How to review a jdrama (apologies in advance)

[Fracture]

Having spent the better part of the morning melting my brain at no site in particular, it has occurred to me that there are still a few people out there that don't understand how to produce quality criticism.  As a public service, I am here to set the record straight.

First you need to decide if you like the show or not.  If you like it, it gets a 10/10.  If you don't, it gets a 1/10.

These are your only options.  Let me explain.

Giving a score like 7/10 will just make you seem wishy-washy.  All good reviewers know that in order to be taken seriously, you must first pelt your audience into submission with a sweeping sense of authority.  An all-or-nothing score is like a paddle to the reader's head. How can someone not take you seriously when you're paddling their head?

Remember, this is a review, not a math test.  Leave the complicated equations to the graphing-calculator set, i.e. nerds.  Median scores are soft and girly, like fluffy pink pillows, and have no place in the arsenal of a serious reviewer such as yourself.

Note:  If you've never seen the show before, make your decision based entirely on how hawt the cast members are.

---

Now that you've decided on a score, your review needs a body.  Here's a few things to keep in mind:

• The number one reason people read drama reviews is because they want to know how 'kawaiiiii~' the stars are.  Don't waste precious bytes rambling about useless crap like story or music, no one cares.

• The best reviews needn't exceed two sentences.  Elaboration is a communist conspiracy and should be avoided at all costs.  What's the point of giving a head-paddling score if you have to waste a bunch of time explaining it?

• At least 50% of the adjectives in your review should be Japanese words.  It's okay if you don't know what these words mean, it's far more important to demonstrate your attunement with the source culture by observing that Ueto Aya is 'cho-kawaiiii!' or that Attention Please was 'cho-okashiiii!' or that One Litre of Tears made you feel 'cho-issankatansochuudoku!'.

• If the show features a prominent musician in an acting role, take into account whether you like their music.  "NEWS SUCKS 1/10" is a perfectly acceptable and well-formed review for Kurosagi.

• Punctuation is optional, except for tildes~ which should be inserted~~ after random~~~~~ words throughout.

• If the show has a lot of shameless, unnecessary moralizing, be sure to note how it "change my life~" and how much it matured you.  Even if you hate the show, you need to let everyone know that underneath that tough, authoritative exterior is a person who was previously unaware that money can't buy happiness or that murdering people is wrong.

• Bonus points if you end your review with either "arigato~", "ganbare~" or "gomenasai~", typed just like that.  Whether it makes contextual sense is irrelevant.

Now, let's look at some examples from the masters, copy/pasted directly from some unknown site:

[Rating: 10/10]
ryo-chaaaaan~~~

Really, what more needs to be said?  This tells me everything I need to know.

[Rating: 1/10]
this is bullshit

The master of subtlety.  With a little effort, this reviewer may be able to reduce the text even further, perhaps to a simple "fuck you".

[Rating: 10/10]
i cannot stop crying , and " TAK KERING GUSI " :(( , i dont want to live anymore after watching this jdaroma.

Wow, that really makes me want to watch it!

[Rating: 10/10]
i buy this story recently and i,m enjoy wacthing it but i dont really like yamap hair style n i feel like i want 2 cut some of his hair and i think maki is so busy body kind of person but i give 10 because i like yamap so much.

Truly profound, I know that when I was watching the show I couldn't stop thinking about taking a sharp object to Yamapi's skull either.

[Rating: 10/10]
metcha sugoiiii

Don't you feel like you've learned a lot from reading this?  I am so grateful that this person took eight seconds of their life to tell me absolutely nothing in poorly-formed romaji.  ganbare, reviewer-san~~~

[Rating: 10/10]
aww this movie was the cutest movie ever. i liked erika the best. she's so cute and adorable! especially when she smiles. and i love her haircut!

No sense in wasting words on meaningless stuff, this review gets right to the point.  Erika's hair is clearly the make-or-break factor here. I mean, I guess it was nice of them to write a script around it and all, but no one really cares about that kind of shit, do they?

[Rating: 10/10]
our life is so meningful. after i watched this drama, i see that we must appreciate our live.

Seeing Sawajiri in a bikini makes me feel the same way, brother.

[Rating: 10/10]
WATASHI WA SAYURI DESU YORoPpiku OnEgaiShimAsu nee XD
PERU KARA KITE moOu---6 nEn KuRai TACchimasUUu KEDOOOOoO AnnMAri"""NIHONGO""YOuuZu De Wa ArimAshEnnNn XSSS
DRAMA suGoiDEsuU nEe....MiTeru TO SuGgOiiiii KANDOU shimAsUshiiiii!!!(L)(U)
HOnTOu ni AyA-Chan KAWaiSOoOO!!!NAnDE ByoUkI Ga chouDO AYa ChAn ni kEmTA nO KAnAAa¿?S0Re Wa.......(N)
Ahh!!!!TORRENT?????kAna :S ????DOuuuYatTee DOWloAnD suRunDesu-ka???MAE kaRA ZuuuuuuuuuuuuTtO SoRe wO kikiTakuTe....:S:S HonTOw ni PC De miTaI Desu!!!!!
DaKARa DaRekAAa oShieTE kuRemASenkAAaa???OnEGai onEGaiii.......PlEASE!!!!!!!!!
(((((YARiKATa oShiETe kuDAa Saii!!!!!!!!!)))))))))))
DEWa DEWa...MinnA kYoUSuKETEee!!!
bai bAiiChUUUUUU!!!!!!

