Doomed Samurai time!
The wonderful scottishlass mentioned that Kimura Takuya's next project is a movie about a blind samurai, called Bushi no ichibun (Love and Honor). The story follows the relationship between a young samurai who loses his eyesight during a mission and his wife. She eventually sacrifices herself in order to save her husband's honor. meganbmoore, did I get your attention yet? Samurais, period piece, fighting and honor and doomed love? How much better can it get?
It's based on Shuhei Fujisawa's novel and Kimura Takuya (my newest obsession, the lead in the beyond amazing jdorama Pride) plays the lead. It's the last part of a samurai trilogy (unconnected stories that look at daily, deglammed lives of samurai) by Yoji Yamada. The other two were Twilight Samurai, which is brilliant and sad and very tender and which I've seen (IMDB summary: Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe, his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel) and The Hidden Blade (about forbidden love between a low-rank samurai and a poor maid at the end of Edo period), which I haven't seen but will now seek out.
Love and Honor is supposed to come out at the end of this year!!!
In other doomed samurai news, I am potentially interested in watching Yoshitune, a 49 ep (!!) dorama about Minamoto no Yoshitune, a renown Japanese general in the 12th century. It has swords, and tricky politics and angst as Yoshitune ended up being forced to off himself together with wife and daughter. Apparently his pregnant gf was captured also, and after she gave birth, her child was killed though she was let live. She became a nun and died soon after apparently crying out for Yoshitune (mmm, please tell me they have something this OTT in the dorama). Party-time for everyone it seems. And to add more inducement, Yoshitune is played by my jdorama boytoy, Takizawa Hideaki. So it sounds great. Except! 49 episodes! I mean...even with my watching habits, that's a minimum of three weeks!
And in the angsty, hot, fighting dorama with Takizawa Hideaki sub-genre (yeah, be quiet. It SHOULD be a sub-genre), the next one on my list is the four-hour Satomi Hakkenden. For any anime lovers on my list, think Fushigi Yuugi, live action. For everyone else, this is a grim fantasy (or fairy tale) about eight warriors with supernaturally strong fighting powers destined to save the kingdom (Takizawa Hideaki is the quiet, reserved and overburdened young man who is the main character and one of said warriors) and features more fighting, angst, romance and gorgeous men than any story should. And Takizawa Hideaki cements my opinion that in my fantasy casting, he is Tamahome.
I bring you a LOT of SH pics.
It's based on Shuhei Fujisawa's novel and Kimura Takuya (my newest obsession, the lead in the beyond amazing jdorama Pride) plays the lead. It's the last part of a samurai trilogy (unconnected stories that look at daily, deglammed lives of samurai) by Yoji Yamada. The other two were Twilight Samurai, which is brilliant and sad and very tender and which I've seen (IMDB summary: Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe, his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel) and The Hidden Blade (about forbidden love between a low-rank samurai and a poor maid at the end of Edo period), which I haven't seen but will now seek out.
Love and Honor is supposed to come out at the end of this year!!!
In other doomed samurai news, I am potentially interested in watching Yoshitune, a 49 ep (!!) dorama about Minamoto no Yoshitune, a renown Japanese general in the 12th century. It has swords, and tricky politics and angst as Yoshitune ended up being forced to off himself together with wife and daughter. Apparently his pregnant gf was captured also, and after she gave birth, her child was killed though she was let live. She became a nun and died soon after apparently crying out for Yoshitune (mmm, please tell me they have something this OTT in the dorama). Party-time for everyone it seems. And to add more inducement, Yoshitune is played by my jdorama boytoy, Takizawa Hideaki. So it sounds great. Except! 49 episodes! I mean...even with my watching habits, that's a minimum of three weeks!
And in the angsty, hot, fighting dorama with Takizawa Hideaki sub-genre (yeah, be quiet. It SHOULD be a sub-genre), the next one on my list is the four-hour Satomi Hakkenden. For any anime lovers on my list, think Fushigi Yuugi, live action. For everyone else, this is a grim fantasy (or fairy tale) about eight warriors with supernaturally strong fighting powers destined to save the kingdom (Takizawa Hideaki is the quiet, reserved and overburdened young man who is the main character and one of said warriors) and features more fighting, angst, romance and gorgeous men than any story should. And Takizawa Hideaki cements my opinion that in my fantasy casting, he is Tamahome.
I bring you a LOT of SH pics.