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.

Konya, Katte ni Dakishimetemo Ii Desu Ka?
( 今夜、勝手に抱きしめてもいいですか? / Can I Just Hug You Tonight?)
MyDramaList rating: 6.0/10

Hello hello, and welcome to this short in-between review! I think I’ve mentioned it a couple of times before, but one thing I enjoy about Japanese dramas is that they’re always so short and light, very easy to digest and enjoy. After my last watch I was desperate for some light entertainment, and I definitely got that out of this show. I was a bit confused as there seems to be very little known about this series, it didn’t even have a page on DramaWiki or AsianWiki. So, like I did for Good Morning Call, I created the page myself, feel free to check it out here. It’s a very simple and short story with a small cast of characters, so it shouldn’t be too hard to write a review about it. Beside it being a very “typical” Japanese romcom which definitely lacked a lot of depth, there were still things that jumped out to me that I appreciated and liked about it. Let’s get going!

Konya, Katte ni Dakishimetemo Ii Desu Ka? is a 12-episode J-Ddrama, with episodes of 24 minutes each, an enjoyable length to binge-watch. The story is about college student Saeki Riko (played by Yahagi Honoka), who despite her easygoing nature doesn’t really have a clear idea of what she wants to pursue in life. When it comes to romance, she’s also quite clumsy as she tends to just go out with whoever confesses his love to her, and she always ends up backing out when she realizes that mutual feelings are required in order to make a relationship work. Riko lives with her best friend Amamiya Yoshino (played by Kamura Mami), who is striving to become a kindergarten teacher. They met Shindo Arata (played by Nakao Masaki) in their college bouldering club, and they often hang out together at the girls’ house to have takoyaki parties etc. Arata has been in love with Riko since the first time he was introduced to her. Yoshino has been in love with Arata since she was first introduced to him. Riko is oblivious to both these facts, as she herself still can’t let go of her childhood friend and first love ‘Shu-chan’, whom she hasn’t seen in years.
After dating a co-worker escalates into a stalker situation and Riko decides it’s better to look for a new job, Arata suggests she come work with him, as they are always looking for young, new employees at his team. He works for a business that aims to redevelop their city with new creative ideas to make it more attractive (it reminded me a bit of Project Atami). When Riko gladly accepts the opportunity and arrives at her new job, fate has it that there, she meets her first love again. ‘Shu-chan’, aka Ichihara Shuji (played by Mizuno Masaru) is now a promising photographer who works in the same share office building as Riko and Arata. For Riko, it’s as if nothing’s changed between them, but Shuji initially acts like he doesn’t recognize her and treats her indifferently. However, as they gradually reconnect this doesn’t go unnoticed by Shuji’s agent Fukai Midoriko (played by Iriyama Noriko), who is bent on him not getting distracted in pursuing his dream of becoming a professional photographer. Besides that, she’s also personally interested, if not slightly obsessed, with Shuji herself.
While Riko and Shuji gradually close the gap between them as former childhood friends, they get caught up in a romantic turbulence (as MDL so strikingly puts it) as everyone’s feelings come out in the open, sometimes not the way they wanted. We’re dealing with a love pentagon this time, not your good old triangle. In-between this romantic turbulence, Riko also sets about finding a dream of her own, which she ultimately finds in wedding planning.

Let me just talk about the main characters briefly before going on to my comments about the story.
To start, let’s talk about Riko. We first get to know her after yet another failed dating attempt with someone she doesn’t have feelings for. From the very first episode on, we learn that Riko is very honest about her feelings, she brings her thoughts into words very clearly, and it’s easy to understand her way of thinking. She’s also very good at reflecting, sometimes even too good. When her co-worker/ex-boyfriend ends up ambushing her and she sees how he can’t let her go, she immediately blames herself for leading him on and not drawing a line earlier. She easily blames herself for (indirectly) causing other people trouble or misfortune, also in situations when it’s really not her fault. She’s a very open, easygoing and cheerful lady with an easy smile that quickly draws people in. Despite her accessible personality, she also tends to live in her own world a bit. When she meets Shuji again and he doesn’t immediately confirm that he is indeed her childhood friend, she starts monitoring him to gather evidence that he must be her ‘Shu-chan’. I can’t deny I found it kind of funny that she basically set up a PowerPoint presentation to convince Shuji that he was ‘Shu-chan’, as if he wouldn’t know that himself. On the other hand, this also shows her determination, to follow through with whatever it is she wants to achieve.
What I really liked about Riko was that she was so open and honest about her feelings. Whenever an occasion occurred in which she had a conflict with someone close to her, she immediately set out to talk about it, and she really cared about other people’s feelings. She didn’t make too much drama out of things that didn’t concern her personally, she was just living her own life, she was living in the moment, and her uncomplicatedness was very welcome to me. Yes, she certainly had some slightly immature tendencies and she was oblivious as heck, but she never became annoying in my opinion. In her defense, despite it being obvious how her friends were feeling about her and each other, they never told her before, so how was she supposed to know about it? You can’t just always assume everyone reads the room the same way.

