Jun. 20th, 2016

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My interest in anything related to Johnny's has been depleting for quite sometime. I think it started with the SMAP saga and at the same time, there's an over exposed of Arashi and other groups as well, in a sense. It's not about releasing more singles or albums, which I'd much prefer to actually, but it's the exposure in other media appearances which overwhelmed me. I'm not sure if it's actually already going on for quite some time and I only notice it recently OR it started right after the SMAP saga. But, bottom line is, Johnny's as a company has been pushing too many things at the same time everywhere and my imagination says it's their plan B considering SMAP situation now (I'm still waiting for Sep for the conclusion, and in the meantime SMAPxSMAP is not the same anymore to me :( ). This kind of push may not be so apparent if you only follow 1 group, but it's quite overwhelming when you follow afew, let alone majority of the groups, and if you see Johnny's as one company entity.

In dramaland, if you notice, I haven't been writing anything since Winter 2016 season because I only literally finished 1 drama (DameKoi), and for Spring 2016, I haven't even finished any, nor do I even have the will to continue watching them. I feel like I'm searching for the magic and trying hard to find it with the recent seasons of J-drama but the magic is not sparking or there're not even traces of glitters. It's either because my taste changes (which I don't think so, my criteria for drama is still the same), or my mood changes, or the J-drama land just sucks all together lately. I don't think it's the last part (I still have some faith in J-drama) regardless whether it's complex or simple plot drama. But I find that even the rom-com theme is hard to watch. Is marriage that important? seems that TV station is painting across everywhere in their romcom drama that it's a girl's dream to get married. I'd prefer K-drama blatant inserts of girls must be married after certain age culture. It's sexist and equally annoying, but at least they don't try to be passive agressive about it. And to make it worse, I don't really look forward to Summer drama especially after I watched some episodes of Misaeng (yep, the K-drama version of that Nakajima Yuuto's new drama). If J-drama version if going for the same intensity as the K-drama, then it has better be as intense as Hanzawa Naoki (it has similar feels anyway), else, it'll go south, but I'm still waiting to be proven wrong here, because Misaeng has a good theme, which is very relatable to Japan work culture. At the same time, I'll make a note to check out more of TVN's drama. I like Queen Inhyeon's Man and Another Miss Oh (it better be happy end, else I'll be devastated). What about the live actions? I already see 2 adaptations Happy Mari and Seisei Suruhodo, Aishiteru, and to be honest I don't have good feeling for both. I love the manga version of Happy Mari, and though I like Dean Fujioka, I don't think he can do justice for Hokuto. On the other hand, Happy Mari will be a good source for K-drama because it has all the scheming of a chaebol company and inheritance, which are the regular theme of K-drama anyway, and the current K-drama makes more convincing bed scenes than J-drama (not all, but still better), and Happy Mari is afterall, a smut manga, not shoujo, so if J-drama ends up deleting all the bed scenes, then, well, there goes the so-called live action. I haven't read Seisei, but from the synopsis, it makes me wonder, how the drama actually going to turn up as, another boring live action or there's extra effort to it?

All these factors plus limited internet access (cannot download, only can do streaming with plenty of patience), leads me to... Shinhwa blackhole. Yes it's a blackhole because I only started with re-collecting Shin Hyesung's songs. I used to listen to his songs (his voice soothes me), not Shinhwa, and I forgot about him until recently when I started to check out k-pop again (he had an mini album out early this year - and it's a good one, something different from him). And while doing that, I realized why I never really listen to Shinhwa in the past... it's because their old albums have lots of R&B stuffs. Their newer albums (The Returns onwards) are easier to my ears, and now they're already matured and basically can do whatever they want with their song releases (much like the older Johnny's have a say in whatever they're releasing). Since Shinhwa is still active and started from not far from H.O.T era (yeah I listened to T.O.P that long time ago, and that's the only song I know of Shinhwa), their material is equally abundance like V6's (Kpop being Kpop has Youtube to testify for it, not like... Johnny's), and the more I read about them the more I find that they have the V6's endurance, SMAP's brotherhood and Arashi's charms. Their variety show, Shinhwa Broadcast is like 1 hour version of Arashi no Shukudai-kun. I'd think that if Arashi has V6's popularity trend, it'd be exactly like that. Right now, VS Arashi is boring for me (repeatitive), I'm indifferent about Arashi ni Shiyagare (Nino's yelling out answer is getting annoying and I realized I only watch AniShi nowadays for Matsujun's segment), and I only watch Sho-chan's Yakai show if the guests are the ones I like.

So, in the meantime, unless J-drama offer something different, I'll be going deeper and deeper into Shinhwa blackhole...
And I'd kill if V6 does this choreography!!! V6 may not be able to sing as good (cough - Ken's fault), but they jollywell can dance this and main reason is coz I want to see Ken do Andy's part!

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