Liar Game

Hmmm.... what can i say about this show, except that it is very interesting and engaging, a must see in short especially you likes Death Note. Everything is all about mind games.

Based on the manga series of the same name, the story is about an honest college student, Kanzaki Nao, who receives a hundred million yen one day, along with a card saying she has been chosen to take part in the "Liar Game". The aim of the game is to trick the other players out of their hundred million dollars. At the end, the winner gets the hundred million and the loser is a hundred million yen in debt. Furthermore, organizer of the game is worse than a loan shark when attempting to retrieve money from those in debt.

The next day, she receives notification that her opponent is her former teacher, Fujisawa Kazuo. She goes to him, seeking help, but ends up getting tricked into handing her money over and will have to bear the hundred million yen in debt when the game ended. Desperate, she approaches the police for help, but they are unable to do anything. However, she is told of a mastermind swindler, Akiyama Shinichi, who is to be released from jail the next day. Desperate, she goes to him for help. Akiyama helps Nao to win back all the money, and just as they thought that everything had ended, second round of Liar Game starts.

The character of Kanzaki Nao is extremely innocent and naive. Now if everyone in the world has the same thinking as her, then we would have lived in paradise instead. But then in reality it is not, and this story just makes us wonder how can such a person survived. She had been tricked and laughed at, again again since small and yet she is still firm in her believes. Everyone just takes advantage of her due to her thinking. It may sound cruel, but sometimes i just wished the character would just grow up, or die so that everyone can goes on with their lives.

As for Akiyama, his character is extremely cool and cunning. Nobody knows about his plan till the last minute. Now it will be very dangerous to deal with this kind of person as we do not know what they are really thinking. At times, just when we thought it was too late, another hidden plan lies within to turnaround the tide. Ofcourse, if i reveals further it will spoil the whole show. Btw, don't be fooled by the picture of Akiyama above, his actual looks is more presentable in the whole show :P

Spaghetti, spaghetti and spaghetti

Most restaurants only served few types of spaghetti, the famous ones being creamy carbonara and balognese. Not to mention that we can only find limited variaties of pasta sauce in the supermarkets. So it was no wonder that all these while, i only makes balognese spaghetti, since it was the easiest to make using ready-made pasta sauce. It was not until i watched Bambino series that i realised we can always create our own pasta sauce to suit our own tastebuds, everything from scratch. I even manage to create my own recepies for my hubby to try out, which he likes very much. Too bad that i always forgot to take a snapshot of my creations to be posted here. Here's a few tips:

1. olive oil makes the best spaghetti sauce with its fragrant aroma, though it is slightly more expensive compared to normal cooking oil.

2. after draining the spaghetti, crack some eggs into the spaghetti and quickly stir it. The hot spaghetti will cook the eggs. This gives more "umph" to the taste.

3. bacon is the best ingredients for creating your own spaghetti sauce. Simplest way was to fry it with 1 tblsp of olive oil until it is crispy.

4. throw in lots of parmesan cheese for the taste. If you don't like cheese, you may replace with some salt instead.

5. go veggie with broccoli, mushroom and asparagus.

Notice that the same guy acts in Gokusen season I, but i think he is more

good looking in Gokusen with nicer hairstyle

Girl from Hell (Jigoku Shoujo)

Animax channel is a good media to introduce animes to the public. Usually i would use it to gauge whether it's worthwhile to buy or not by watching one or two episodes when time permitted.



As for Girl From Hell, Animax actually runs the show for quite sometime but i did not bother to really watch it then. It was the japanese live-action series that really made me interested in watching the whole show. But i can seriously tell you, better watch the live-action series before watching the anime, else you may get disappointed with the series instead. It does not have much impact when compared to the anime version plus some scenes are based on the anime instead, but most of the stories really make you hate the villain very much that they really deserved to be sent to hell.



As for the anime version, some stories are quite disturbing as those sent to hell are actually victims of circumstances. Some grudge holder are soooo stupid that you felt that you wanted to slap them.



Anyway, the story is about a website called hell correspondence, and this website is only available during midnight. Anyone with a grudges can access the website at midnight and enter the name of the person you hate. Once the request had been accepted, hell girl named Enma Ai will visit the person who submitted the request and pass to him/her a straw doll with a red string tied around the neck. If the requestor really want to send the person that they hate to hell, they would just untie the red string. However, once the person is sent to hell, the requestor's soul will go to hell also once they are dead, and their soul would forever roam in hell.



The soundtrack for both live-action and anime was very nice. Infact, the singer (OLIVIA) who sang the ending song for live-action series also sang for Nana anime series as well. Hmm... now tempted to buy her CD instead.