I was in the mood to watch a jdrama this week, but nothing really was catching my interest. So I decided to go old school and (re?) watch Buzzer Beat:
With the general caveat that it’s a jdrama, the show is a lot of fun (and a classic for a reason). There’s a large supporting cast so a few different throughlines to follow in the story. It’s also not a high school romance, which is also nice to watch from time to time (although our main characters are like 24 or so, so it’s not like they’re particularly old or anything). Also for anyone who would appreciate a bunch of 20-something shirtless men, there’s a lot of that too The theme song is by B’z as well, which is like a band that I don’t really like, but whenever they have a theme song for a show I’m watching I get wayyyy into it.
I watched the show with j-subs, gez, 10 years ago? when I was deep in the throes of ajatt. It’s funny because I remember watching some of these scenes that I’m watching now but I had no idea what was going on 90% of the time. My comprehension (with subs) this time isn’t 100%, but there’s only been one conversation in 4 episodes that I paused to go back and re-read the subs for (I mostly knew what was happening, but I missed one word in the details). Being able to have such a different experience this second time around has been a lot of fun too! I wonder what other shows where I had no idea what was happening that I should go back to.
ストロベリー・パニック S1 | L26 15/26 - continues to be really boring. I do feel like my comprehension has improved a bit tho (or maybe I just got some easier episodes)
Haven’t started yet, but:
On my list after having seen おにいさまへ… S1 | L26 . Intimidated by the upper L30s, so may drop for eventually reading the manga. Thankfully there’s subs on jimaku.cc
On my list cuz famous old yuri
Famous old shoujo, will def skip filler. Glad to have something Easy to watch
Gez, if Marmalade Boy is that easy it almost makes me want to do a no filler rewatch… although I think I still have PTSD from the number of times Miki despondently says “Yuu…” in the series
For Netflix yes. My account is in America, and I use the VPN consistently for Japan. You may have to be careful about multiple devices and whether you login with VPN on them or not. Ex: for whatever reason, Netflix thinks my phone (or tablet?) should be going in from America, so if I use VPN it emails for confirmation.
Previous comment early submitted by accident, but:
I used to use Crunchyroll but dropped them when they removed comments and reviews from their platform.
If there’s a JP service that accepts international cards and has a good UI, I’d love to use that bc otherwise I have to torrent stuff that isn’t on one of those platforms
My mom uses Netflix on her TV (in a different city). I use it from my laptop, always from the VPN (tho I’ve forgotten once or twice, and it doesn’t seem to matter since I’m already logged in). I’ve occasionally used it from phone or tablet - which did set off the multiple households thing, bc it associated those devices with America. So they send you an email with a thing to confirm it, and it’s valid for 2 weeks.
I used those devices from when the account was first created, so idk if that may have helped with not tripping the system
It’s inconsistent. I imagine it depends on if the VPN has new IPs that haven’t been blocked yet. Mine wasn’t working for awhile and now is I use Mullvad
Hmm interesting.
I used to VPN all the time about 5-6 years back, but got to a point where it constantly told me that I was on VPN and only had the “international catalog” when I was on VPN.
My mom says she can’t sign in anymore (she was in a different state until we moved and now she’s in a different country, so I’m not super surprised). We do watch Netflix from Canada a fair amount, so I don’t have a lot of confidence that it’d work out if I VPNed considering we already had a multiple households flag on the account. I’m just kinda shocked that it still works via VPN at all…
I have Crunchyroll, and between that and Netflix I have access to about 90% of the anime I want… and I know how to get access to the rest of it when it comes up… what I really want access to are dramas, esp older dramas, but there’s always
Can’t hurt to try. Worst that happens is it doesn’t work
Rakuten Viki and some other sites have plenty of dramas iirc (idk about new vs old). I think JME had a bunch, and there’s some other site that I’m forgetting. Will try to look up later, if nobody else has suggestions
Viki is great for new dramas, but very lean on older ones. I think all I’ve seen there is Hana Yori Dango (which makes me sad that that’s old now ), although in all fairness I didn’t look super hard.
I want to want to pay for JME but it’s just so much money. If it was a main streaming service I’d be happy to, but as a niche one that only I’d watch some of the time it’s really expensive.
jumping in on the VPN conversation - i use the free version of the proton vpn, and usually always turn it off before using netflix because i was worried about the household thing.
but it’s happened a few times now where i’m looking at the list of shows and notice lots of them have their names in japanese, because i forgot to deactivate proton. i haven’t tried actually watching a show with the vpn still on, but i can definitely log in and see the japanese catalog. so maybe proton is an option?
iirc the free version gives you 4 countries (in my case, living in europe, it’s the US, romania, the netherlands, and japan) and connects to the first available one, lately i’ve had japan quite often. the paid version lets you choose.
Do you have somewhere with the episode summaries? I can try and make a rough guide based on that. In broad strokes though, the exchange student arc is all filler.
50-66 I believe is all filler arc. I’d have to look at the manga again to figure out if they changed additional things from the manga. There are definitely characters that I remember but I don’t know what I remember those plots in 40ish to 50. Michael is made up for the anime and I believe that so is Yuu’s trip to America. From 4 years ago memories of my last read through plus vibes some of the events that happen when he’s gone are canon-ish? I’m trying to remember if Anju is manga canon or not…
I use Surfshark without issue. On occasion Netflix wouldn’t show Japan-only entries in my watchlist (though I could still search for them), but I’m pretty sure that’s because I would go back and forth between US and Japan Netflix on my Fire TV and Netflix just got confused. I’ve also never run into household issues.
(general update on me now)
That said, I just canceled Netflix because I was barely using it. I was only watching 1-2 episodes of Blue Box per month and just generally haven’t been watching anime much in the last 1-2 years. I did like the show, but just couldn’t be bothered to watch week to week, especially after I got way behind. I probably won’t renew again until Stranger Things season 5 comes out, and then maybe I’ll watch the rest of Blue Box.
Also, is it me or is there very little interesting anime announced so far for this year? Normally by this time of year I’d at least have several anime of interest on my list for later in the year, even if practically speaking I wouldn’t watch most of them. But as of now I basically just have a couple sequels and とんがり帽子のアトリエ. And even that I won’t necessarily watch unless the animation quality can meet the very high standard set by the manga.