Hello My Teacher

aka Biscuit Teacher and Star Candy, Hardtack Teacher and Star Candies
Type: K-drama
No. of Episodes: 16
English Subs: Softsubbed at d-addicts

Six years ago, Na Bo-ri was kicked out of high school after a teeny tiny misunderstanding. She was accused of beating up a bunch of male gang members. She didn't REALLY do it, but her dangerous reputation and poor grades made it easy for them to kick her out. However, Bo-ri did not give up on her studies, and after working hard, she got her GED, went to college (albeit a low-level college), and has returned to her old high school on a mission to become a teacher there.

She doesn't want to be a teacher because of any overwhelming desire to help students. Instead she wants to teach simply to be close to the man she had a huge crush on in high school- her art teacher, Ji Hyun-Woo. However, because of her rocky past at that school, the only way she manages to actually get a teaching job there is by agreeing to basically babysit a student named Park Tae-in.

Tae-in is the son of the school superintendant, and is Hyun-woo's nephew. He is a real troublemaker who has just returned to Korea after a couple years living overseas. Tae-in is a brash guy but with lots of charisma, and he soon becomes a popular leader amongst the students at the school. Bo-ri really has her hands full trying to keep him in check and reform him into a good student. Tae-in's main hobby is to torment Bo-ri, and he is really merciless about it.

Hello My Teacher is a student-teacher romance going in both directions! The love triangle involves Tae-in, his teacher Bo-ri, and her teacher Hyun-woo. There is the usual k-drama angst going on, but also a lot of comedy, and even some fantasy. Bo-ri's reputation as a gangster is used to show some scenes in a really dramatic, action-gangster-movie way, but then later we see what REALLY happened. I admit that I love the teacher-student romances, especially when they don't end in cruel deaths by cancer or vehicular flattening. ^_^

Kimi wa Pet

Type: J-Drama
No. of Episodes: 10
English Subs: English hardsubbed

Kimi wa Pet (You're My Pet) has an amusing premise that I couldn't resist. It follows the adventures of IWAYA Sumire, an elite Tokyo University graduate who works for a newspaper. Sumire is tall, beautiful, and very smart. In fact, this combination of attributes usually makes her rather intimidating to be around. Sumire, however, just wants to have a normal, loving relationship with someone. Unfortunately, men seem to feel too threatened by her success to stay with her for very long.

Things change one day when Sumire, after a very rough day at work that involved getting demoted, finds a large box sitting in front of her apartment complex. Inside the box is a young man who looks very worse for wear. Sumire knows that this boy needs medicat attention, so she drags him, box and all, up to her apartment, where she bandages his wounds.

The guy in the box stays in Sumire's apartment the next day and is reluctant to leave. On a whim, Sumire says that the only way he can stay is if he agrees to be her pet! She never expected him to actually AGREE to the suggestion! But he does, and soon the young man, named Momo by Sumire, is living with her as her pet. She treats him as one would a pet, making a bed for him, bathing him, feeding him, and taking him for walks.

In return, Momo provides emotional support for Sumire, who is under a lot of stress at work and in her love life. Momo is always there to greet her at her door with a smile, and he is a shoulder for her to cry on. Talk about a strange relationship!

Momo does have a life outside of Sumire's apartment, and the more she learns about it, the more Sumire is intrigued. Meanwhile, Momo grows deeply attached to his 'master' and notices feelings of jealousy emerge when Sumire's college crush returns and takes an interest in her. Can there really be any sort of happy future for a woman and her pet boy?

Nobuta wo Produce

Type: J-drama
No. of Episodes: 10
Subtitles: Softsubbed by the folks at d-addicts

Finally, a recent J-drama that I liked! Nobuta wo Produce is an amusing and touching story of three people who learn how friends are made and how people can change and stay the same.

Shuji is the most popular guy in school. He is friends with everyone, has a great, popular girlfriend, and is the one everyone runs to for help. He is THE MAN on campus. However, Shuji is living a lie. He doesn't really care about all these friends he has, or about anyone or anything at his school. To him school (maybe even life) is just a game. He sort of sits outside of himself, and watches as he pretends to be perfect and what everyone would like. He promises people what they want, and manipulates everyone to maintain his status.

The only thorn in Shuji's side is Akira, one of his classmates who is not impressed at all by Shuji's popularity and fake charm. Shuji detests Akira, but Akira is even oblivious of that. Akira is a really strange guy. He gets drunk off of soymilk, and acts a little bit loopy all the time. He doesn't care about popularity or social status, and does his own thing in his own unique way.

