Art and shiny things…
1)Coffee Prince (Kdrama). This is one of the most famous kisses in drama-land, and for good reason. Our hero FINALLY conquers his panic, fear, confusion and repression, grabs the paint-spattered Eun-Chan in the deserted coffeeshop, and kisses her with long-simmering heat and passion. Perfect setting, great buildup, long-held kiss – good stuff.
Buzzer Beat is a 2009 Japanese drama starring Yamashita Tomohisa (better known as Yamapi) and Kitigawa Keiko. This is a drama about a group of young people, it’s set in summer, mostly light-hearted, features a lot of outdoor scenes, and in general has a magical, buoyant vibe that makes it a perfect summer show. It’s a drama about two thoroughly decent, intelligent, hardworking people (played with great charm and beauty and chemistry by Yamapi and Kitigawa) who have an instant connection, become friends while both are involved with other people, and later fall in love. There’s so much magic and loveliness about the way their relationship is portrayed. Yamapi is a talented basketball player struggling to get his groove back, and Kitigawa is a self-assured, charming, endearing violinist. There is some drama and angst but it’s mostly fairly low-key and this is a great romance and a fun story about a group of friends and about growing up.
Continuing the series as we count backward, see the previous post Favorite Asian Dramas #9-12
6)Devil Beside You (Taiwanese)
I know some people who love the other Mike He/Rainie Yang drama Why Why Love a good deal more, but for me this was the first drama I saw them in and one of my first Taiwanese dramas ever, and while it could be argued that WWL has a more consistent plot, DBY has my heart. It was love at first fight when Qi Yue(Rainie Yang), after gathering all her courage to hand a letter of confession to her long-time crush Yuan Yi(Kingone Wang), hands it by accident instead to bad boy Jiang Meng(Mike He), the school troublemaker known as “the Devil”. The exchange sparks the Devil’s interest and he begins pursuing her, to her horror, which becomes even greater when she realizes that he’s the son of the man her mother’s going to marry and that they’ll be living in the same house from then on…
Once upon a long, long, time ago (okay, it was about three years), this girl was obsessed with Asian dramas. Mostly Korean and Taiwanese with a smattering of Japanese. A Taiwanese friend in college introduced me to Asian TV series, widely available with English subtitles via various streaming sites, and the rest, as they say, is history. Throughout college, I went on a long spiral of total obsession, and even spent two years doing freelance writing for Dramafever.com, the U.S.-based “Netflix for dramas”. Be that as it may, the spark eventually faded and I’m largely moved on, but I still have a huge amount of fondness in my heart for this genre. So here is my list of my 12 favorite dramas, culled from the hundreds I watched or experienced during that time period. Will be split into three parts; this part covers #9-#12.
Coffee and Irony 