I saved the best for last.  Stare in awe, friends, this is probably the greatest review ever written for anything ever.  I wish I knew the Japanese word for 'epic' because if I did I'd type it in alt-caps followed by about a dozen exclamation points and then vomit up some random emotes to make it as unreadable as possible.

It's especially impressive that this person saw fit to include a review score while suggesting that he hasn't even seen the show, indicating that besides being a Japanese language authority he is also a clairvoyant.  Psychics make the best reviewers because they're awesome and can do card tricks like Mistress Cleo.


There you have it.  I hope you've learned something.  Maybe we can at last put an end to all these sickening nerd reviews with their useless plot analysis and relevant commentary, and return to what really matters:  Yamapi's hair.

[Asmodai]

Great write up. I need a new keyboard now.

Amazingly, if you just change a few keywords, you can apply this write-up to just about anything reviewed on the web.

[Ayabie]

This is why I don't visit above mentioned site.

Thanks for a great laugh, Fracture!

[tenkei]

epic

[boykun]

Wow, that one was something else.

[JFC]

Definitely epic.

[winner]

wow.
without looking closely, i'd swear that last one was a bunch of pokemon stuck in a small room, drunk. 

I do go to 'unknown site' for its nice clean info database (looking up which jdrama **** was in 5 yrs ago).
And nice haircuts are always a plus (in dramas and in life ).

[ferrar1]

[Rating: 10/10]

HAHA

[doinkies]

*snort* That perfectly describes most of the reviews at that site! I used to go there often but now that there are other places like d-addicts and DramaWiki to look up info/discuss dramas at, I rarely go there.

The Johnny's wotas who spam "YAMAPI/(insert other Johnny's member's nickname here) KAWAII SUGOI KAKKOII" and whatnot are my "favorites", if "favorites" means "people who I probably couldn't stand to be with for more than 10 seconds". For some reason, a lot of young Johnny's wotas always make these sorts of comments, it is why I avoid most threads on d-addicts about most of the young Johnny's members or the dramas they star in, even if I liked the drama I could not put up with reading the inane comments of wotas who just want to squee about how hawt so-and-so is.

And about that last person. Wow. Was she posting like a burikko on purpose? What is with the weird romanizations of some words? In what language is "youzu" an acceptable romanization of "jouzu"?

Ugh.

[Saburo]

Hmm, I think I've actually been to that site but I've never actually read a single review because the page is forever loading up HUGE imbeded jpegs and HUGE banner signatures that can't be turned off.  So fuhget dat place!

You get what you pay for.

[Hakai]

Review of Fracture´s writting:

[Rating: 10/10]

WraITtinGu suGoiDEsuU nEe....

 

[Fracture]

I forgot I posted this

It's true that there's no reason really to ever go to 'that site', I mean there are some decent posts but it's not worth digging through the mud to find them.

You'd think eventually one would become desensitized to the internetz, especially after spending time at places like JPM which makes me want to laugh and cry and swallow rat poison all at the same time.

[doinkies]

You'd think eventually one would become desensitized to the internetz, especially after spending time at places like JPM which makes me want to laugh and cry and swallow rat poison all at the same time.

I used to go to JPM often but now it's just become...ugh. I stopped going there last spring.

JPOPSUKI's forum is even WORSE. Most of the people there make me want to headdesk...most posters on the thread about the Koda Kumi scandal in particular totally missed the point and chose to rant about how stupid people were to get offended (and to those doinks, imagine if you were a woman approaching your 30s or in your early 30s and wanted to have kids later or didn't even want kids, I doubt you'd have the same response then), DragonmasterAlex is the biggest doink of all and obviously goes to 4chan too much, people fling crap at each other all the time there, it's basically the cesspool of J-pop forums, which is really doinky because the main JPOPSUKI tracker is great and I wish it didn't have so many doinks posting on their forums.

Another example of JPOPSUKI Forum's doinkiness is this thread: http://mullemeck.serveftp.org/jps_beta/forum/viewtopic.php?t=59345 Even after Aleandra posted a very well-thought-out reply, the OP still continues to miss the point.

[Fracture]

You know, I don't believe that I have ever read JPS forums.  I've always just thought of it as a tracker site.  That thread was a laugh though.  You can gauge the uselessness of any forum participant by how quickly they invoke Goodwin's Law.

Let us be thankful for our own HiP corner of the internetz   I don't think I've ever seen an honest-to-god all-out flame war here outside of PMs.