Takuya Kimura: Birth of a J-Drama “Hero”
If you’ve never seen a Japanese drama, then let me say there are often 3 key elements to each series: brevity, “trendiness”, and melodrama. 1) Each series is usually 10 or 12 episodes max, unless incredibly popular in which case a follow-up movie will be made, or special as it’s called. Only rarely does a show, even a popular show, get a second full season. This means most series are essentially like American/British mini-series, and are more serial than episodic. 2) The brevity of these shows plays into component 2, which is J-Drama’s “trendiness” or perhaps a better word would be relevance to their audience.
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