Wow, this must be the greatest drama ever!

I am not going to elaborate or describe in detail the culture of Japanese televison and especially all the fuzz surrounding the latest "Drama", which basically is a drama tv-series with a start and an end, based on popular "manga" or original scripts. Normally, this is nothing that concerns me since I just plain don't watch them so they neither bother nor entertain me.

However, one new drama has caught my attention is the drama 魔王 "Maou" (basically means "King of Magic") that has been pushed quite heavily. Apparently it's a Japanese remake of a successful Korean drama that a Japanese channel bought the rights to and remade. I don't know the details of the story, but it seems to be a dark story involving a diabolic lawyer, a well-meaning but sometimes rough cop, murders and tarot cards. That is about as much as I've picked up from the commercials. From the sound of it, it might sound a bit scary and exciting, right?

Well, here's the catch; in the casting, they seemed to rely on the great talent in the "Johnny & Associates" talent agency who has created such well-polished Japanese acts as SMAP, Kinki Kids, Ka-Tun and countless others. The common thread of these acts is that they are very well mannered and they all have a generic "pretty boy" look going for them.

So the main characters; the diabolic lawyer and the rough cop are played by very harmless looking skinny 25 year old guys with fancy haircuts. Seeing one of the play the role of a hard cop is just plain twisted. It's not enough of a fun factor to make me sit through an episode, but still, it's pretty entertaining.