Kurosagi (the series)

I’ve watched the jdrama “Kurosagi” recently. It’s based on a manga written by Natsuhara Takeshi, and is basically about a man called Kurosaki who is taking his vengeance on swindlers (since his father ended up murdering the rest of his family and then suiciding due to a swindle) by swindling them in turn. This concept is very awesome. Of course, no jdrama is complete without a wee bit of romance mixed in, so in the first episode we are also introduced to Yoshikawa Tsurara, a poor university student aiming to be a prosecutor in the future. Her uncle gets swindled and Kurosaki offers to swindle his money back. She later ends up moving into an apartment complex which is run by Kurosaki, and, ehh, I guess stuff happens. She doesn’t really accept Kurosakis line of work at all, seeing as she wants to be a prosecutor and all.

According to what is explained at the beginning of every episode, there are three kinds of swindlers; Shirosagi (white swindlers) who swindle for money, Akasagi (red swindlers) who swindle with emotions, and Kurosagi (black swindlers) that prey on the other swindlers. This series kurosagi, Kurosaki, is far from altruistic, of course. He’s emotionally distant and has a dark past and all that, thus not being very interested in romance with a poor university student such as Tsurara, nor anyone else, for that matter. Later on we get an awesome love triangle.

Kurosaki gets most of his jobs from an old master swindler who sells him information while sort of running a classy restaurant and being in generally crappy health. That guy also happens to be the mastermind behind the swindle that got Kurosakis family killed.

I liked the series. It definitely has moments of awesome, especially when Kurosaki carries through his heists. In many ways it also reminded me of another jdrama called “Liar Game”, which I might talk about more later. The show is about as long as what is normal for jdramas, eleven episodes. There’s also a movie that I have yet to watch, but I assume there’ll be more of a conclusion to it all in the movie, as the series did kind of end in the “reset ending” style, which imo is total bullshit every time I see it. It is not a bad idea to have definite endings, people! Or at least, make sure something gets accomplished… Anyway, for what it’s worth, it’s a good watch.

Air Master

So, yeah, my vacation turned out to be a bit longer than initially planned. I was set for it to be 2 weeks, but it ended up being 3, and after that I’ve been very lazy about blogging and the internet in general. I haven’t yet watched the uncut version of Silver Fang which I flagged for in the last post, but I have watched a few other things which I can write about meanwhile. Like Air Master.

Air Master is based on a manga  by Shibata Yokusaru. and is basically about a 16 year old girl, Aikawa Maki, who turns to street fighting to pass the time after giving up professional gymnastics due to growing too large for the gymnast archetype. And yeah, she easily towers a lot of the other characters in the show. Speaking of characters, they are definitely the main draw of this series after the fight scenes (which are quite something, but I’ll get to that later). Apart from the normal (well, not so normal, really) friends Maki has, the opponents she meets are also quite colorful. Perhaps the most rememberable rival she has is Sakiyama Kaori, a wannabe model/idol who also ends up streetfighting and declares Maki her eternal rival despite getting the shit beaten out of her all the time.

But yes, the fights. They’re really well choreographed. Makis fighting style is very much based on her agility and her ability to jump (she is the eponymous Air Master, after all). It’s more or less like she’s flying during the fights. Her opponents all have different fighting styles and I’d say they all look pretty cool. I’d lie if I said it was realistic though. It starts out as almost plausible, but later on we get a guy who fights with two broken arms and two broken legs while not even being completely serious, and a guy in a freaking armored power suit (so that he can fight even with a broken hand).

As for the story, it isn’t really a strong one. It’s about Maki fighting just to feel the adrenaline rush she remembers from her gymnastics days. Later on in the series we get the mandatory tournament, too. Nothing worth really mentioning, really, but the awesome fights more than makes up for it.

If I were to sum this series up in one sentence, it’d be: The Initial D of street fighting. Yeah, because, really, it is a lot like Initial D, where we have Takumi driving around in the car showing off his totally awesome driving skills with “the galleries” oooh-ing and aaww-ing and discussing it. We have the same thing in Air Master, Maki and rival beating each other up while the spectators oohs and aawws. Which doesn’t make it bad, mind you. The fights outshines a lot of the competition, so to speak.

The ending disappointed me, though. Not that it felt terribly rushed or anything, it was just… odd.

Anyway, 27 episodes well spent.