Quick rundown of TV I'm watching: COMMUNITY and JIN 仁

[zigguratbuilder]

AMERICA
I caught some moments of the new comedy Community when flipping around: It was filled with potential so I went back and watched them all. Best comedy on TV, IMO. I got sucked in because of Donald Glover ("the black guy from Derrick Comedy"), Ken Jeong and John Oliver (the british dude from The Daily Show). Turns out that Danny Pudi's

Comments

[mike_montesa]

Noticed the manga-based shows in there-Otomen, Liar Game, probably Samurai High School. I usually despise these things. The writing works in manga, but when they take it live action, given the general lack of production value and lousy writing, plus untalented "talent" acting the parts, they just suck ass.

Wife watches "Aibo" on TV Japan every week. I can sorta tolerate that, but why does every detective cop-buddy show have the young guy wearing a fucking bomber jacket? That's soooo 80's...

I saw one episode of Kyumei Byoto. So lame. It even pissed off my wife.

[zigguratbuilder]

Yeah, the problem with anime and dramas these days is that there's clearly no writing talent left: I think each season (aside from the jidai-geki) there's maaaybe one single drama that is not based on a manga these days (same with anime). Manga is where all the creativity goes to be discovered, and TV and anime have gotten so used to mining it the last few years that they haven't been able to produce anything original for years now.

JIN is based on a manga too, same as (surprising) Shinya Shokudo, one I didn't mention above but is also my season's favorite.

Check out Shinya Shokudo. It is *awesome*. One dude is upping it in 5-episodes at a time blocks, so it's not regular. It's a nighttime drama, really slow paced and subtle, 30 minute pop episodes, but holy crap it's some of the most moving TV I've seen in a long time. The episode with 2 old men crying and eating butter rice really had me choked up.
(but it, too, is based on a manga. Weird)