Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Nee Sensei, Shiranai no?
(ねぇ先生、知らないの? / Hey Teacher, Don’t You Know?)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hiya! It’s been so long since my last review! I’m still halfway with another Korean drama but it’s taking me a while, so I wanted to watch something light and short inbetween. The reason why it’s taking me so long has nothing to do with that I’m struggling to get through it, but my schedule has been super busy ever since May. I started a new job and am back at the office full-time, leaving me with very little energy to concentrate on basically any kind of hobby that I usually enjoy to do in my free time. I have been getting back to my K-Drama, but it’s just taking a longer time and it’s quite slow-paced. And then I suddenly saw a clip from this drama and when I checked it out, it turned out to be a really short one, only 6 episodes of 25 minutes. So to make up for taking so long until my next full-fletched review, here’s a little inbetween one! 🙂 I was in the mood for a typical Japanese romantic comedy, and this gave me enough fluffy feelings to write a short review about it.

As I mentioned, it’s a 6-episode short drama, based on a manga, and it’s basically about the writer of a popular shoujo manga series, Aoi Hana (played by Baba Fumika). Her writer’s pseudonym is Hanai Ao-sensei. She’s been writing romantic manga ever since she was 18 despite never having any real experience in romance herself. She works with her two faithful assistants Makoto and Koinuma (respectively played by Tanda Hazuki and Miyase Ryubi). One day, after submitting her new entry to her editor, she realizes that she really needs to look after her appearance more, as she tends to neglect her personal hygiene when she’s busy with work. In a hurry, she enters the nearest hair salon, only to find out it’s a super fancy place that doesn’t allow walk-ins. Just as she’s about to leave, she still gets invited in by a handsome hairdresser who offers to take care of her hair. This hairdresser is Kido Riichi (played by Akaso Eiji).
During their short encounter and small talk, Hana awakens something in Riichi and after he’s done with her hair he asks her to go out with him because ‘he’ll make her pretty everyday’.

So, the first thing here is probably that this went very fast, haha. He literally JUST cut her hair. Anyways, she went along with it and the second episode is already a leap in time to one month later. We learn that, although they have now been dating for a month, Hana tends to neglect Riichi when she’s busy with work, not replying to his messages for days. She feels bad about it, but she also can’t help that she loves her job and always forgets everything around her when she’s busy.
Riichi has fallen in love with exactly this characteristic of her, so even though he gets impatient, he always accepts it and he just keeps waiting for her to message him that she wants to see him, and then he comes running.
As Riichi helps her discover what a real-life romantic relationship feels like, Hana is also able to develop her manga writing skills, using many of the situations happening to her as inspiration for her stories. Eventually, her story clearly becomes a bit more mature in its depiction of a real relationship with physical intimacy etcetera, and although it also takes her some time for her to get used to that, she eventually makes peace with it, recognizing it as a good change in style.

Probably the most interesting about their relationship dynamic is how they reversed the stereotypical gender roles. In this situation, Hana is the workaholic woman and Riichi is the patient, devoted guy. However, when he does get her alone, he tends to get a little pushy, saying things like ‘I can’t hold back anymore’. When Hana tells him multiple times that it’s because of him that her manga is getting better, he keeps trying to get a ‘reward’ for it – suggesting that they finally sleep together.
Occasionally, it did make a feel a little awkward, but that’s probably because Hana looked so uncomfortable with it all the time and wasn’t really strong in setting her boundaries. She got better at it eventually, but sometimes I thought he was getting a little too impatient there. However, as soon as he noticed she wasn’t ready, or fell asleep while he making a physical advance on her (seriously though girl, how could you fall asleep in that situation?? XD) he always stopped, smiled, and backed off, so that was good.

Of course a Japanese romcom isn’t complete without (potential) love rivals. The salon Riichi works at is pretty fancy, as I mentioned, and he gets a lot of models and actresses as clients. One of them is the young and popular actress Hoshino Nanase (played by Yahagi Honoka), who doesn’t really hide the fact that she’s interested in Riichi. She even asks him to become her personal stylist when she starts a new drama role – and when this turns out to be for the live adaptation of Hana’s manga, things get a little tense. Despite being a big fan of Hana’s work, Nanase tries to act stoic towards her when she finds out she’s Riichi’s girlfriend. However, she still backs off immediately after getting blatantly rejected by Riichi himself. As expected of a short drama, they rounded off the potential threats to the canon couple’s relationship pretty fast and smoothly. Hana’s assistant Koinuma also (randomly?) turns out to have a crush on her but this crush is immediately exterminated when he meets Riichi for the first time. This came kind of out of nowhere for me, by the way, in the first couple of episodes he’s not even looking at her like that and then suddenly he’s like ‘I’ve always liked you’, so they may have made that a bit clearer from the start.

There isn’t a lot of drama in the series, mostly just Hana’s insecurities that are working against her. She’s the typical Japanese shoujo heroine, the one that just instinctively apologizes instead of saying ‘hello’ when she enters a room. It can get a little annoying, but I’m glad that they still gave her a little more backbone at the end. She gets a bit insecure and jealous when she sees another girl (who turns out to be Nanase) hugging Riichi in front of the hairsalon one time, but even though that shakes her a bit, it doesn’t turn into a big thing and after Riichi explains the situation to her, it’s all good again.

I just have to say, even though Riichi was like the idealest of the idealest guy here, he might as well have been a playboy. Like, I’m positive that he would’ve been able to fool her very easily with how he treated her. It was interesting to see them become such a fond couple without so little build-up, but at the same time it was somehow also very easy to accept. I’m kind of interested in reading the manga now, just to see how the build-up in their relationship is in the original work, since of course they had to make it real short for this drama.
But I did like how they made the story focus on the two of them. In every episode, the first part is from Hana’s perspective, and at some point we also see Riichi’s perspective on the same situation, like their first encounter in the salon or the time where Nanase hugged him in the front of the store. So from Riichi’s perspective, all we get is that he is so into Hana, he literally doesn’t look at anyone else. From Hana’s perspective, she’s constantly busy worrying about how other people see her and Riichi together, and when he catches him just looking at another woman’s picture, she already panicks ‘Oh my god is that his ideal type?? I can’t compete with that!!’ Riichi constantly has to calm her down and convince her that she’s the only one for him, but I can’t imagine it will be easy for him all the time.
Anyways, since there wasn’t any room for any real psychological development here, let’s just keep it at that it’s a cute love story between two busy and sleep-deprived people, and that was kind of a cute concept, different than usual.
I also liked how much their personalities complimented each other and how, in all aspects, Hana was the one who took the most time figuring that out. Probably one reason why Riichi is so quick in pursuing her after just meeting her once, is that, from the first time they meet at the hairsalon, he immediately recognizes that they’re alike. Alike in that they both have a busy job and love that job, and occasionally neglect their sleep are bad with keeping other people involved in their lives outside of work. We see in a couple of flashbacks than multiple of Riichi’s former girlfriends broke up with him because he couldn’t make time for them. Hana is the complete opposite of that and that’s what attracts him to her – she’s too busy herself to worry about him not spending enough time on her. And when they do make time for each other, then it’s an even more special occasion.
It takes literally until the final episode for Hana to realize the same thing, that they are actually quite alike. She watches him at the salon one time and then suddenly it hits her. And I feel like this was her in their entire relationship as well, haha. She’s just not used to having someone wanting to spend so much personal time with her, so it’s easy for her to forget about it as she gets absorbed in work, even though she does still think about him and misses him a lot. But I think that it reassured her as well to see that Riichi was kind of the same in that way, that he also loved his job and worked really hard for it. Even when she came to visit him and he was going to cut her hair, he still left her alone to tend to other patients and in his work, also didn’t necessarily prioritize her over his job. I kind of liked their dynamic, haha. Especially because from another viewpoint, you’d think they didn’t necessarily match that well. But that’s why I liked how in that particular way, they clicked like no other and that’s probably why Riichi, when he realized this, went all the way for Hana. And when she realized it as well, be it a little later, she did the same.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the amount of kissing scenes in this series. Japanese dramas tend to be kind of prudish with showing intimacy on screen, but Riichi really wasn’t embarrassed to show his affection towards Hana in public, even though it made her pretty uncomfortable in the beginning. What I did like was the moment when she stopped caring, when Nanase confronted her again saying ‘aren’t you intimidated by the fact that I said I liked him’ and she was just like ‘well, I was at first, but now, actually, nah, not anymore’. It just felt like she finally became confident enough in her relationship with Riichi that she didn’t back down anymore, she realized she really could have the best of both worlds. Being a workaholic/successful manga artist AND not having to worry about her relationship since Riichi completely accepted her, occasional negligence and all.

By the way, the title stems from a phrase that Riichi uses a lot in his narration towards situations with Hana. As ‘sensei’ is not only a word used for school teachers but also for doctors and, such as in this case, for manga artists, in his narration he refers to Hana as ‘sensei’. In each episode, at one point, there is a narration of his voice saying ‘Nee sensei, shiranai no?‘, followed by something like, a feeling that he gets from looking at her, or something.
When he’s directly talking to her, he always calls her ‘Hana’, so this really only happens in his narration and I guess it’s also a direct reference to the original manga series.

I barely knew any of the cast members!
I don’t know why, but Baba Fumika gave me immense Kim Yoo Jeong vibes at times oO like, sometimes she would make a face and she’d look so much like her? Maybe it’s just me, haha. Anyways, I like that she was able to give the character of Hana a bit more depth than just the skittish, insecure, typical shoujo heroine. I also really liked how she went through kind of a transformation herself throughout the series, from her typical sweaters and jerseys to her mature look when she went to work on the live adaptation in the end! She portrayed Hana’s development pretty well.

I’d never heard of Akaso Eiji, but I can’t deny he is really handsome. Riichi is really the ideal type of guy, attractive, caring, kind, occasionally acts like an abandoned puppy but you can’t reprimand him about it. And even though he falls under the infamous 3B that you shouldn’t date (actually someone told me about this when I was in Japan as well, so I knew about it, that Bandmen, Bartenders and Beauticians are the worst types of guys to date since they lack free time and spent a lot of time around female fans/customers/clients), he isn’t like the stereotype at all. His smile was really adorable too… I’m moving on now xD

Yahagi Honoka is probably the only cast member I know and I love her. Ever since Itazura na Kiss, where she still acted under her previous stage name Miki Honoka, I think she’s a brilliant young actress. It was cool to see her as a more mature and confident character here. Even though she acted a little bit childish when faced with her love rival, she couldn’t help herself when she realized how much she admired Hana and in the end was able to give up on Riichi pretty quickly.

I forgot to mention Hana’s editor, Kiritani (played by Wada Masanari). I was afraid that they’d make him into yet another love rival, after they suddenly pulled that with Koinuma, but I’m glad they didn’t go through with that. I still feel like, if there was more time, he might’ve become more interested in Hana, also when Riichi out of the blue brought him up as a potential rival while there is literally 0% going on between Kiritani and Hana, I thought that maybe in the original work he could be a love rival. Anyways, in this case I was glad they didn’t turn him into one. It was nice to see him turn from a cold-looking editor to a more sincere guy as he appreciated the changes Hana was going through as well.

Overall, I enjoyed it. It was short and fun and pretty heart-throbbing at times! It really made me want to write this kind of romance again. As I mentioned, Japanese romance series can be kind of prudish, but there’s also dramas in there that get pretty hot (!) and I’m always sort of pleasantly surprised by that, haha.

I really missed writing reviews, so I wanted to make this inbetween one, also just so I would still keep the hang of it, haha. I am already more than halfway through my K-Drama, so I may have another review ready probably some time next month 🙂 Please bear with me until then! 😀

Bye-beeee~!