Jawaad Mahmood in Tokyo

There exist many misconceptions about the world of Japanese Television. The most interesting is the extreme game show where people get humiliated and physically harmed for not getting the right answer to a question. In many cases, these are misunderstandings based on the difficulty of understanding foreign humor. Japanese is a language that mainly used to interest businessmen. As a result, many of us coming out of the school system have a difficult time understanding Japanese humor. London Hearts is a good example of a show that would, on the surface, appear to be a perfect example of one of those cruel game shows.

More…

So I just watched the first episode of “Garo” (Wolf Fang). It wasn’t a particularly great show, especially for one that is supposedly marketted towards adults. Actually, the description on Wikipedia is quite inadvertantly funny: “Produced by Bandai, the series is considered by some to be a turning point in tokusatsu entertainment, as it was marketed towards adults and older teenagers, as opposed to younger children. The show contains graphic violence, nudity, and mature themes.” As if nudity and ‘adult themes’ are part and parcel of a show aimed at adults

The show was not particularly bad; the special effects were nice (in a modern chinese kung fu movie sort of way), but the story seemed to be the same old. “Magic Knight has a mission to destroy all of a group of people, transforms when he needs super-powered help, et cetra”. They dress it up with a romance in the middle, but it is nothing special.

I’ll keep watching, to see what a “mature tokusatsu” show is if for no other reason. Thus far, it seems to be a cliched WB series.