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.

Douse Mou Nigerarenai
(どうせもう逃げられない / I Can’t Run Away Anymore Anyway)
MyDramaList rating: 5.5/10

Hiya! I actually didn’t expect to be able to upload a final review before the end of this month and I was initially planning to leave this review until after my deadline in June. However, since I went through it so quickly and frankly just wanted to get it over with, I decided to devote my final vacant afternoon of the month to finish it. For the next series my Wheel of Fortune app picked out, I watched this short little romance drama which probably made it onto my list after I read the synopsis and thought it might prove to be interesting. As it’s been a while since I watched any simple cute romcoms, I was hoping it would raise my giddy spirits a bit. Unfortunately, I’ll have to say right off the bat that for my seventh watch this year, it didn’t turn out to be a Lucky Number Seven. This will be a relatively negative review, so be prepared.

Douse Mou Nigerarenai is a Japanese MBS drama that consists of 9 episodes of about 24 minutes. It’s based on the manga series of the same name by Kazui Kazumi. The story starts when main characters Sakisaka Takumi (played by Shirasu Jin) and Nodakura Naho (played by Yokota Mayuu) meet for the first time. As he gets into a fight with his date in public, Takumi drags Naho – whom he sees staring at the spectacle from a near distance – into the conversation and introduces her to his date as his new girlfriend (🚩). After the date has stomped off, Naho gets mad at him for 1. being so rude to his date and 2. for using her for his own convenience like that. Despite her anger, she still gives him her handkerchief to ease the spot where he got slapped. That same afternoon, the two meet again under unexpected circumstances – Naho was actually on her way to a job interview at Takumi’s company.
Takumi is a photographer who got famous for a photo called “A World With You”, with which he won a prestigious advertisement design award. Now, five years after that win, he owns a tiny company called Solo Design which provides designs for all sorts of things, from plush toys to tableware to food packaging.
With only temp experience, Naho means to take a short-term job before she joins a permanent office job, as it’s her dream to become an ‘OL’, which is a common Japanese term for a typical office lady. However, it doesn’t take long for Takumi to hire her as a full-time employee at Solo Design after Naho is tricked by her ‘friend’ and misses the entrance test for a company they were planning on entering together. Despite the small hiring budget of Solo Design and the fact that Naho’s tasks are way too small for a permanent contract, she is able to stay on at Takumi’s company.
While Takumi initially starts out teasing Naho a lot for her naivety and unbreakable positivity, for example for nicknaming her ‘Norakura Aho’ (‘aho’ means idiot; 🚩), Naho comes to see that behind that bad boy attitude, there’s also a soft side to her new boss. It doesn’t take long for the two to develop an attachment to each other, which starts from Takumi’s warnings regarding Naho’s habit to trust everyone way too easily. However, when the two start getting closer, a traumatic incident from Takumi’s past pops up and this causes him to start distancing himself from her.

Just to get this out of the way, this was possibly one of the most toxic relationships I’ve seen in a Japanese drama so far. Nothing about it was romantic to me. It was problematic and messy and if I were Naho I would’ve just let Takumi deal with his own shit by himself. Still, for the sake of this review I’ll try my best to remain objective and reflect on both characters’ perspectives.
Starting with Naho, what struck me as unusual from the start was that the story wasn’t written from her perspective. The synopsis illustrated her as the main protagonist, but the story actually starts from Takumi’s perspective. Naho is introduced as a very bright and forward-looking person, with the additional trait of having blind faith in everyone and being positive to a fault. She can even be described as a bit immature, because she also lets herself get teased very easily and tends to pout about it rather than actually stand up for herself. Despite the (very) occasional rebuttal, she has the habit of blaming herself a lot for things that aren’t hers to take on. Apart from these basic characteristics, I generally found it very hard to gauge her as a character since she doesn’t have much inner dialogue and the viewers also don’t get much insight into her psyche from the get-go as she barely talks about what she really feels when we’re just getting to know her character. We also don’t get any information about her family or background, so it was hard to pinpoint where she might have developed her naive and positive habits, for example. Any kind of backstory to support how she turned out the way she did would have been welcome, because without that she was really just a blank slate to me that I had to start filling in by myself, and this didn’t really help in building empathy and understanding for her.
Takumi is introduced as a typical bad boy who just plays around with women but has no intention of settling down for something serious (🚩). His first response to meeting Naho is to flirt around and fluster her, playing into her naivety (🚩). This in itself was alarming to me, because it felt like he just hired her to joke around with her. Seriously, taping her slippers to the floor so she’ll fall over? Making her run errands with a piece of paper that says “I’m an idiot” pasted to her back? What are we, ten? 🙄🚩 To switch up this childish behavior and keep Naho by his side, he would suddenly show a different, more caring side, for example in standing up for her against the ‘friend’ that tricked her into losing that permanent job opportunity. He’d be all like, “You’re way too gullible, I’ll protect you” (🚩). Heck, he even freaking KISSED her out of blue, without consent, just to make the point of, “See, there’s bad people like me who’ll just take advantage of you”. 🚩🚩🚩 I would’ve been out of the office at that point, but unfortunately, this actually gets Naho attracted to him more and more. No matter how fickle he is in his treatment of her – teasing her one moment, then drawing her closer the next – Naho just can’t stop developing feelings for him. It even goes so far that she starts blaming herself for not being able to support him properly in his trauma which has literally nothing to do with her.

