Interview with Toda Erika

So, I made a serious attempt to watch the second season of the Liar Game drama.  I didn’t make it mostly because watching some of the changes made to Akiyama, Nao, and Fukunaga were hard to watch knowing how things went in the manga and liking that level of character development better.

Though, some of the minor characters were wonderfully cast (Makizono and Nishida, more particularly) and I think I like Eri better than the other dealers.

But enough of that. Here’s an interview with Toda Erika (the actress who plays Nao), it seems older based on the content, but it’s still an interesting read.

Liar Game Drama + Movie

By Nicole

Like others, I’d my qualms about the Liar Game Drama. I still do.

For one thing, they changed Fukunaga (originally a transsexual) to an effeminate man. I kinda disagree that Kanzaki Nao didn’t evolve in the series because I have to admit that she has matured a little in the second season. Casting Matsuda Shota for the role of Shinichi Akiyama was absolutely genius. The introduction of Katsuragi Ryou, however, was not.

Liar Game movie

Posted without too much commentary (and no translation):

Trailer for the Liar Game Movie

I know I’ve had my issues with the drama in the past (have seen the whole first season and bits of the second), but we can be friends again, right? =P

There’s more information about it with the link.

So some actual official news +other things

According to the Young Jump site:

Vol 10 of Liar Game will be released on Nov. 4.

Another Liar Game Book (Invitation) will also be released on Nov. 4.

And the drama will be starting Tuesday Nov. 10 at 9 p.m.

So November is going to be a busy month.

In other news:

One Scanlations has scanlated the entire volume of Roots of A. So if you’re interested in the rest of the short stories from that volume (or just want a higher quality Roots of A scan), go check it out.

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Liar Game Drama Season 2 + New Movie

The other important Liar Game news this week:

Liar Game is getting a second season of the drama and a movie coming out. Release dates aren’t known yet, but apparently Toda Erika and Matsuda Shota are both coming back as Nao and Akiyama, along with the rest of the original cast.

ANN’s much better coverage of the news (and in English! sorry, my brain’s fried from trying to decipher so much Japanese 0.0). Thanks to Dhalia for the link.

Weird…

I enjoyed the drama, but I wonder how they’re going to continue off of the first season, and still stay somewhat true to the puzzly psychological part of the manga. They can’t really follow the manga any more without seriously going back and redoing the drama…

Most importantly, if Fukunaga is a  boy, what is he going to use in place of eyeliner as his secret weapon?

Comparison between the Manga version and the J-drama version.

I aim for this post to sum up the major differences between the manga and the drama. Spoilers go through the end of the drama, and through volume 6 of the manga.

The first thing to realize is that, taken on it’s own, the drama isn’t bad.  It’s pretty cheesy, but cheesy is fine. The games get explained pretty well, with the addition of visual aids that make it easier to follow in the drama. Akiyama is also pretty cool, and I think they’ve gotten his character about 80% correct. The messages and themes in the drama are different than the ones in the manga, not ones that I respond to personally, but they make for a happy ending.

The second thing to realize is that the drama has its limitations. Doing Liar Game in the same way the manga does it would require a huge cast of characters. It also has to connect to a much wider audience than a Seinen manga about psychology and mental games would normally appeal to. Oh, and the drama only had an 11 episode run, so they had to cram an entire 6 volumes worth of manga in to 10 40 min shows, and a 3 hour special. Plus they had to close it neatly on round three.

So keeping that in mind…