Blog - gochisōsama!
gochisōsama!
I'm not much of a TV watcher, but I've got my shows! Since January I had been enjoying very much the series 「喰いタン」 ("kui-tan", short for "kuishinbō tantei" or "gourmand detective"), a detective comedy based on a manga which—as title says—relates to food, food and more food! The reason I had started to watch it was because Konishi Yasuharu produced the soundtrack, which consisted of remixed classical music similarly to the great "Readymade Digs Classics".
However my love for the show went much beyond the music, as I also like detective plots and food! The story's central character, Takano Shinya aka kui-tan (Johnnys' Higashiyama Noriyuki), is a mysterious good-hearted man who arrives from nowhere into an unsuccessful small detective agency in Yokohama. His knowledge about food and uncheatable papillae will inevitably elucidate cases the agency gets involved in. Every show focuses on different food and brings up some little known nutritious fact.
Other lovable characters at kui-tan's sides are the agency's Kyōsuke (Johnnys' Morita Gō), Kyōko-chan (Ichikawa Mikako), and the young Hajime-kun (11-year old Suga Kenta).
Unfortunately, the successful show is coming to an end already this weekend after 10 weeks. As goes for most Japanese TV drama, even good shows go in hiatus after a short season. There will probably be a DVD release which I'd love to get my hands on, but then again it will probably priced close to ¥20000 as did Fugō keiji last year, a price I won't afford for stuff I could have taped off TV. Can't someone prove them that pricing TV series DVDs 75% cheaper could get them 500+% sales, or something?
This does come with a good news though because, speaking of Fugō keiji, "Fugō keiji 2" will start this April!
Posted on March 6, 2006 at 23:56 | Tweet
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I found too that DVD sets of TV shows in Japan are just crazy expensive, e.g. the season 3 set of 24 was 25200Y compared to 48USD in the US ...
Sounds like a fun show. I recently discovered recently 'gokusen' over at youtube, some highschool dramady which gets me laughing quite some. Yes, why buy when it is available for free somewhere ..
Posted by Peter Nacken on March 8, 2006 at 15:01
Maybe they think most sales will be to rental shops. After all the real hardcore fans will always pay anything. They do that in the U.S. whenever they think there won't be so much "sell through" of a major release that people heard of but bombed. They jack up the price if they know rental stores will have to get a couple copies... then again in Japan they have not for rental releases too so I've not yet figured out how that factors in.
Also a good question is if they pay the creative team money. There's lots of bad feelings in the U.S. because only the TV producers see a lot of money from DVD sales and some have been wildly successful.
Then again I've seen 1960s Japanese TV shows go for that kind of money and I doubt the elderly actors and directors see any money.
Not all, but many Japanese releases seem go for about 100 yen a minute.
Though I was amused that many of Stanley Kubrick's movies are actually 25% cheaper in Japan than the U.S.
nick,
who just released an american DVD
(not my own production)
http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5639
Posted by ndkent on March 11, 2006 at 02:10
I don't think those boxed sets are aimed to the rental market at all. Most releases you can buy in store are marked as "sale only/rental prohibited".
I do hope that the right people are seeing enough of that price tag.
And you're right about the ¥100yen/minute price, at least for short features and music videos... Not cheap, and I'm glad we don't have to pay that much to go to the theater. :)
Congrats for the DVD! Sounds interesting!
Posted by Patrick on March 14, 2006 at 10:39