Currently watching: Nakuna Hara-chan

To be honest, after I'd finished subbing SOIL, I didn't have any plans to do any more subtitles. Although SOIL was a satisfying drama to work on, it left me kind of exhausted. However, two things happened to change my mind. First, I was getting increasingly irritated by the machine-translations that one subber in particular left in his subtitles. I know I should be grateful they're being subbed at all, but at least do a bit of quality control before you release them.

The other thing was finding this drama on a hard drive, and discovering that no one had made English subs for it (in my last post about this drama, I mentioned they were on LiveJournal, but couldn't find them when I searched again). I'd seen the first few episodes before, but this time I wanted to watch it properly, so I sat down and made a start on a set of subtitles for it.

The storyline is about a frustrated manga writer (Aso Kumiko) who, after a series of unlikely events, meets one of her own characters in real life. This character, Hara-chan (played in typical bombastic style by Nagase Tomoya) is very much an innocent in a strange new world, and his lack of inhibitions about how to act make for some interesting episodes.

It requires a huge suspension of disbelief from the viewer. Not just about how a comic character can come to life, but also about how he can meet his own author, and go back and forth into his world at opportune moments. But once you get over that, it's a fun comedy, which also has a fair amount of emotional weight behind it. Certainly, anyone who's let their own low self-esteem stop them from going for something they really wanted should find themselves empathising with this story.

Also, Nakuna, Hara-chan seems like a good drama for anyone just starting out learning Japanese, because Hara-chan repeats a lot of words when asking what they mean.

An amusing comedy, perfect if you want something that won't tax your mind, but will pull at your heartstrings.