One day Shuji's near-perfect world is rocked when the tree he touches every morning for good luck is suddenly uprooted and removed. This change in his routine troubles Shuji, and the appearance of a strange new girl only disturbs him more. Her name is Nobuko, and she is a new transfer student into Shuji's class. She has no self-confidence whatsoever, and hates herself. Her hair is long and unruly, and there seems to be a dark cloud of gloom hanging over her. Their meeting sets off a chain of events that affects the entire school.

Nobuko's shyness immediately makes her the target for bullying at school. Her habit of accepting all the bad treatment from her classmates without protest only makes them pick on her even more. Finally the commotion caused by the bullying of Nobuko prompts Akira to challenge Shuji to do something. They end up deciding to 'produce' Nobuko, to recreate her and mold her into the most popular girl in school. The three form a pact of secrecy and the production begins!

Every day Shuji and Akira provide some useful and not so useful bits of coaching for Nobuko (whom they soon nickname "Nobuta"). Shuji and Akira maintain the secrecy of their project by pretending to not be partners in front of everyone. The trio meets on the school roof every day, and before long they grow close. This bond will help them when an unexpected threat emerges.

Nobuta wo Produce is a comedy, a drama, and a mystery, with some hints of fantasy. There is definitely an feeling of magical or supernatural power in the air at the school. The transformation of Nobuta from beginning to end is interesting to watch. I highly recommend this series!

My Lovely Sam-Soon

Type: K-drama
No. of Episodes: 16
English Subtitles: Licensed and released with English subs by YesAsia

Life is rough for Kim Sam-Soon. She's 30, unemployed, slightly overweight, and she catches her boyfriend cheating on her on Christmas Eve. Furthermore, she is saddled with an embarrassingly rustic name like "Sam-Soon". Sam-soon is assertive, outspoken, stubborn, and has a bad habit of mistaking the men's restroom for the women's restroom. (^_^;) Yet she is an ordinary woman with a soft spot inside who just wants to be in love and have someone love her.


One man witnesses Sam-Soon breaking up with her boyfriend on Christmas Eve. His name is Hyun Jin-Heon, and he is very unsympathetic with her plight, making fun of her and giving her some unwelcome advice. He has a change of heart when they meet by chance a short time later. Jin-Heon is the son of a wealthy hotel owner, but instead of running his family's business, he has opened a French Restaurant. The pastry chef at his restaurant has suddenly quit, and he is desperate for a replacement. He runs into Sam-Soon in the kitchen of his family's hotel where she is applying for a job.

Sam-Soon happens to be a Le Cordon Bleu-trained pastry chef who is looking for work. After some hair cutting, cake-flinging, and grovelling, Sam-Soon becomes the new Pastry Chef at Jin-Heon's restaurant. Sam-Soon doesn't trust Jin-Heon very much, giving him the nickname "Sam-Shik", the male equivalent to the name "Sam-Soon". He's younger than her, and she thinks he is a total player. All the female employees at his restaurant are in love with him! Sam-soon's life suddenly gets complicated when Jin-Heon asks her to pretend to be his girlfriend!

Jin-Heon is secretive about his past, but apparently there was a tragic accident in which his older brother and sister-in-law were killed. His mother is pressuring Jin-Heon into getting married and taking over the hotel business, but he refuses. Using Sam-Soon works well to throw his mother off balance, but things take a turn when Jin-Heon's long lost love suddenly returns, with a secret of her own!

My Lovely Sam-Soon is a hilarious, touching, and romantic comedy between an outspoken everyday "Cinderella" and a tarnished Prince. This is one of my faaaaavorite Korean dramas!

Itazura na Kiss - It Started With A Kiss

Type: J-Drama and Taiwan Drama
No. of Episodes: 9 (Jdrama), 18?? (Taiwan)
English Subs: J-drama has not been subbed, the Taiwan drama has been softsubbed by folks on d-addicts

Itazura na Kiss

Itazura na Kiss is a shoujo manga by TADA Kaoru. It is a hilarious love story that spans 26 volumes. Back in 1996, it was adapted into a great Japanese drama starring KASHIWABARA Takashi and SATO Aiko. The Japanese drama only had 9 episodes, so the story was condensed a lot, but they did a great job with it.

