[First impression] Otoko Meshi

When I first looked at the list of this dorama season, I was like "Yay, there are two food dramas this season." But when I read the synopsis, I wasn't quite sure about Otoko Meshi. I mean, it's about food and yakuza. I didn't think those two things would go together well. So I was thinking of skipping this drama. But then somebody picked up this drama. Since I've been curious about it anyway (and I also love food-related shows), I decided to watch it. And I quite liked it. It's one of the shorter dramas, only about 20 min long. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, because it means that we only get a little bit of food porn (that's kinda a bummer because that's the point of food shows), but on the other hand, we don't spend much time on the yakuza part. Well, as long as they can make it work (and not boring), that's okay, I guess.

The yakuza part is pretty weird, just like I thought. But because it's comical, it kinda makes it less weird, I think. They spent the first half focused on the yakuza arc, which was understandable, because this was the first ep and they needed to provide backstory and introduction. Once the setup was complete, we finally got a little bit of food porn. I was a bit disappointed tho, because the food in the opening sequence looked way better. Maybe it was just because they didn't have a lot of ingredients in this ep (they only used leftovers). But it does look a lot better in the preview of the next ep, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm not too sure where the yakuza arc will go from here, but I hope it won't ruin the lightness of this drama. Because when I'm watching food shows, I just wanna relax and enjoy the food porn, without thinking of any other unnecessary arcs.

Fuji TV dramas on VIU

So a few weeks ago, I heard that VIU now has jdramas, but they only get the license for Fuji TV dramas. I checked the website, and I saw that they have 2 airing dramas; Suki na Hito ga Iru Koto and Eigyou Buchou Kira Natsuko. They also have other older dramas, albeit not a lot. Few days ago, I wrote about jdramas not being mainstream, even though I'd heard about this. And that's because I'm not sure if this is another start of mainstream jdramas. In the past, other legal streaming sites also held the license of jdramas, but it only lasted for a while. They don't license jdramas anymore now. So I'm kinda pessimistic this time.

It seems like only some kdrama fans (who also watch jdramas) know this. I think jdrama fans still use the fansub. I'm not sure tho, since I'm not watching those two dramas. VIU is faster, as expected. They already have ep 3 of Suki na Hito ga Iru Koto, while the fansub is still on ep 2. But like I said, the quality is different. Fansub is definitely worth the wait. Only get VIU subs when nobody picks up the drama, just because it's better than watching it raw.

Since VIU holds the license for a lot of Korean variety shows, I hope they will get Fuji TV variety shows too. So I don't have to watch VS Arashi raw, and wonder what they all laugh about. And maybe also get the license for other channel's dramas and variety shows. But especially the variety shows. Because the subs are rarer. While drama subbers tend to finish the subs until the end, variety show subbers don't sub it every week. And I need my weekly fix of subbed Arashi shows lol.