Higgscel. Does Japan have as much "realistic" nihilistic live action drama as idyllic Anime?

[Deleted member 20987]

@Higgscel

Here in rainy UK we love our doom and gloom dramas that show the unsavoury and ugly side of life in the UK.

Maybe its grey skies and post-industrial, post 1980s recessions but we love to dwell on unemployment, under-age of consent teen sex, depression, domestic violence, alcoholism, drugs, murder, bullying bosses, suicide, pregnancy, infidelity, jealousy. Also unflinching depictions of bad boys getting the girl unapologetically at the expense of unattractive losers.

TV Dramas we have
- SKINS (which has underage of consent teen sex, Chadlites, Stacies fucking, teen group sex, drug use and lesbianism).
- EastEnders (domestic violence, families at war, catfights and hair pulling)

TV films
- The Full Monty showing men socially displaced by unemployment and ridiculed by women for it
- Trainspotting- showing violent drug dealers beating people up and still shagging women including an underage of consent sub-plot

I tried to see if Japan had similar shit and drama since a lot of popular TV shows appear to be anime. The Japanese titles listed make it hard to tell if animated or live action.

50/50 split or different ratios?

Plus do they go hard on social issues?

 

[Deleted member 21324]

Interested to hear what he as to say.

 

[Deleted member 23453]

I've had a bit to drink tonight, so this post is a longboi.
I'm probably not the best person to ask, you're better off lurking /jp/.

I actually don't own a TV for the purpose of not having to deal with NHK like a lot of gaijins do.
Same as the UK, Germany, etc. Japan has TV licenses, but only if you own a TV (however there was a case last year where NHK won in court because while some dude didn't have a TV, his phone supported receiving TV signals), the dudes who come knocking are actually quite nice.

I do have amazon.co.jp prime account. Amazon product ASIN View: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/browse.html?node=2351649051

However, I've never actually watched a show using it. (I'm on WiMAX, so my net gets capped after 6pm, not all apartments have fiber like everybody likes to jerk off about Amazing Japanese Internet)
My wapanese skills are also shit, so it's hard for me to keep up, all the stupid fucking expressions the language has.

Though after staying in many hotels I can say this, characters in live action as bad as their anime counterparts, they're over-expressive to the point that it's fake and annoying.
I've never seen them cover the hard issues in Japan such as the "Yes man" mentality that Japanese have, or:
The workplace power-struggle, workplace bullying, child abuse (always in the news, example being recently a chad and his foid beating the shit out their daughter and forcing her to have cold showers each night till she just ended up dying in the shower), teen suicide, pre-teen suicide, school bullying, parenting issues, police abuse(which has also been in the news after the whole carlos ghosn thing, long story short japan can lock you away in a police cell over and over by reducing charges, though maybe because it's recent and I haven't been watching tv), etc.

Though I've barely seen these issues covered by western media as-well, JapanToday.com and TokyoReporter.com are pretty good sites if you're into Japanese news without the rose tinted glasses.

There's also the case of a certain internet culture that lead to things like this:

Takahiro Shiraishi - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Which is becoming more and more of an issue till the point where if you search certain phrases in Japanese on twitter, it displays the Japanese suicide hotline's account.

But I have never seen it covered, other than people talking about people using the culture to market things jfl.

Police shows are probably the fucking worse, there's always some sort of fucking drama going between the officers which is more important than the actual crime. Compared to the west where the drama between the officers is the slow moving subplot and the crime is the focus, and I swear the crime is always rape or murder.

tl;dr
Plus do they go hard on social issues? From what I've watched, No. But I'm not the best person to ask because I literally don't own a TV.

Other note:
If you're interested in a funny live action "Unofficial Sentai Akibaranger" was pretty good years ago. Ending of season 1 was a kino reference to all the sentai ranger shows.

 

[Deleted member 20987]

sentai ranger shows.

Nice post.

I recall Japan having some fucked up shit, especially that heinous prolonged, rape, maiming, tortute, imprisonment, systematic starvation, soiling, sodomy and murder of Junko Furuta (over 44 long agonising days) at the hands of the Yakuza you mentioned a while back.
That suicide cult thing is weird, I don't get what motivates Jap teens to enlist in that crap.

Back to fictional portrayals and tonality of Japanese media. As a subscriber to both Anime and Japanese cinema I got the overall impression of the exaggerated and genteel mannerisms in actors- live action or voice over performance.
We call that melodrama in the West and its so kitsch now its considered comedic and gay. Think Sunset Beach or Tommy Wiseau's The Room (2003).

Here in the UK, Police dramas are authentic and realistic with actual help from former police officers, forensic advisors and based on author's novels that did their research.

I do know that Japan has got a "Yakuza anime" sub-genre. There was a messed up live action movie called Itchi The Killer (2001) about a mentally ill, autistic waiter hired out as an unwitting assassin by his abusive Father and employer to kill for the Yakuza. It was based on a manga and turned live-action before an anime series.

Shame there isn't a "SKINS" style tv series about Japanese foids doing nasty shit (like teen sex and drugs), but I guess Japan likes to put on its best face to the world.

 

[Deleted member 19236]

brutal ngl