AIHARA Kotoko is a high school girl who is in love with the smartest, coolest guy in school, IRIE Naoki. She has had a crush on him since their first year, when it was love at first sight while watching him give a speech to the student body. It has taken Kotoko 2 years to work up the nerve to confess her feelings to him in a love letter and actually give it to him.

Unfortunately, Naoki is not interested in Kotoko's confession and rather rudely brushes her off. He tells her that he doesn't like 'dumb girls' and pretty much breaks her heart. Poor Kotoko. While Naoki is in Class A at the school, where all the brightest students are, Kotoko is over in Class F, the class with the lowest grades. All seems hopeless for Kotoko until a disaster at home changes her life forever.

Kotoko lives alone with her father, a sushi chef. They love each other very much, and her father works hard to support Kotoko since her mother passed away. Unfortunately there isn't much he can do when their house suddenly burns down. They are almost forced to live in the sushi shop when Kotoko's father is visited by some old school friends to offer to allow them to stay at their place. Kotoko goes along with her father to his friend's home and is surprised to see how rich and fancy it is. She is even more surprised when she discovers that it is Irie's house!

Things are looking up for Kotoko now! She is actually living with the guy she likes (she still likes him even after he was so mean) and can see him every day! She finds an unexpected ally in his mother, who has always dreamed of having a daughter and is all for the idea of Naoki marrying Kotoko. The wacky hijinks ensue, as the seemingly perfect but cold Naoki is stuck living with the bubbly, clumsy Kotoko. She desperately wants him to like her but he is just as desperate to avoid her. Can they ever work it out?

It Started With a Kiss

In 2005, a good 10 or so years after the Japanese drama aired, a new live action version of Itazura na Kiss began airing in Taiwan. It stars Joe Cheng as Zhishu (Naoki) and Ariel Lin as Xiangqin (Kotoko). It follows the same plot as the manga and the Japanese version of the drama, but because the Taiwan drama has more episodes to work with, they are able to stick much closer to the full manga story. There are more supporting characters in this version that had to be eliminated from the Japanese version. I love the Taiwan version. It is amazing to see so many scenes from the manga translated directly to the screen.

Xianqin spends years working up the nerve to deliver a love letter to Zhishu, only to have him reject her cruelly in front of everyone at school. However, she still cares for him. Then her new house suddenly collapses and she and her father are forced to move into the house of his close school friends- Zhishu's family! Zhishu and his younger brother are not thrilled to have Xianqin there. Zhishu's strategy is to ignore her presence. But that is hard to do when his mother keeps forcing them together. She even gives Xianqin some embarrassing ammunition to blackmail Zhishu with. Through high school and into college life, Xianqin continues to like Zhishu, in spite of the arrival of various romantic rivals.

Ariel's Xiangqin feels a bit more close to the manga version of Kotoko to me. Her hair is the right length and is often styled the same way it is in the manga. Her character is not as over the top goofy as Kotoko in the Japanese version. You can feel that she really admires Zhishu and wants him to like her.


Joe Cheng's Zhishu is awesome as well. He does a great job at acting aloof and being annoyed at Xiangqin yet slowly thaws and isn't so annoyed by her. The number of episodes in the Taiwan drama really allows the story to flow well and for us to see the slow progression of Zhishu's feelings from intense dislike to something more warm. He is a seemingly perfect guy - good at school work, great at sports... he can even cook well. His ordered life is turned upside down when Xiangqin and her father move into his home. Her clumsy but honest feelings are something new to him.

Both Itazura na Kiss and It Started With a Kiss are excellent dramas. I really hope someone will get around to subtitling the earlier show. It really deserves to be appreciated by a wider audience!

Full House

Type: K-Drama
No. of Episodes: 16
English Subs: Licensed in the US and English subbed by YesAsia


Like most of the dramas I like, Full House is based on a comic, in this case a Korean Manhwa by Soo Yon Won. It's the humorous story of Ji-Eun, a girl who returns home from vacation to discover that her beloved house and all of her possessions have been sold while she was away. The culprit? Her two closest friends! Now Yeong-Jae owns her house, and he is not about to let her stay. You see Yeong-Jae is an enormously popular male model/actor/idol, and he values his privacy. A clash of wills begins as Ji-Eun is NOT going to leave her house!

