Liar Game

to those who know, liar game is originally a manga which turned into a 2 series jdrama and a movie starring 戸田恵梨香 (toda erika) and 松田翔太 (matsuda shota).

Follow up:

to give a short introduction, liar game is about this stupidly honest girl called kanzaki nao (toda erika) who was dragged into a cruel game called the liar game, in which players try to scam each other of their money worths hundreds of millions yen (or millions of usd), which was loaned to them by a mysterious organization. if you win, you can keep the prize money which you won over. if you lose, you just had to pay back the debt of hundreds of millions of yen. but being the stupidly honest girl she was, she got scammed really quickly and had no choice but to beg for the help of a genius swindler, akiyama shinichi, just a few minutes after he was released from prison. and from then on they were dragged deeper and deeper into the game.

this story basically takes you through the different types of games and shows how various people play each other in a battle of wits and psychological warfare. what is interesting is how you see people turning the odds and rise from the bottom to victory using their intelligence. of course as all stories goes, there is a certain level of exaggeration involved.

as of all adaptations, naturally the drama and the manga would have different storylines which split from somewhere in the middle, as well as slightly different changes here and there. for example i kind of like how they changed the masked supervisors of the games to 吉瀬美智子 (kichise machiko) & co. machiko is quite a good actress, in my opinion, adding to the fact that i feel she is quite pretty. her coolness as well as the feel she gave suits the supervisor of the game very well.

a little disappointment would be that the level of yokoya was kind of brought down. in the manga he was very high in level in terms of intelligence and his manipulation of people, but somehow in the drama, although this feeling was also given, it was somewhat reduced very much and part of his characteristics were given to the drama only character katsuragi ryo.

overall, i really enjoyed the drama very much. the music was well done, and each of the actors and actresses put in much effort in the show. i especially love it when erika went 'ehhhhhh?!!' and 'uso!'
totally sexy and kawaii. her reaction at different parts of the show, be it during season 1 or 2, makes her even more lovable. i don't know how others would act but i feel that she really brought out the character of kanzaki nao.

as for the genius swindler, he is as smart as in the manga, but the drama reduced the weaknesses he had. in the manga we can see that he did get scared and panicked at times, but in the drama such emotions were absent. well, that was up to the scriptwriter to decide. as an actor he did particularly good too.

battle of wits. psychological warfare. manipulation of humans. the cruelty and sincerity of people. the drama portrayed all of them quite well. in short, if you are wondering what is the next drama you should see, you should try liar game if you haven't done so. though there are differences from the original, it is still a very good production which i did not regret watching.