Full resignation letter from Demetre C. Daskalakis, a CDC leader, does not hold back.
"The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning. My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud."

Bullet Train Explosion: This was quite a decent go at this sort of movie, with interpersonal and rescue-related hijinks and explosions. I enjoyed my time with it.

Shiroi Kyoto (2003) was soooo good. I loved the way they developed the story and characters. They also managed to end nearly every episode on a cliffhanger of some kind 😱

Thanks for sharing the vid! Loved the car singing scenes, and it was nice to see the gang again in this version

Wakamonotachi: When I saw the rest of the cast list, I was like, this is an auto-pick.

It didn't disappoint.

It went into heavy topics but the liveliness of the family and some comedic situations leavened it. Excellent character work as well.

Orange Days: Loved it. Brilliant writing and likeable cast.

Went on a hunt for other shows with Tsumabuki Satoshi, and...

Yamato Nadeshiko: Rather bemused slash frustrated by this. FL wasn't written to be very likeable (and in some ways this applied to ML too?) and I never ended up rooting for the leads to get together. Cast somewhat carried it, which led me to finish the show, but overall it kind of fell flat for me.

Kujaku no Dance: Windup was good, payoff was mixed. I felt some of the character beats landed well but the mystery's resolution was so-so.

A bit of writer's block recently so I slowed down on posting over the last month.

I also spent some time on playing Trails in the Sky FC and am enjoying it (heard it's slow; taking it slow; 50 hours for half the game so far).

OK, some mini-reviews: 🧵

It's signposted in various places online that this drama features an affair. However, that turned out to be one of the subplots rather than the main story, and was handled relatively well, I think.

Overall it's a recommend unless cheating stories are a hard no.

The newsroom is very lively, with a great cast of colorful characters.

The editor, (played by Sasaki Kuranosuke) and Kurokawa (Kate's boss) stand out amongst the supporting cast.

There's whitewashing of what tabloid press do, but also exploration of the impacts some of these reports can have.

I enjoyed it overall.

The foreshadowing and parallels were awesome, as were some of the characters (writing and acting).

But I found some aspects of the writing rather unbelievable too. And I had to google the ending. My interpretation was the "right" one but I felt there were too few clues...

Nemureru Mori (1998): It was already on my to-watch but got bumped up because someone commenting on Kujaku no Dance mentioned it.

The suspense/mystery angle got its hooks in me and I pretty much watched it as quickly as I could, which took more than a week.