Before going into the most problematic aspect of the story – Takumi’s trauma – I’d like to introduce the few characters that I did actually like in this show: the other employees from Solo Design. When Naho starts working there, she joins a team of two colleagues besides Takumi: Amari Takehiko (played by Kusakawa Takuya) and Urae Sayaka (played by Ishida Nicole). A third colleague named Fukasawa Kaoru (played by Asaka Koudai) joins in a bit later. Amari and Urae are immediately very warm and welcoming to Naho and they really validate her presence in the office. When Naho at some point decides to leave because she feels bad about hogging a permanent employee spot, Urae immediately states that she can’t get things done without her and the whole team tries to persuade Takumi to reject her resignation.
I also liked the short arc about Urae debating to go solo and how this brought about some honesty from Takumi’s side. This was one of the few instances where I felt like an event in the office actually contributed to the main characters’ development while it simultaneously highlighted a supporting character in a relevant way. I wish there would have been some tiny arc around Amari as well, as he was kind of left behind in that regard. Anyways, it was nice getting to know at least Urae a bit better.
I had slightly mixed feelings about Kaoru at the beginning, mostly because of his ‘fun’ habit to tell Naho to take her clothes off as a joke 😒 . However, his character’s additional purpose was established when it was revealed that he knew more about Takumi’s past and he was the person who could tell Naho about it when Takumi decided to keep his distance from her.
Another supporting character that I liked was Takumi’s niece Tsubasa (played by Honda Miyu), purely because she was the only person in his family who didn’t think of him as problematic and just liked him as a nice uncle in an uncomplicated way.

It’s time to go into what messed up the story the most for me. From the start, it’s revealed through short flashbacks that Takumi has a past with the woman in his famous photo “A World With You”. The photo features a woman with short hair holding a young dog in a field of flowers. When Naho first enters Solo Design, she is immediately warned by Urae not to talk about the story behind the photo and Takumi’s past in general (🚩). Takumi also seems to have withdrawal symptoms whenever it’s raining, which kind of reminded me of the ML’s trauma from A Business Proposal.
It’s eventually revealed that the woman in the picture, Chiharu (played by Kobayashi Ryoko), was his older brother’s wife and that Takumi had been in love with her (🚩). She tragically died after she and Takumi got into a car accident in the rain one time. Apart from Takumi’s guilt regarding her death (he was driving and therefore he claims he killed her), there seems to be something else behind his lingering attachment to her. Ultimately, Naho learns that, on the night before the accident, Chiharu came to visit Takumi at his house. She appeared on his doorstep, drenched and dejected, and told him she’d slept with her company’s boss in order to get promoted. She ended up at Takumi’s place because she felt too scared and ashamed to face her husband.

Okay, so listen. I get that Takumi wanted to lift some weight off of Chiharu at that point. Seeing the woman he loved in that state must have been awful and I get that he just wanted to help her in whatever way possible. Honestly, I get that. But seriously, how the FUCK did he come up with the idea to take the place of the person she slept with in her story? Why couldn’t he have just promised to keep her secret and help her cover it up or something? Like, how did this solution make it any better? He literally complicated the situation by taking on part of the blame and creating a reason for his brother to hate the both of them rather than just his wife in case he found out. It just didn’t make sense to me why Takumi felt the need to put some of that blame onto himself. Also, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he actually chose to use the opportunity to confess his feelings for Chiharu right there and then. She was sitting on his couch, completely soaked and in tears, filled with shame, and he thought it would be a good chance to tell her that he would do everything to protect her – he even started KISSING her, like, what the heck was he thinking?! It actually made the situation go from bad to worse.
Just when I thought that was the worst of it, I was only more disturbed by Chiharu’s reaction. Not only did she allow Takumi to ‘kiss it better’ (she even started kissing him back 😒 ), in the car the next morning she even told Takumi that she was happy to hear his confession! Like, girl, what?! Are you seriously going along with this right now? Despite defending her actions with her boss, she was in a very delicate situation and state, and I also don’t know for sure why she came to Takumi or if she expected anything from him. Still, fact remains that she went along with his idiotic idea and didn’t even reject him when he expressed his true feelings for her while she was married to his brother. They were both at fault. I said what I said. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

So yeah, Takumi has been carrying the guilt of Chiharu’s death with him the entire time and that, in combination with the blame he put on himself for covering up her secret, has been the main reason why he’s never allowed himself to be happy. That’s why he constantly keeps distancing himself from Naho, even after drawing her in time and time again. It’s like, he would admit to liking her and kiss her only to come back the next day to tell her that he’s changed his mind and they can’t be together. It’s all connected to his self-victimization and the fact that he’s punishing himself over and over again for what happened to Chiharu. Everything combined just made the situation super unhealthy and problematic. On the other hand, Naho didn’t make it any better because she in turn also started self-victimizing by constantly blaming herself for not being able to help him. The way their relationship kept building on their respective victim complexes was so toxic it actually became hard to watch. At some point I just kept yelling at Naho to remove herself from the situation because it wasn’t doing either of them any good and Takumi really need to get his shit together first. The simple truth was that he started something new when he was still stuck on his dead first love in several messy ways. It was actually painful to watch him change his mind every other day, confusing the shit out of Naho and hurting her again and again in the process. The worst thing was that, even when Naho was like “I’ve decided to give up on him for real!”, I knew he was going to come back and she was going to fold again and they would end up “happily ever after” without actually resolving anything. Every single time that he pushed her away and then came back to hug her again I was like 🤬🤬🤬 That pattern just kept repeating and it’s also exactly what happened in the end.

What contributed largely to the messy storyline was the writing. Apart from complicating situations such as what happened between Takumi and Chiharu, some dialogues also just didn’t make any sense. As I said, Takumi started changing his mind every other day about what his intentions with Naho were. There was this one ‘official’ confession scene where he told her he liked her (not for the first time, by the way) and kissed her and then the next day he sat her down to reject her again saying he “thought about it for a very long time”. Bro, you confessed to her YESTERDAY. Unless your definition of ‘a very long time’ is one day, this doesn’t make any sense. Naho confirmed this, as she should’ve, by getting super confused and saying that “this is really sudden” because yeah, IT WAS. His feelings literally changed overnight. These kinds of conversations kept repeating and it just got exhausting to watch.
Also, in the final episode when Takumi finally ‘officially officially’ confesses to Naho, he says that patching things up with his brother “made him fully realize that Chiharu was gone and how much he missed her for the first time”. Dude literally spent five years stuck on his feelings for her, punishing himself for her death and now he suddenly says, “Wow, I just realized for the first time that she’s gone and how I miss her”. What the fuck was that about?
Finally, there were several red flags that went up during and after the final confession. When asking Naho to be his forever, Takumi didn’t just rattle on about how much he still missed Chiharu and wished he could spend time with her, he also ‘proposed’ with the words “Please give yourself to me”. ?!?! Until the very end he STILL had the audacity to expect her to devote herself to him even after confirming that he STILL missed Chiharu. In the short and unimpressive scene after that, which shows them in the foreplay of officially sleeping together for the first time, he literally tells Naho that he’ll “love her (or “make love to her” 👀 ; the Japanese language can be quite ambiguous) enough to make up for all the times he made her cry by herself”. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 🚩🚩
Seriously, on the scale of J-Drama love confessions, this one gets a -10 out of 10. I’m gonna run out of red flags.

