I'm currently having lots of fun with the live-action adaption of "Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon" for Japanese TV. It's pretty low-brow entertainment but still a pleasant way to kill at least a ton of braincells per episode (and there's 49 of them . . . episodes, not braincells, mind).
I guess I don't have to tell you that it's a pretty cheaply produced show with poor but always hyperbolic acting by a bunch of kawaii Idols. Add some soapy Highschool-drama and Schooluniforms so brightly coloured they seem like Cosplay-wear (and I'm not talking about their battle-wear). But what "Sailor Moon" actually is pretty good at is poking fun at awkward everyday-situations, like dating-adversities or cute misunderstandings; there are a bunch of truly hilarious events throughout. And of course Karaoke. Lots of it. Since all the girls also have a real-life popstar-background with major media-presence, the script doesn't shy back from throwing in some of the most ridiculous twists ever seen just for the sake of including another scene of a singing-performance into the storyline.
The action really shouldn't be called like that since it's merely more than a parade of cute girls doing backflips and awkward kicks missing their targets by more than two inch (but lets just pretend they didn't), with their short, high-flying mini-skirts revealing an inflationary share of accidental (but monumentally obtrusive) panty-shots as a side-effect, making you feel like a moderate pervert. There are some weird choices of locations as well: at one point they're fighting in a church, then they run through a door, and suddenly they're in a school's sports-coliseum with a rotating cross being projected on the walls. With at least one required full-length transformation sequence per episode, cheesy CGI and always resorting to a random super-power as a last-instance Deus ex Machina, the fight-scenes can hardly be described as original. The bad guys are quite boring, too, always standing around in a dark cave, laughing threateningly (if they're not playing Beethoven on the piano) while hatching absurd plans to conquer the world. By the way, my favorite Senshis are Keiko "Sailor Mars" Kitagawa and Ayaka Komatsu, a.k.a. "Sailor Venus." (No. 3 and 4 from the left in the above picture).
Now, if this doesn't sound like a lot of fun to you, you're probably right and I'm just another hopeless Otaku getting off on cheap thrills, as long as they're Japanese. On the other hand . . . no, you're right. I am really a hopeless case.
Before I forget, here's some Ayaka Komatsu for you:
