HEART STATION

Never has a series been so syncronized with its own soundtrack! (At least from the ones I’ve watched) Everything is so in touch with the music in the series to the moment’s emotion that it increases the feeling they’re trying to expose to us. I love this about the series and everything else about it. Since my last review, there is one more main character named Tomohiko Ogura.

• Tomohiko Ogura: Ogura got into the series because he works with Eri in the airport. He told Eri about how his wife is living with another man in their house and he was kicked out. He is very shy and timid, but pretty controllable just like Michiru. He ends up living with Ruka, Takeru and Eri because of that and steals a plasma television from his house as a house-warming gift!

[Spoilers] Through the first five episodes, we get more and more interested in the cliffhangers, the relationships and in the strong personalities of the characters and the conflicts they’re involved in. Although, in the beginning we see this very close bond of love and friendship between Ruka and Michiru, it seems like lately, Ruka doesn’t like the fact that Michiru is so controllable by Sosuke (Michiru’s abusive boyfriend) and through the 4th and 5th episodes, I feel like she ‘gave up’ on Michiru. Although Michiru may seem weak and controllable in the beginning, in the 5th episode, it’s interesting to notice how she finally rejects Sosuke after being hit so many times. Michiru gets a key to live with Ruka, Takeru and Eri. It didn’t last long because later, Michiru fights with Ruka because Ruka wants to keep her away from Sosuke because of all the harm he caused, but since Michiru breaks up with him, Sosuke gets depressed (More than he already is) and mysterious and draws Michiru back when he calls her and says he’ll kill himself. Michiru fights with Ruka and goes back to Sosuke. That’s where the 5th episode leaves off.

[Spoilers] About the characters, we learn that they all have their problems and weaknesses, but when they’re together, it’s like nothing matters anymore. It’s a really heart-warming series and every one of the characters has a very strong personality, be it in a positive or a negative way. We learn that Takeru is afraid of relationships because of something in his past. Ruka searches for help because she believes she has a ‘gender identity disorder.’ Michiru is back with Sosuke. Ogura is back to his house with his wife (Nobody really knows what happened), and Eri is unhappy because of everything going on around her.

I can’t stop checking back on Kioku’s website to see if the next episode is already hardsubbed (With subtitles already on the video) because the series is becoming so different from its origins and the mystery, love and warmth involved is captivating! I love the series and can’t stop watching it and Kioku does an amazing job translating from Japanese to English with clear subtitles.

Episode 1 (Torrent Download)
Episode 2 (Torrent Download)
Episode 3 (Torrent Download)
Episode 4 (Torrent Download)
Episode 5 (Torrent Download)

There has been some time that I’ve been wanting to watch the first episode of the ‘dorama’ (Japanese drama, or soap opera) Last Friends and it took me a while just to find a download with hardsubs (Subtitles that come already placed throughout the episode), but I have, and I already watched it. This first experience with Japanese drama was very interesting and I love how even though it’s foreign, I can still sense similarities between this series and other American ones, and that’s great, because it makes the series much easier to relate to. But even though it’s similar to American series, I love the Japanese setting, everything is so beautiful even when it’s not meant to… Maybe that’s just me, but I love everything about it.

Until the first half of the episode, it’s like an introduction to the lives of the characters. There are five characters, and I’ll talk about each of them from what we see in the first episode:

• Aida Michiru: Michiru is a cute, innocent and adorable girl who is the main character of the series. The story follows how she returns to Tokyo and is in the process of getting used to it again. She moves in with her boyfriend, Sosuke, and meets her old high school friend, Ruka, and they begin hanging out again. Through Ruka, Michiru finds other great friends.
• Kishimoto Ruka: Ruka is not an ordinary girl because she hates men for treating her always for her gender and not for who she is. She’s a skilled motocrosser and has feeling towards Michiru. She also has a very boyish look to her.
• Mizushima Takeru: So far, there’s not much information on him, but his best friend, Eri, believes he’s gay because she’s never seen him with a girl and he’s a makeup artist. Besides that, we learn that he gets very pushy when he’s drunk, apparently.
• Takigawa Eri: We also can’t get much information about Eri from the first episode, but she’s very happy and loves to have fun. She’s also quite loud, but cute too.
• Oikawa Sosuke: He’s Michiru’s abusive boyfriend. In the beginning of the episode, he’s very sweet to her, but after she’s moved in, he believes the text messages she recieves from Ruka are a man’s, and hits her. He’s very controlling and closed-minded, Michiru can barely explain what’s going on before he beats her.

[Undetailed Spoilers] The rest of the episode is more of the series’ conflict. We learn more about the characters and then Michiru is trying to prove to Sosuke that Ruka is a girl, so she goes back to her house and looks for her high school yearbook. Sosuke calls her and makes her come home even though she didn’t find he yearbook. When she gets there, he beats her up very, very much and throws her on the lamp she bought for him when she moved in. She leaves and calls Ruka, but she doesn’t answer her cellphone. Later, Ruka finds her and brings her home where her roommate, Eri is found with her friend, Takeru. They have a great time together and go to sleep. That morning, something special happens, and I’ll leave it for you to watch it.

In my opinion, I really loved the series, and I’m certainly downloading the second episode with the hardsubs. My first experience with a ‘dorama’ was a great one! And Utada Hikaru’s Prisoner Of Love song is the theme song for the series, and in the four times it is played through the episode, it’s perfect timing, you feel the character’s emotions through the song and the soundtrack and the series itself are amazing. I recommend it to anyone who wants to watch it, but take notice that the content is very mature and you have to have certain maturity to watch the series.

Episode 1 (Torrent Download)

I’ve fallen in love with “Ugly Betty” since the first time I’ve ever watched it. I remember the first episode I’ve watched was “Queens For A Day.” An episode which Betty gets a make over and ends up looking extremely… well… Not pretty. I have just finished watching the complete first season and I have to admit I have never seen ANY other series that slowly reveal bonds between the characters the way this series does. Not even in “How I Met Your Mother” and it’s basically the whole deal with the show. But I do think that the ending of the season was not an ending… It had no conclusion. Here’s how it went: [Spoilers]

First, Daniel Meade (Editor In Chief of Mode, this super fashion company) crashed his car seriously because his sister (Former brother, but he had an accident and was presumed dead for 2 years, but then shows up as a transsexual. The whole beginning of the show showed this cloaked lady which turned out to be Alex. [Now Alexis]) was driving him to the hospital because he was high.

Then Santos (Hilda’s [Betty's sister] husband) is buying his son a congratulations gift (He’s finally accepting his son’s sexuality and interests) when they store is being robbed and while trying to save the clerk, he is shot. Betty is aware of the news and looks for Hilda at Justin’s musical and tells her everything. The scene is heartbreaking. Hilda screams and cries and the sounds are muffled by the glass door separating her form the auditorium. Just when Hilda and Santos are coming back together and beginning to understand each other, he’s murdered.

Then Betty discovers her boyfriend-to-be, Henry, is in love with her, but he’s got a girlfriend, Charlie, who he broke up with for Betty. She comes to Betty and tells her she’s pregnant. Betty then finds out that it might not be Henry’s, since Charlie was having an affair with Betty’s date, (Her dentist) who she brought to Charlie’s birthday party.

These are the main events that happened on the last episode. There are so many things that need to be answered and nothing is concluded, it’s like a normal episode! Not even the pilot episode was so vague and dramatic.

Even though the whole watch-the-second-season-because-it-contains-all-the-answers deal is going on (And it’s working), I totally rate the series a 10/10 stars! It’s got the adorableness a series needs, the drama, comedy and sweetness. It’s a series you can’t resist.

I don’t know why, I just love Sarah Michelle Gellar. She acts in television’s best series ever, “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” and I think that’s partially the reason, the other reason is because she’s very beautiful and an amazing actress. It’s a pity that she dies in all her movies, Sofy told me that Gellar even admited that she dies in all her movies, but I must admit, from all the movies I’ve seen, her death in “I Know What You Did Last Summer” is the most annoying death EVER. I don’t know why, but I always feel sympathy towards her characters, she’s SO the best actress EVER, although, the only bad thing is that she was the only actress that didn’t want to continue with Buffy, and she would CONSIDER to act in the movie if the script was interesting enough. I wish I had all her movies, she’s such an interesting woman, who happens to act in MANY terror movies (To all of you newbies to my blog out there, terror movies are my FAVORITE movies, or “horror” is my favorite movie genre)

Here are the latest news on her:

She’s starring a new movie, to be released on 2008, the name is “Alice” and it’s based on the game, “American McGee’s Alice,” released in the year 2000. The movie’s gonna be SO perfect, it’s about “Alice In Wonderland” but it’s a dark side of the movie. In the movie, her parents die in a fire when she returns from wonderland, she becomes demented, and tries to suicide, she becomes really depressed, SO depressed that in the cover of the game, she is holding a knife, and her dress is covered in blood, the Cheshire cat is beside her, it’s a more skeletal version of him, and he’s a lot devilish and creepier. Sarah Michelle Gellar will be Alice in the movie, and even though it’ll only be released in 2008, I can’t wait! I’m so happy, I just love the way they changed the story, they changed Alice, and wonderland, and from such a happy movie, such a disturbing story was created, for more information, if you’re interested here are my sources:

For normal people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_McGee%27s_Alice

For Baby C: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466663/

I love vacation because I can do one thing: Nothing. I spend all my time just in front of the TV while I play games in my laptop. I also have my special TV series schedule, since, when in school days, I can’t watch some of these series because they’re in the morning. Every vacation of mine there are series that makes me want to spend my vacation sitting on the couch just watching them. This vacation, I wanna watch “The Nanny” all day long, it’s like one of the best series EVER! If any of you don’t know what I’m talking about, you SO gotta watch it! Well, returning to what I was talkin’ about… in previous vacations I got addicted to “Gilmore Girls” and “Sex and the City.” I loved “Gilmore Girls” before, now I’m not a big fan, since it can get us tired sometimes, but I never got tired of “Sex and the City.” It was in Miami that I started watching it, it went on late at night, I don’t know how late, I was still getting used to the difference in time, so I slept a lot later… I remember keeping a package of life savers while I watched TV, it was so much fun, my sister watched it too, don’t worry, she’s mentally prepared for what went on in the series, and whenever I thought something was gonna happen, I changed the channel, so don’t think I’m an irresponsible brother, she watches “Jerry Springer” anyways. Well, we spent the whole night watching Carrie’s adventures through the streets of New York, and then we watched another show that passed after that, named “Daisy Does America” to some, it’s a stupid show, to others, who don’t know it and just read the title, it’s an inapropriate show, but it’s not that, it’s about this woman, Daisy who goes around America looking for different groups of people and see what they do, and then for some time, she would try to become part of that group, for example, once she met this rapper group, she spent some days with that group, dressing like they do, and doing what they do, here in Brazil, we have a similar show named “Tribos” or “Tribes” in English. Another series that I enjoy watching this vacation is “America’s Next Top Model,” just like Ms. Coggio stated: “I don’t know exactly why ANTM rules my life in America….Somewhere between their luxury accomodations, their fabulously girly insecurities, and the Tyra Mail I just lose myself.” and right after that best-1-hour-of-the-best-thing-of-the-week, I watch Desperate Housewives, Wednesday is SO the best day of the week (For now at least…).

I love vacation for this reason, we can watch how many TV shows we feel like watching, and no one to judge us, it’s vacation after all!