Now’s a good time to start watching jdramas

Now is a good time to start watching jdramas if you like them or are curious about them. The newest season has just started and the previous one just ended.

The site is pretty self-explanatory. You will see tiles for newer episodes near the top and older ones near the bottom.

What I recommend, since there are so many, is to sample them. If it is a new series d/l the first episode (and wait for English subs if no one has started subbing them yet). If it is an in-progress or a completed series, after starting the torrent then go into your bittorrent client and select only the first episode to download.

As for completed series, I really liked Ghost Writer and Marumaru Tsuma. I really didn’t like Ryuusei Wagon which had gratuitous violence.

One other thing I will say: Don’t take the promotional images on the little tiles too seriously. I’ve found they are almost no indication whatsoever about the actual content or quality of the dramas.

By the way, in the past I’ve seen it occur a few times where a subber for some reason just stopped in the middle of a series. Sometimes you can search on other(1) sites(2) and will find that someone else has done subs for the same series. You may also find alternate resolution videos on these sites.

One other thing: Sometimes it can be illuminating to watch at least part of an episode without subs. For example, check out the first episode of the new series Liquid. As you will see this is a very Japanese drama with a lot of attention to detail and excellent cinematography. Another one I liked watching without subs is episode 9 of Marumaru Tsuma (but don’t skip ahead if you haven’t seen the previous episodes!).

Without the subs you can really focus on other details like the expressions of the actors, the scenery, etc. If you are used to watching jdramas always with subs you may miss out on many of the nuances which make Japanese drama so great.

UPDATE:

So far of the crop of new ones Ishitachi no Renai Jijou and Liquid look interesting. From last season another one I didn’t mention that I like is Second Love.