They eventually make an agreement in which she may stay at the house as long as she works as Yeong-Jae's maid! Yeong-Jae is a neat freak, and wants Ji-Eun to clean everything and stay out of his way. He doesn't want to think about Ji-Eun. He's more interested in Hae-Won, a childhood friend he has been in love with forever. But of course, in the way of all K-dramas, Hye-Won doesn't love Yeong-Jae back (at least not in that way). She is in love with their good friend Min-Hyuk! Ahh the obligatory K-drama love square forms!

After embarrassing himself in front of Hye-Won, Yeong-Jae and Ji-Eun actually draw up a contract for a marriage of convenience! The marriage will be a good cover up for his unreturned feelings for Hye-Won (and some other recent celebrity scandals). Ji-Eun agrees because when they divorce in a few months, she will regain ownership of her beloved house, and Yeong-Jae will move out!

Ji-Eun and Yeong-Jae must now pretend to the world that they are a loving couple. Of course this is difficult when they are both so rude to each other! Yeong-Jae is rather childish and petty, while Ji-Eun is so stubborn! They clash and yell at each other every time they meet, yet somehow feelings begin to develop between them which neither of them can actually admit. Yeong-Jae is especially resistant, as he is also still in love with Hye-Won!

Ji-Eun, when not cleaning the house, is an aspiring writer. Before her house was sold, she was a popular internet novelist. Unfortunately the quality standards for published work are much higher than for what appears on the internet, and she has many problems trying to get someone to publish her newest story. Things look up when Yeong-Jae's friend Min-Hyuk (an executive at an entertainment company) agrees to take Ji-Eun under his wing and help her develop her writing. Is he motivated to do this because of his freindship with Yeong-Jae, or is his interest in Ji-Eun? AS for Hye-Won, she loves Min-Hyuk, yet seems reluctant to let Yeong-Jae go. Ahh things get very complicated!

Full House is one of my favorite Korean dramas. All the actors perform well in their roles, and the story is very dramatic and funny at the same time. I highly recommend it!

Gokusen

Type: J-Drama
No. of Episodes: 12 (season 1), 10 (season 2)
English Subs: Hardsubbed by SARS (season 1) softsubbed by ran_chan and others on d-addicts (season 2)

I decided to go with one of my favorite doramas for my first entry in this blog~ :)

GOKUSEN is the story of young high school teacher YAMAGUCHI Kumiko. At the beginning of the series, she is 23 years old, and has just accepted her first real teaching position as a math instructor at an all-boys high school. Kumiko is very cute in an awkward, quirky way. Her clothing is unfashionable, and she wears her long hair in two ponytails that make her look younger than she is. Her glasses add to the geeky effect. Her attitude is optimistic and almost naive. She wants to be a great teacher, and she believes in her students.

Kumiko's first class does not share in her dorky cheerfulness and optimism. They are a class of juvenile delinquents with multicolored hair, sloppy uniforms, and rough attitudes. They are lead by SAWADA Shin, their class leader who has a habit of being lazy in class. In the drama, her class is 3rd year, class D. The boys in 3-D are not thrilled to have such a lame looking teacher like Yamaguchi-sensei, so of course they try to bully her and force her to quit. Their attempts do not get them far.

What the class of 3-D does not know is that YAMAGUCHI Kumiko is a lot tougher than she looks. In fact, she has a secret life outside of the classroom that she goes to great pains to conceal from her students and co-workers. Kumiko is not your average shy geek. She is, in fact, the 4th generation heir to an infamous and powerful Tokyo Yakuza group! Years ago, Kumiko's parents passed away, and Kumiko was sent to live with her grandfather, the leader of the Yakuza group. Living with them has shaped Kumiko's personality in strange ways. When flustered or angry, she will switch from normal speech patterns, to the rough, crude slang speech of the Yakuza. She is also an excellent fighter, and can easily defeat a group of attackers.

The series focuses on Kumiko's attempts at earning the trust and respect of her students and helping them become better people, beating up badguys, imparting life lessons (through inspirational speeches ^_^;) and occasionally teaching math. And through all this, she must keep her unusual background a secret. If the school or the local PTA were to find out, she would be fired. There is, of course, a little romance going on, as Kumiko falls for someone very unsuitable for her, and a few people also fall for her.

Gokusen is based on a women's manga, and the manga influence is apparent in the style of humor and the camera angles. A second season of Gokusen aired a couple years after the first one, and was even more successful in the ratings. In it, Yankumi faces an even more dangerous class. There are plenty of new faces as well as a few old friends. It is a great series too, but I admit I prefer the first season. I have a website devoted to Gokusen, which can be found here.