As Riko’s best friend, Yoshino was put in a bit of an awkward spot with her feelings for Arata. She already knew he fancied Riko, and when Yoshino was alone with him it was always a bit more awkward than when Riko was with them. But then again, her feelings were really relatable. Sure, I was wondering from the start why she hadn’t told Riko anything in the entire two years since she started liking Arata, and her getting annoyed with Riko for being thoughtless or senseless while Riko didn’t have a clue what she was talking about was a bit unfair. But I did like that she never became petty towards Riko. I couldn’t blame her for sometimes getting fed up with the fact that Riko was so oblivious, but she did end up solving her own problem by ultimately confessing to Arata, and when he rejected her, she really just went ‘oh well’ and went on with her life. In contrast to Arata himself, who kind of kept clinging to Riko even after she rejected him, Yoshino immediately dealt with the rejection so maturely, she just decided not to waste anymore time on her unrequited feelings and immediately got over it. It was nice that she already got a date so soon after, the rejection really seemed to have fallen off of her and that was very nice. I always appreciate it when people don’t add too much drama to their unrequited feelings and just get on with their lives if it doesn’t work out.

Speaking of Arata, my boy had it bad. It was a cruel cosmic joke that he ended up being the person to reunite Riko and Shuji. I did feel like he was a bit more greedy and selfish in his feelings for Riko, but he was also able to relate and eventually deal with the fact that she didn’t like him back. Something that I felt through this series on several occasions was that you can’t force your feelings onto someone. No matter how deeply you feel for them, if it’s not mutual, you just have to deal with that. Pushing it won’t make things better, on the contrary. I’m glad that Arata stayed at Riko’s side as her friend, but I did feel like somehow it wasn’t as easy for him to let go. He kept involving himself in Riko’s love life in the sense that he kept confronting Shuji with how he was treating Riko, and that’s where I went a little 😬 because that really shouldn’t have been any of his business. He kept acting like Riko’s knight in shining armor, he kept trying to protect her instead of letting her deal with her own stuff. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but feel for him as he was a really good guy and despite the fact that it was killing him inside to see Riko and Shuji grow closer after he was rejected, he never let anything jeopardize his friendship with Riko. I also liked how sweet and apologetic he was towards Yoshino when he couldn’t return her feelings, he actually hugged her back for a moment before he said sorry and I’m just glad they were able to go back to normal without too much awkwardness afterwards.

Of all the people, Shuji was the person who was the least clear in voicing what he was going through. While everyone was confessing and getting rejected and being honest about their feelings, he was the only person that made me go, ‘dude, no one is going to know what you’re thinking if you don’t say anything’. I also found the transition of him being all ‘the Shuji you knew from childhood is gone’ to suddenly being on good terms with Riko again kind of strange. It was as if I missed some build-up and for all I knew he really just cared for her as a precious childhood friend. Especially since he was getting it on with Midoriko a couple of times and I initially didn’t think that was just to distract himself. I mean, the way he kissed Midoriko was much more passionate than that one final kiss between him and Riko in the final episode. I guess he was passionate about distracting himself 🙄 Anyways, his feelings were the least clear to me of all the characters and that was a shame because I really wanted to know what was going on inside his head. Instead, this is the farthest removed I’ve felt from a ‘male lead’ character in a long time. Even when he eventually talked to Yoshino and Arata about what Midoriko was plotting, he still didn’t speak clearly and the two really had to pull the words out of him. I would’ve liked to get a bit more clarity from him from the start, because now I did not feel the build-up between him and Riko, and I would’ve liked to root for the main couple a bit more.

Midoriko was that typical petty J-Drama chick that, if she doesn’t kill you with frustration, she just makes you laugh because she’s just so unbelievable. In my case, it was the latter. She was just so typical, I couldn’t with her. As the oldest of all the main characters, she was the most child-like of them all. As the daughter of a very influential CEO and Shuji’s agent, she had a lot of connections but instead of taking a more professional approach of, for example, getting Shuji the chance to go abroad so he would be away from Riko while still keeping his career and dreams in mind, she decided it would be better to threaten him into marrying her under the condition that she made Riko’s newfound dream of becoming a wedding planner at her father’s company come true. Like, the fact that she went that far and that it became all about either Riko or Shuji giving up their dream for each other, was just laughable because it was so ridiculous. That a grown and established woman like herself would go to such lengths just because she was jealous that Shuji was falling for his childhood friend – because it had absolutely nothing to do with him ‘getting distracted’, he was professional enough – was kind of wild to me. Despite the fact that she was constantly going ‘what the heck am I doing’ to herself, which suggested she was aware of how crazy she was being, she still didn’t stop and only became crazier. I was also surprised how she managed to string Shuji along, because he could’ve been like ‘nah man’ much earlier in my opinion, it shouldn’t have taken him that long to see what she was trying to pull.

I want to establish something with regard to my previous review about The One and Only. I usually don’t compare my ratings as I decide by feeling, but just in case people are following my reviews chronologically and wonder why I gave this show a higher rating than the previous one, I will give an explanation about that now as I’ve debated about it myself as well. While KonDaki may not be as heavily loaden or in-depth, one major thing I liked about it was the communication between the main characters – and the actors, for that matter. It just helps me make sense so much better if I can relate to the characters’ feelings, and despite it being a bit cringy now and then, I really liked how well the actors connected with each other. They were constantly paying attention, looking at and listening to each other, and in conveying their feelings I could really see their responses develope very naturally. Everyone was processing their emotions clearly and realistically, and I thought everyone was very good in their facial expressions as well. I could see that they all took their characters and their feelings seriously, and so it didn’t matter if their lines were cheesy, the delivery was sincere and that is something I really missed from my last watch. There was a huge difference in how they communicated with each other. Even in the case of Midoriko with her crazy eyes, she went for it without holding back and I respected that, even though I still didn’t like her character. So yeah, I just wanted to explain that because I couldn’t help think about it myself when I rated this show. This is how much I love healthy communication in a drama, it can literally add an entire point to my rating of a show, haha.

Let me talk a bit about the relationships between all the characters in more detail. First of all, the friendship between Riko, Yoshino and Arata. We see in a flashback that they met about two years before the story starts, when Arata joined the bouldering club that Riko and Yoshino were members of (I guess it was just the three of them since there were never any other people present during their bouldering sessions). In their first conversation, we see the exact moment in which Arata falls for Riko, as well as the moment that Yoshino falls for Arata, despite immediately seeing the way he looks at her best friend. I found their friendship really nice to watch. The way they always hung out at the girls’ house, the way Yoshino would always prepare stuff to fry and eat together, how they went bouldering together. It’s always the three of them, so you don’t actually get to dissect their individual connections with each other until one member is suddenly absent. It was a bit sad that while Yoshino didn’t mind being alone with Arata -in fact, she tried creating opportunities but he would always keep inviting Riko as well- Arata always got a bit awkward when it was just the two of them, and he’d always keep asking where Riko was. Still, the way he rejected her confession made me feel that he really cared about her as a friend, and I really loved that he didn’t push her away when she hugged him, that he even held her by her arms for a moment before he said what she already expected. I was glad that they went back to being normal friends afterwards, it only showed how much their friendship meant to them both. While Yoshino moved on pretty swiftly, Arata had more difficulty letting go. I kind of felt Riko’s unease with him at some points, for example when he hugged her from behind on that bridge that one time and basically told her to rely on him and use him to get over Shuji… I was like, how could he expect Riko to take advantage of his feelings like that? Like, I get that his feelings were more difficult to push down after his rejection and that it annoyed him to see Shuji, the guy Riko rejected him for, not facing up to his feelings towards her, but I really went, ‘Arata bro, let it go, don’t do this to yourself’ a couple of times. It would’ve been healthier for him to just move on like Yoshino did. On the other hand, I also liked that they showed different ways of moving on/dealing with rejection with different characters. After all, everyone deals with it their own way.

With the whole premise of Riko and Shuji being childhood friends and Riko having had a crush on him as a kid and all… once they were reunited, honestly, that’s all it felt like to me. It never actually became more, I didn’t really feel any romantic love between them. To me, their relationship felt like it was based on Riko’s childhood crush on Shuji, and Shuji’s wish to protect Riko as his sister-like childhood friend.
As I mentioned before, the switch from Shuji’s indifferent ‘I’ve changed, the boy you once loved is gone’ attitude to them suddenly going hiking and bonding together was a bit sudden and I kept feeling like I was missing developments between them. If it weren’t for Shuji occasionally mentioning that he liked Riko to Arata or someone else, I honestly wouldn’t have been able to gauge what he was truly feeling for her. For all I knew, he really did see her as just a childhood friend, and they both seemed comfortable enough with that. When he initially rejected her, I think Riko dealt with it quite maturely, despite the fact that it hurt her she really tried to accept that he must have never seen her as more than a childhood friend, and she was willing to deal with that as long as they could remain good friends. She was even able to acknowledge his alleged feelings for Midoriko when she heard about him ‘giving up his dream to marry her’, even though it hurt her a lot. She was willing to suffer while she let him go fulfill his dream, it was never her intention to stand in his way or claim a part in his life by force, like Midoriko tried to do. I actually quite liked the friendship between Riko and Shuji, even without the alleged romance which I wasn’t feeling. They pulled off being friends quite realistically.
One point of confusion I want to add in here is that I didn’t quite understand when exactly Shuji started liking Riko. At one point it’s suggested that he already liked her from when they were childhood friends, and that he even started pursuing his dream of taking pictures in space because of Riko. Through this, Arata even makes the deduction that he never actually stood a chance, because the two of them already liked each other way before he even came into the picture. But then at the end, when Shuji finally comes clean about his true feelings for Riko, he says ‘I don’t know when it started, but I started falling for you’, suggesting that he only fell for her after they were reunited. As it was suggested before that he started pursuing photography because of Riko and even for her, to show her his pictures taken from the sky, I assumed he must’ve been keeping her in mind the entire time, even when he didn’t expect to ever see her again. Like, I thought it was established that he’d had feelings for her ever since way back when. But now he just ‘happened to fall in love’ with the same girl who incidentally also inspired his entire dream and career from when he was a kid? As I already wasn’t completely up to speed with their romantic development, this made it even less clear to me as I had no idea when or where his character must have started falling for Riko, he kind of remained the same throughout the entire series. From Riko’s side, it was more than clear what her feelings were from the start, and she also showed the most initiative in her feelings for Shuji, like in the way she remembered all of this habits and quirks from when they were kids. She really showed how much she’d been thinking about him all this time, while on the other hand Shuji apparently only really started noticing her after they were reunited. I just felt like they weren’t quite on the same wavelength from the start, and this created a bit of an inbalance in the portrayal of their feelings for each other.

Also, what the heck was going on between Shuji and Midoriko? I thought their relationship was purely professional, even when Midoriko was being clingy with him, but he actually went along with making out with her a couple of times and I wasn’t quite sure if that was only because he wanted to distract himself from thinking about Riko. It seemed to me that this had already been going on for a while, from even before he was reunited with Riko. Also, why would he go against his feelings for Riko so much? What was so bad about him falling for her? It couldn’t possibly have been worse than him getting intimate with his own agent. Why would he feed into Midoriko’s delusion that he was interested in her and not take her obsession with him seriously until so much later? I had the feeling he knew exactly what kind of person she was, so it kind of baffled me that it took him so long to acknowledge that she had been creating drama for Riko. Also, why did he even agree to that ridiculous engagement arrangement? They were acting as if that was really the only solution, the only way out and I was just like, dude, seriously, have some self-respect and get yourself out of there, it’s not like she actually has anything to say or do about how you choose to live your life. His decision to call it off also came kind of randomly, because in the scene before he even confirmed again to Yoshino and Arata that this was the only way for him to go. I was so glad that Riko had been listening in, because otherwise she would’ve never known his side of the story. I loved how she took matters into her own hands and just went into the office declining the job offer from her side, telling Shuji that he didn’t need to keep protecting her as if she was a little kid. Also, when Midoriko was like ‘you’ll never be able to work in this industry’ (bitch, who are you to decide that?), Riko was like ‘I don’t care, I’ll work extra hard, as long as I don’t have to be associated with the company that treated Shu-chan this way’ I was like 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Riko was the only person who saw sense and chose for the clearest solution right then and there, and I was super proud of her for being so mature, more than the two grown adults in front of her. I also liked that she walked away from that dinner, because there was literally no reason she should’ve put herself through that.

I believe that if Midoriko wasn’t so bent on bringing Riko down, she could’ve easily been a pretty good senpai to her. When she was being nice, she seemed to be really easygoing and understanding of people. I was honestly thrown off by how nice she was to Riko when she offered to help with the weddding party, I didn’t even believe she was faking it at that point. It seemed that, despite her plan to get Riko in trouble for using a wrong photo, she was actually interested in helping out. When she was like that, I really thought, ‘look, she can actually be nice, it’s not that hard’. It was just a bit frustrating that, while everyone was just living their own lives and solving their own problems, she was the one adding focus and weight to the relationship between Riko and Shuji. Even when the two in question were perfectly happy with their newly ignited friendship (before it even became more than that), she kept being like, ‘you care that much about her? you’re willing to give up everything for that girl?’ Like, even when she was the one responsible for getting Riko in trouble and even jeopardizing Shuji’s career, when Shuji had to go kneel in apology and fix the situation, Midoriko always kept going back to, ‘this is how far you’re willing to go for her?’ Even when it wasn’t about Riko per se, the way she kept focussing so much attention on that, more than the actual people involved, was kind of annoying. Like, if she’d done it purely with Shuji’s career in mind and at least prioritized his dream above anything else, I would’ve been able to see where she was coming from as his agent. But now, despite always claiming to put everything on the line for Shuji to grow as a professional, she pulled stuff that took his dreams away from him more than Riko ever did. She just became so immature and greedy in her personal feelings that I kind of lost respect for her as a professional agent. She should’ve at least kept Shuji’s dream as a priority before she started treating it as something to hold over him to manipulate him. I remember a situation from Hajimete Koi wo Shita Hi ni Yomu Hanashi where this guy was forced to remarry his ex-wife purely to save someone else from facing jeopardy, and it’s just wild to me how this is apparently a recurring trope.

When it wasn’t about the unrequited feelings and the rejections, they added in some random parts to emphasize the friendship between the main characters. Admittedly, they were a bit Captain Obvious in how they created a conversation leading up to ‘Anyways, next time on KonDaki!’, but I did like that they added some random back-and-forth dialogue between Riko and Yoshino, for example. I remember one scene when they were eating pizza (or something) and Riko was like, ‘Let’s clean up and go to bed’ and they kept ushering the other person to clean up the mess, lol. They filled about ten seconds with them literally going, ‘Douzo’… ‘Douzo’… ‘Douzo.’ I thought it was kind of funny, but only because, like I said before, the actors really went for it, despite it sometimes being a little cheesy or lame. I could appreciate that they wanted to show some light and funny interactions in-between the dramatic events of the story.

I feel like I’m already running out of things to say, but hey, that’s what you get for reviewing a short and relatively unproblematic drama, haha. Before I head towards my conclusion I just want to mention a few points that I found a bit random or weird.
First of all, in terms of practical things, the title of the show. I understand that there is an original work of this story, but I couldn’t find anything about it, even whether it’s a manga or a novel. Anyways, although the title of this series, which translates as something along the lines of ‘Can I Selfishly Embrace You Tonight?’ sounds like any typical J-Drama title, I didn’t actually understand what it referred to. It didn’t have a direct link to a specific event in the story and it’s never mentioned as a phrase in the series, either. I just wondered where it came from and what it referred to. I personally didn’t really feel like it related to the story in any particular way.
Secondly, the opening sequence. I mean, I get that the red thread of fate is a popular theme in Japanese love stories, but again, despite the fact that it added dramatic effect, there was no direct lead to anything that happened in the show. The red thread of fate is never even mentioned by any of the characters, they never even talk about ‘destiny’ or anything like that, and I just wondered why they chose for an opening sequence including the red thread of fate while it had nothing to do with the story. The characters aren’t even bound to each other by fate, besides Riko and Shuji, none of them even knew each other before college/work and despite some people ending up together, I never once felt like they were ‘bound by fate’. So yeah, I found it a bit random, even as a typically used theme. Additionally, I always get a bit sceptical when a sequence shows the main characters staring blankly into the camera, because it never conveys any kind of emotion to me. I guess it’s supposed to give a dreamy or dramatic vibe, but it didn’t make sense to me to show all the main characters in this dazed, stoic and emotionless state, as they never appear like this throughout the show. It just made me wonder what the opening sequence was supposed to convey. I had no idea what to think about it, I couldn’t gauge what I was supposed to be getting from that opening.
As for the ending sequence (loved the song, by the way, and it was nice that the singer made a cameo appearance as a florist at some point), it showed at least some reference to the story as it depicted the characters in settings that often appeared in the series, and I guess the tears referred to them all processing their complicated/unrequited feelings. So, despite the kind of pasted-on dramaticness of that, I could see where it came from. Don’t get me started on the fakeness of those tears though, because I’m still not sure if they were CGI or just tear liquid, lol.
Lastly, and this pertains to the story, but how the freaking heck did they come up with the decision to have Arata and Midoriko end up together?! Seriously, that made the least sense to me out of everything. If anything I would’ve rooted for Arata and Yoshino to still end up together, but this?! It was so random, out-of-the-blue and misplaced, I couldn’t even be positively surprised. I just went, WHAT?! when they showed Riko advising on their wedding party, and them being all lovey-dovey with each other. That was just… something I definitely didn’t ask for. There was no need for anyone to end up with anyone besides Riko and Shuji (which also wasn’t even a necessity for me to be honest), but to then push two people together who literally had NOTHING to do with each other the entire show? As in, right, they worked in the same office building, but Arata was just as pissed at her as anyone for what she did to Riko. This was the last thing I expected to happen and I didn’t care for it at all.

I think I’ve said about everything I wanted now, so let’s go on to the cast comments!

I’m not gonna lie, I might be a little bit biased towards Yahagi Honoka. I just like her so much. To this day she remains to be my favorite ever Kotoko (loved that little reference to ItaKiss in the first episode by the way, when she was handing out ItaKissaten vouchers, no way that escaped me xD) and I just generally like her way of acting. I think it’s in the way she always completely goes for it, she’s not afraid to show exaggerated expressions and she always takes her character very seriously, even though she has to act in a petty or cheesy way. I saw some comments on MDL about how, if you hated her character in ItaKiss you also wouldn’t be able to stand her here, like people were actually comparing this show to ItaKiss and I don’t understand it because it’s nothing alike. Riko wasn’t anything like Kotoko in expressing her feelings to Shuji, so that comparison can be thrown right out of the window as far as I’m concerned. She was much more mature and collected, and even in her feelings for Shuji she never let herself get dragged away. I liked the genuinety with which she portrayed Riko a lot. To me, she just has the ability to convey her character’s feelings in a very realistic and relatable way, and she always seems to be really in the moment, never pasted on.
So far I’ve only seen her in Itazura na Kiss, Kizoku Tantei and Nee Sensei, Shiranai no?, where she played the FL’s love rival and showed a petty side for the first time. I feel like she’ll always get casted for a sweet girl because of her lovely smile and tendency to give a bit of a ditzy/clumsy touch to her character, but I’d really love to see more variety from her, because I’m convinced she’d also be able to pull off roles that might not be so typical. Can’t wait to see more of her!

I understand that Mizuno Masaru was the leader of a Japanese idol group called BOYS AND MEN (I see that he ‘graduated’ from the group last year). Based on his looks, I’m not particularly surprised. I have to say, that despite the lack of clarity I got from Shuji’s character, I didn’t dislike his acting. He could’ve given more in his expressions as he tended to be a bit stoic, but I could see that there was something going on behind his eyes, and he was definitely feeling his character. If it weren’t for the confusion I felt with regards to Shuji’s feelings for Riko, also in combination with what exactly his relationship with Midoriko was, I would’ve probably liked his performance a bit more, but I still think he did relatively well. I haven’t seen any other dramas with him, but maybe he’ll start doing more acting jobs now that he’s graduated from his idol group? Any case, I wish him luck in his further career!

I haven’t seen anything from Nakao Masaki before either, but I quite liked his performance as Arata. I think he did really well with his expressions, and I could tell he was connecting and communicating with his fellow actors very well. Despite the fact that he got to take on some of the more possibly ‘cringy’ stuff, like back hugging his unrequited crush and yelling at Shuji about how he shouldn’t make Riko cry, I could tell he was really going for it, he took his character very seriously and that made him consistently sympathetic throughout the show. Even if the lines were a bit dramatic, he delivered them very sincerely and I appreciated that. I wonder if I’ll see more stuff from him in the future. I wouldn’t mind, he seems talented!

