探偵学園Q

Haven't been doing anything for the past several days except play the (fluff)Friends Egg Hunt on Facebook (which was welcoming cos didn't require brainpower), and watching my latest craze: the Japanese detective drama serial, 探偵学園Q (Tantei Gakuen Q).

Started watching it by accident, simply because it was my favourite kind of show: detective stories! Turns out the show was transcribed from a manga series, author of 金田一，one of my favs. So the stories were relatively believable with nice detecting & analysing clues.

Show focus on 5 young detectives-to-be, classmates in a detective school, solving one case after another. Each case finishes in either 1 or 2 episodes, with sub-plots on each character's personal life. The oldest boy is the martial arts expert with perfect eyesight, the youngest a computer genius. The only gal in the group has instant perfect memory, capable of remembering everything she's seen. The 2 main male leads are very good at detecting & analysing, ie. solving the case. One is an optimistic boy who sees the good in everybody, the other a loner with a sinister family background.

Best of all are of course, the actors & actress! The 3 main characters in the show are only about 14 yrs old, & they managed to find 3 great actors/actress for the parts! Only thing is, the 2 lead actors 长得太清秀. When I 1st started watching the show, I thought the main lead was another girl-dress-up-as-boy character!

Very irritating, the serial is only 11 episodes long, excluding the SP. (They made a 2 hr special episode 1st, showcasing how they passed the various detecting tests to qualify for the Q Class in the school. Ratings was very good, hence they proceeded with the drama serial.)

I'm actually re-watching the entire serial immediately after I finished the last episode, something I haven't done since the old Jap serial, Hero. Normally I don't re-watch detective shows so soon, since it's no fun when you know the story's ending, but the interactions between the various characters are just too interesting to stop at 11 episodes. Now I'm trying to lay my hands on the the 45 episode anime........

A bit silly to drool over a boy so much younger than I am, but the actor 山田凉介 looks really cool in the show. See what another fan prepared on YouTube, scene from the show:



About the negative thing in the show: the relatively scary corpses. The murder victims are always filmed eyes open with deadpan faces & plenty of blood (for non-strangulation cases), so I have to make sure I don't look at those scenes too long, else I have trouble sleeping at night. ;P

斗牛，要不要

Just finished watching the latest Taiwanese drama serial, 斗牛，要不要.

Started watching the show cos female lead is one of my fav, S.H.E's Hebe. This is the 1st time she's acting as female lead without Ella & Selina, so of course checked out her 1st effort.

After the show, found the 1st male lead, 贺军翔, to be actually good-looking: never understood why he was considered handsome from his previous 2 shows (换换爱 & 恶魔在身边). After this, can fully understand why he's so popular in Taiwan. Guess all the suits helped a bit. ;)

Also, finally found the 2nd male lead, 李威, to be acceptable. Previously found the actor to be a bit annoying. Now with such a heart-melting "protect her forever, even if can't be together" role, his popularity is also up.

One interesting aspect of the serial is its showcasing of fancy basketball moves. Really quite impressive, and the players soooooooo suave doing it!

However, cannot tahan the way the director keeps doing the 360 degrees filming. When focusing on the 2 leads falling in love it's lovely, but when it's done whenever they're together, & even when the 2 male leads are fighting for the attention of their gal, I can't help wishing to fast forward those scenes.

But a big plus: the soundtrack from S.H.E's recording company, HIM International. Really well suited to the show, having distinct themes for different threads of the story.

Loved this song 爱来过 describing Hebe's character's love for 贺军翔's.
This is extract from the drama: