[Discussion] Yoshitsune

Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 12:52 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

It must be the destiny, but the only reason I got interested in Yoshitsune is because Gocchin, but thanks to that, now I'm involved in the J-Drama world Smile

, thanks to Gocchin Wub

... Yoshitsune looks so fantastic, I still haven't seen all the episodes, I'm still waiting when Maki finally appears.

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 6:32 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Oh, I'm sooo suprised that this drama thread is only 2 pages long...
It's is such a good drama! I like it very much- I've seen only 7 eps since now, but I'll definetly watch all 49!

Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:57 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 3:06 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Even if I understand very little Japanese, this taiga drama is a classic! Aside from being a famous legendary epic, this series has an all star cast with Hideaki Takizawa and those two kawaii onna - Aya Ueto and Satomi Ishihara! They're all here!

Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2006 3:42 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Matsudaira Ken as Benkei was just great. A true warrior monk, scary as hell at times, but then completely funny (like his encounter with a certain woman).

Ishihara as Shizuka was just too cute and too passive for my tastes. Ueto's Utsubo was good, though, a true girl from the streets of old Kyoto, who remained on her course.

Hojo Masako was great, I loved how her first encounter with Yoritomo. In history she received the nickname "nun shogun" after the death of her husband (which, ironically, is linked to Yoshitsune, too; at least in folk tales. It's said that Yoritomo's horse threw him off when it was startled by Yoshitsune's ghost, who was haunting his brother because of the betrayal many years afterwards), when she held together the Kamakura Shogunate.

Yoritomo though, no matter what people may think of him and despite his betrayal (which was common tactics in politics anyway, just take Go-Shirakawa's motives and tactics), was a brilliant statesman who changed Japan and brought it away from the court and really into the hands of the samurai, where it stayed until 1868.

Their daughter, though... Now she was CUTE.

Personally I didn't like how they ended Tomoe Gozen's career. Letting her die on the battlefield, leading a blazing charge of what's left of Yoshinaka's army at the enemy would have been better for her, or maybe go for the second option, that of letting her become a nun, after all, those are two of the three known legends about her end. The third talks about how she threw herself into the see right after fleeing the battlefield with Yoshinaka's head. But having Tomoe settling down and have a child? Oivech! That's not the Tomoe Gozen that appears in the Heike Monogatari.

Yoshitsune... I wasn't too impressed with him the way it was played, sorry to say that. Well, he was good looking, but... that's about it. And naive, so horribly naive, I can't imagine that the real Yoshitsune was really THAT naive. I was always thinking how Fujiwara Tatsuya would have played him, or even Oguri Shun.

Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 1:47 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

i saw this on tv a couple of months ago. i was flipping through the channels and then this came up at 9:00. i really liked it! =] i tuned in every saturday to watch it. haha i've watched a lot of taiga dramas on the same channel before, but it wasn't as interesting as Yoshitsune!! i love the whole story.

Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 2:22 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Interesting enough, Yoshitsune was actually a flop according to the ratings. It started out above 20 points in the beginning - just like every other taiga drama starting with Ryukyu no Kaze in 1993. However, at around week 24 it started to tank, several weeks reaching as low as 13.5 points which is major disaster in the taiga drama realm. Reading various articles, the idea of using idol power in this taiga drama did three things:

1. It attracted the trendy drama fans to the taiga drama early on.

2. It turned off the traditional taiga drama fans from the beginning.

3. After awhile, the trendy drama idol fans tuned away as well.
- Too long
- Storyline is crap
- Their favorite idols didn't get the coverage they were hoping for

With Komyo ga Tsuji, NHK went back to focusing on the story itself and using traditional methods of recruiting artists, rather than trying to use the taiga drama to attract the younger viewers into watching these long period dramas by appealing to what they like. IMHO, they tried the idol thing as an experiment, but overall it didn't work out as well as they had anticipated. Lesson learned - You can use idol power to attract the idol-followers to watching any show in the beginning. But, in the long run, the story is EVERYTHING. Idol power works in 12-week seasons because of the short-attention span of the idol fans - NOT 1-year dramas like these taiga dramas. I doubt NHK will make this same mistake again for quite awhile.

To be quite honest, I can't comprehend the reason why NHK is so wrapped up about the ratings being low. I mean, there are no CMs and other marketing on NHK (it's basically a publicly-run TV network.) And the residents there are required to pay the TV tax, so NHK is receiving revenue whether they're doing well or not. With this in mind, I'd say "screw the idol fans!!!!" and stick with what they've been doing these past 40 years. Even if the taiga dramas draw single-digit percentages, I'm still watching them because it is ME that I'm only concerned about.

For the record... I stopped watching Yoshitsune after episode 12. I just couldn't stand it.

--- groink

Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 4:22 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Gah is there any clubbox where i can dl this from? But i dont understand japanese anyway T.T lol but the scenes are so beautiful..it reminds me of "glass mask" so i really want to watch it pinch

I dont think takky is good enough to portray such a character though....i hope johnny would stop pushin all their fav boys into dramas >.> it seems like theres no chance for other actors to get a leadin role ==> sucks...

edit: oh wait there is eng sub for the ones on daddicts pinch

hope there still r seeds

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 8:52 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I finally finished Yoshitsune, my first taiga drama, and I was surprised at how incredible it turned out to be even though I'm not much of a fan of pre-modern stuff. It did get boring early for a dozen episodes or so, but around the mid-20s when the war began and things were going to hell, it got really exciting and engaging for the rest of the series. I was also amazed how beautiful many of the scenes were, even though it was a VHS capture. My only regret is that Studio Oto didn't continue their HDTV fansubs because SO's Ep 1 looked so gorgeous compared to the SARS' 2+ VHS rips. ^_^

BTW, does anyone know if all these characters are based on real people? I tried to look up Ueto Aya's "Utsubo" and found nothing . . was Yoshitsune really involved in some kinda love triangle or was that just romance fluff injected in for the sake of romance fluff? =/

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 11:10 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Yes, they're based on real people. There are usually a couple of fictive elements thrown into the Taiga dramas (for example, the whole bit about the peasant girl being in love with Yoshitsune), but the major characters were predominantly real. There is some question as to how historical Benkei was, but he is referred to in the early records, the three principle literary tracks of the Heike (Heike Monogatari, Genpei Josuiki, and the Genpei Tojoroku) and the Gikeiki.

Tony

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 6:54 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I have always stayed away from Taiga doramas because I always thought they were nothing more than low budget play-like costume parties until Groinke's passion convinced me to give Atsuhime a try.
And now I am hooked.
Yoshitsune is my second Taiga and I was really happy to fall once again under the spell of Inamori Izumi ( playing Tokiwa, Yoshitsune's Mum and Takiyama in Atsuhime).
She owns those types of roles like no other japanese actress.

Thank you Groink !

This is also a fun way to learn about japanese history and geography.