Just like Mizuno Masaru (and the drama itself until I made it), Kamura Mami doesn’t have a DramaWiki page, and I found her on AsianWiki. Apparently she’s only been in two other projects. I thought she was really good as Yoshino. She had this really sweet, motherly vibe around her, I just got that from the way she always took care of Riko and cooked for her friends. I really appreciated how real her character was, she wasn’t a pushover, she got annoyed like anyone would in certain occasions, but she never pushed it on others and she dealt with her own issues by herself very maturely. I thought it was really nice to see how she went on with her life after Arata rejected her, even after having liked him for two years. She never let her envy of Riko in her position get the better of her, she knew it wasn’t worth destroying their friendship over something like that. I also really liked her realness in terms of response. She got properly ‘ what the actual f–‘ angry at Midoriko and Shuji over how they were treating Riko. I remember that scene when Shuji told them about what Midoriko had done and how this was the only thing he could do to ‘protect’ Riko’s dream and how Yoshino was just looking at him like ‘🤨??!!’, like ‘ what the heck are you even talking about, man’. Her expression conveyed exactly what I was feeling as I was listening to his vague explanation, so I really aligned with her there, haha. I hope she gets to be in more stuff, I really liked her here.

I don’t recognize Iriyama Noriko from anything, but I see now that she appeared in an episode of Mondai no Aru Restaurant. I don’t remember her from there, but I liked that show a lot. Anyways, she was definitely a little all over the place with her expressions, it felt like she was the least able to get her face under control. I mean, it worked in her favor, especially when she started going a bit cuckoo. She was definitely a good fit for the role of Midoriko in terms of her typecasting as a business lady, and I liked her only at times when she was just focussing on her work and not on trying to sabotage Riko and Shuji’s friendship, even before it became more than that. I see she’s done a lot of dramas so far, ever since 2005. In terms of character, I couldn’t but feel like she stood apart from the other four. She didn’t really belong to their circle and she felt a bit like the odd one out, also in the opending and ending themes. I didn’t feel like she belonged in the love pentagon as much as the rest, to be honest. Her only link was Shuji (still not acknowledging her with Arata), so her position within the “romantic turbulence” felt a bit different. It also bothered me a little that she was supposedly the eldest out of all of them and therefore the one who should’ve acted like a proper adult the most, but she ended up being the most childish of them all. She was a little child that couldn’t get the piece of cake she wanted, so then went on doing a bunch of cumbersome things that would make the person who didn’t want to give her the cake miserable, even though that didn’t actually solve her problem either. On the other hand, I wasn’t bothered by her as much as I would’ve in a different setting. It helped that the series itself was so light, because now her pettiness just became laughable and even slightly entertaining to me rather than purely frustrating and annoying.

I want to give one final recognition to Takemori Sento who played Arata and Riko’s boss, Mr. Ninomiya. I really liked him! He seemed like a super fun boss and he was always really nice and funny. I liked how they worked with him in organizing that wedding party for him and his future wife, and how he was so supportive of Riko finding her dream in that successful endeavor. I don’t know him from anything else either, but I just wanted to mention him since I liked his character a lot.

So yeah, overall I thought it was an entertaining watch. It’s short, it’s light, the drama in terms of unrequited crushes and rejections is dealt with very swiftly as soon as it starts, there are no major dragged-out confrontations or conflicts between people and everyone communicates with each other. Despite the typicalness of it, the occasional cringy lines or dramatic gestures, I generally liked the acting and the cast. The story was simple and it was easy to relate to the characters. Short stories like these are always a nice kind of pallet cleanser after watching a bunch of lengthy or heavy shows, so I welcomed it warmly. Even the fact that I didn’t actually feel the relationship or chemistry between the main couple that much wasn’t enough to make me dislike this. It was enough for me to see how well the actors acted together, it really made me want to join one of their takoyaki parties.

Next up is a Chinese series because I haven’t watched one of those in a while. After that we’re going back to K-Drama for a while, so let’s enjoy some variety while we can, shall we? Thanks again for reading all the way through this review, I was originally planning to write it later but the mood to finish the final episode just came over me in the middle of the day, so I went with the flow, haha.

Until next time!

Bye-bee! x