Interesting results everyone. I was curious, because there are a lot of anime fans out there, but many haven’t gotten into J-drama yet.
SHOWS
I initially didn’t write any of the shows I’ve watched on purpose, because I wanted to see what others have enjoyed. I watch J-drama pretty regularly so the list would be too long to put here, but just a random sampling off the top of my head of shows that I’ve enjoyed: Orange Days, Joou no Kyoushitsu (Queen’s Classroom), Angels Whose Wings Have Fallen, Fantastic Deer Man, Nodame Cantabile, Proposal Daisakusen, Ame to Yume no Ato ni, Mop Girl, Suika, Hanayome wa Yakudoshi, Ashita no Kita Yoshio just to name a few.
There are 4 seasons a year for J-Drama (since they last 10-12 episodes, the shows change 4 times a year, with usually a week or two of specials between the 4 seasons).
STREAMING SITES
As to what rachelcakes1985 said about streaming sites though, PLEASE DON’T USE THEM! (“evil” smiley not to rachelcakes1985 but to the streaming sites!) At first the idea of online streaming seems harmless enough, but the J-Drama fansubbers detest the streaming sites – to the point where many have completely stopped subbing because of what they do. Basically the fansubbing of J-Drama is not-for-profit. There’s a grey area as to the legality of it, but (especially if they’re just providing a script file) most people let it pass. However what the streaming sites do is steal the fansubber’s fanwork – and then place it online for profit (yes, even though the viewer doesn’t pay, the streaming sites make a huge profit by selling ads. Just like Google. You don’t pay for Google, but they’re making a lot of money selling ads). So the fansubbers are seeing (a) their work ripped off (with streaming sites logos placed on them) and (b) their work being used for others to make profit off of. This not only upsets them from a “they’re ripping off my stuff” point of view, but also worries them about the Japanese networks possibly now coming after them – because before, it was absolutely not for profit for the fan community, but now lots of streaming sites are making lots of money showing J-Dramas, which could not only possibly make the fansubbers liable, but also make the Japanese networks clamp down and send out cease & desist letters, and simply end the whole world of fansubs for J-Drama.
So the fansubbers are pretty serious. Many have stopped subbing completely (including dropping shows right in the middle) solely because of streaming sites. Others (such as Stormy Team Subs) have gone private – and will release their subs only to members now. Yet others have done things such as purposefully not subbing certain episodes in a (futile) effort to stop the streaming sites from putting up their stuff (one example was “Monster Parent.” Out of 11 episodes, the translator for this show decided not to translate episodes 7 and 8, but just write a short paragraph overview of what happens during the episode, hoping that this would discourage the streaming sites from putting up that show). On just about any sub (whether it be hardsub or softsub SRT file) there are DO NOT UPLOAD TO STREAMING SITES and STREAMING SITES HURT US NOT HELP US messages. The fansubbers make the content free for all (because there’s no profit involved) whether it be a hardcopy of the show translated, or just a text translation file you can sync up yourself to the raw of the show.
I’m not a fansubber (well, I helped translate a J-movie once, but I certainly am not active and wouldn’t call myself a fansubber) but I can understand where they’re coming from. I can also understand how a casual viewer might not at first realize the harm in watching online, so that’s why I wrote all this… to kind of explain it. A lot of shows are being dropped (and a lot of translators are simply stopping altogether) solely because of these streaming sites. Don’t take the issue up with me, believe me, this has been debated to death on the various boards (saying that it’s the fans that lose out in the end, etc)… but I can see the fansubber’s point, and the more streaming sites are accessed and used (and more profit gathered by views) the less fansubbing will continue it seems.
WHERE TO FIND J-DRAMA
For those of you who are perhaps interested in J-Drama, here’s the main place to check out: a place called “D-Addicts” for Japanese (as well as Chinese and Korean) dramas:
d-addicts.com/forum/
In the “subtitles” area (sars-fansubs.com/) which also has easy to get episodes. You can check out the shows these two groups do, but again, there’s probably a couple dozen groups out there (at least there were before streaming sites), so with each new season, various groups will decide to sub whatever shows they feel like doing.