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Never read it or saw the movie myself. But there was a TV miniseries version in Japan that I did see
http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Alge...

Otenki Oneesan is the series you're thinking of.

*The games with good stories general can not compress a 20-40 hour experience into an hour thirty.

True! That's why they should start thinking about making SERIALS based on games and NOT MOVIES. It works well in China, Chinese Paladin (xian jian qi xia zhuan) was an awesome serial and very well received by the audience, they then also made a serial for the 3rd part of the game (they skipped the second one though as the story was rather lame, so now there's just xian jian 1 and 3).

You can't just squeeze all the story depth and character development of the games with a good story in a 2 hour movie.

While I agree with your sentiment, I think Bleach is not the best show to demonstrate needing to see every episode. That one is definitely a show that you can miss an episode here and there and not lose much of the storyline. Maybe something that hasn't run for 200 episodes now. I'd be really pissed if I missed one of the shows that I watch that only consists of 13 episodes!

Also, pretty much all of the j-dramas I've seen consist of 10-12 episodes, and if a show does well with fans, they bring it back in a year or two after they have time to flesh out the next "season". Trick is a good example of that with its 3 seasons. Season 1 aired in summer of 2000, season 2 in winter/spring 2002, season 3 in fall 2003, and had a special in fall 2005. I guess that lets the writers/producers time to make sure everything fits together, and gives the actors and actresses time to work on other projects in the mean time.

Densha Otoko was a miniseries that ran in 2005 on Fuji TV in Japan, and chronicled one man's attempts to woo the woman of his dreams with the help of an internet message board. The really remarkable thing about the series (apart from being based on a true story) is that every computer-related thing in it is 100% accurate. While the series has quite a few unrealistic and silly elements, I was impressed by the technical accuracy... right down to using the real BBS that the actual "Densha Otoko" thread occurred on.

Here's a couple I found. #japan-tv and d-addicts.

For Japanese stuff:

http://bunko.theppn.org/

http://www.d-addicts.com/