Customer Reviews

2009 Japanese Drama : Jin w/ Eng Sub

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This drama is well cast, well written, well acted. My family and I really enjoyed the first 3 discs. No problems, English dubbing was pretty good. Then we got started on disc 4 and the first episode would not play...so we skipped it. I had previously seen that particular episode on TV while in Hawaii. But then, when we got to the last disc and arguably most climactic one, the English dubbing was absolutely terrible. It seemed to be Chinese-English dubbing. The characters were being called by Chinese names and the grammar was what you'd expect from someone whose first language is not English. It was incoherent, shes were referred to as hes. Ugh. I wish I would have known that there was trouble with the dubbing before I bought it. Truly disappointing and it's too bad because this is a really terrific family show.

A new TV series, this is a great deal like Dr. Quinn medicine woman. A brain surgeon finds himself transported back into the past and must deal with cultural superstitions and folk medicine in his quest to heal. It's absolutely amazing how many times he finds himself in situations where he needs to open up someone's brain.
The doctor is also suffering from hero martyr complex, having accidentally permanently injured his fiance in a surgery meant to save her life. In the present he can't operate any more, but in the past he is forced to cope and thrive as a doctor once again. Fate and/or perhaps the spirit of his near dead GF have forced him into a situation where he needs to get his life back. Why he is there is never explained, but he meets his Fiance's ancestor and struggles to not have an affair with her and spends all his time fretting he is somehow harming her future with his meddling.
This is an extremely engaging show. The one and only complaint I have is the production company COMPLETELY dropped the ball on the English translations. All of the episodes are beautifully fan subbed except for the last episode. The free fan sub obviously wasn't ready, so the production company who can't speak a word of English translated the dialog through google or something. The translation on the last episode is laughable. It is COMPLETE gibberish. Not one word of understandable dialog. It's so bad it should win an award. All the names are changed and you would get more information about the episode by picking up any book off your coffee table and reading it along as you watched. This is BAD, since the final episode is so marvelous and moving. Luckily, you can find the fan subbed last episode on [...]

Buy the DVD, and watch the final episode on the internet first so you know what is happening. It's worth the aggravation, it's a wonderful show!

- bad editing especially towards the end.
- many unnecessary plots that confuses the storyline.
- last chapter has very bad English subtitles. Translation (from Japanese to English) is very inaccurate and even the characters' names are completely changed from Japanese to Chinese.

I loved this drama. It is well scripted and acted. Music is superb. I understand Japanese, so I didn't turn the subtitles on, so I can't comment on them. I am very much looking forward to buying a DVD of the next series currently shown in Japan.

If you enjoy Japanese period dramas but are tired of formulaic samurai-slasher flicks, this offering is a thoughtfully entertaining alternative.

A time-travelling physician finds himself mysteriously transported to 1860's Edo and must practice his profession with 21st-century knowledge and 19th-century tools. This task is complicated by intellectual politics and the necessity of hiding his true identity from all but his closest companions. All the while he's trying to understand what he's doing there, what happens if his presence changes history, and how he should play the strange hand he's been dealt.

Famous historical personages make appearances, not least of which is the irrepressible Sakamoto Ryoma. Female characters have memorably strong roles, and the paradoxes of time-travel are approached head-on as an integral part of the story. The protagonist is neither a "pretty boy" nor of heroic mien, but an "everyman" caught in a bizarre situation who does the best he can.

The opening episode is very humorous; later in the series events become darker. The portrayal of an Edo fire alone is worth the price of the DVD.
Not least among the attractions of this series are its gritty but tasteful portrayals of the real hazards of living in Bakumatsu period Edo--causing one to reflect on the fact that sudden and random death in former times came all too frequently by the "sword" of Nature.

Highly Recommended!

i liked it and the way it ended. lesson learned...live life in the present. that's the whole conflict jin faces throughout the movie, ie, whether his actions will affect the future,,,,,while in the meantime, everyone around him(and sakamoto in no uncertain terms) was telling him that he should do what is RIGHT and let the future resolve itself.

the finale has a translation problem, it seems whoever did the translation was NOT translating japanese > english, but seemed to be translating japanese > chinese > english, so that many things were phrased oddly and i found myself reading the subtitles twice as hard.

this doesn't get a 5* because of the last episode's translation issue.

4 stars for the story, the characters, and the actors. My one complaint would be the poor translation of the last episode. I knew this in advance because other reviewers commented on it as well, so after experiencing it myself, I have to say I agree ---it was pretty bad---CHI CHI in Japanese can mean "father" or "breast". The story line was about treating breast cancer, but the translator used "father" for the whole episode. It was kind of hilarious actually. Fortunately, I speak Japanese, so I was explaining it to my friends while we watched.

I bought this DVD to watch full episodes again with no intermittent
internet connection this time. The picture quality is great and
watched some episodes with a friend of mine who speaks and reads
Japanese well.

While I wasn`t paying attention to subtitles, she started asking me
if I noticed some weird translations. There are a couple of (sometimes more) mistranslations in each episode, but my jaw literally dropped when I started
watching the last one. Obviously it must have been translated
from Chinese into Japanese by someone who had no idea what he/she was doing.

We had to turn off subtitles and I explained to her whenever she had
a hard time to understand.

I would have given five stars if subtitles were perfect. I have never
seen such horrible translations on DVDs on the market in my entire life.

I've watched via internet streaming, but the story is so great, it is worth buying DVD.

I am very pleased with my purchase and with the seller's description and timely delivery...