whole original real story, adding romance elements, cute family members, cute and loyal, doting boyfriend and a pretty lead, but these are all the things that probably didn't exist and didn't happen in real life [from what i could see of excerps of the real girl and her family in the last 30 seconds of the credits rolling in the eiga version.

it's what kind of annoys me so much.
it's like the eiga takes the real moving element out from real life. i dont know but i feel jaded.

then there's sekai no chuushin de ai wo sakebu.
i like that in japanese its actually called 'socrates in love' but the whole leukemia-tragic-love-story thing is really old.
the only draw is masami though.
i guess her sole appearance as the lead would suffice.


sigh.













at the end of everything,

i'm wondering if there's anything that can really move me.
something realistic, something poignant, something that will amuse me, something touching but not that hard to believe.




meanwhile, till then i guess i ll have to watch stuff like 'otakus in love'.