There were only a few moments where I felt that Naho had a backbone, but she’d always revert to her apologetic self afterwards, and that was a real waste.
I liked how she made Takumi face up to Urae when she was debating on quitting. It was nice to see Takumi becoming the puppy, turning to Naho to ask if he did it right.
Also, although I liked how certain she became of her own feelings for Takumi at some point, it felt kind of weird and out of place when she suddenly went dominant on him, grabbing him by the tie and kissing him first, leaving him uncharacteristically flustered. It was like, even though she did stand up for herself at times, it was very inconsistent and she never retained that attitude for longer than an episode.
Another example was that, even though I thought it was a powerful move of her to cut her hair after Takumi had said that that was the only thing he liked about her, it still didn’t have any lingering effect on her character development.
As we are on the topic of Naho’s hair, I’d just like to take this opportunity to say that I hated what they did with it. In the first couple of episodes, Naho has long hair and she always wears it really cutely, either in a braid or a ponytail. Despite feeling proud of her for actually cutting her hair – because I thought it was so brave of her to actually try to ‘cut’ herself free of Takumi – this was quickly diminished by the fact that they didn’t just cut the actress’ hair and tried to make it work. They actually gave her a typical black bob-style wig and a super sloppy and ill-cut one at that. Like, at least make it look like her actual hair!
I also find it a bit weird that they decided to feature Naho with her long hair on the series’ poster. Admittedly, the long hair looks way better, but she only has that hairstyle for the first couple of episodes. Since I got used to the bob-style wig which she has for more than half of the series until the end, seeing the poster was kind of weird. I actually had to do a double-take to make sure it was really her.

All in all, I think the relationship depicted in this drama was very problematic. Takumi was a walking red flag and though Naho didn’t deserve to get dragged into it, she actively started involving herself into it. While it could be seen as touching that someone goes through so much to help their loved one through their trauma, fact remains that it’s not up to them to fix it. You can only stand by someone for so long without letting it affect your own mental health. Naho literally became miserable because of Takumi and vice versa. The last couple of episodes were just the two of them crying whenever Takumi decided to push Naho away again. In my opinion, they were not healthy for each other and the few ‘cute’ moments they had together didn’t make up for anything.
In positive terms, I do think we should give it to Naho that her loyalty and feelings towards Takumi were so strong that she was prepared to go through all of that to be with him. On Takumi’s side, he really just needed to face his demons and he probably wouldn’t have been able to do it without Naho, despite the fact that it took so many painful situations to get there. I just didn’t like how they kept feeding their own and each other’s sense of self-victimization. As a result, I did not feel anything for them, not when they smiled at each other or when they were breaking their own hearts. The drama became so unnecessarily heavy because of all the crying and needless self-blaming in the second half that I started wanting them to either just cut ties and move on with their own lives or for Takumi to resolve his feelings as soon as possible to at least give Naho some peace of mind.

My biggest issue with this series is that it was probably written to be a heartfelt love story between a pure girl and a troubled guy. The opening sequence depicted a cute little kitten and a big strong tiger, which probably meant to symbolize Naho and Takumi, respectively. Naho’s brightness was meant to light up Takumi’s darkness. Honestly, I liked Naho more in the beginning of the series, before she developed feelings for Takumi, because then she was still very bright in her positivity and she visibly managed to surprise and impress Takumi with her straightforward attitude. It was a shame that she actually ended up getting dragged into his darkness with him.
As if the story and the depicted relationship in this series aren’t toxic enough, I actually find the title of this drama very red flaggy as well. I know that this drama is based on a manga series – and I hope that the manga at least builds up their relationship a bit more steadily and healthily – but seriously, to feature two people in such a toxic cycle of self-victimization and then title it “I Can’t Run Away From It Anymore Anyway”? Although there was no mentioning of the title throughout the series, I can actually picture Naho responding to Takumi’s proposal with “Sure, I’ll give myself to you, because I can’t run away from it anymore anyway.” 🤡 The fact that I can picture her saying it with a genuinely happy smile on her face worries me.

To end on a positive note, I really liked the ending theme, Thermocline by Momosumomosu. It’s a very cute song.

Since this is such a short review, I’m going to add a small cast comments section. I actually didn’t know any of the actors in this show, which was a first!
I don’t know what it was, but something in Shirasu Jin’s face reminds me of Song Joong Gi. I’ve seen him before in Gakkou no Kaidan, Eigyou Buchou Kira Natsuko, Totsuzen Desu Ga, Ashita Kekkon Shimasu, Kizoku Tantei and Erased, although I don’t remember him from any of these (sorry). Apparently we’re the same age! When I looked up more information about him I learned that he recently got married to a woman six years his senior.
Apart from the fact that I didn’t feel much for his character Takumi, I have to admit that his acting was good, especially when it came to his crying scenes. He’s done a whole bunch of dramas so maybe I’ll come across something in the future where he portrays a less problematic character.

I just found out Yokota Mayuu was in 3-nen A-gumi and I hate that I can’t remember her character! But that must mean that she has way more up her acting sleeve, because everyone in 3A was great. Watching her in this show really made me hope that she was a better actress and that the passiveness in her character was solely due to the poor writing of the series. I would’ve just liked to see her portray more expressions in this show, because she really just went from 😊 to 🥺 with no in-betweens. There are at least three more series with her on my list, so I know I’ll get see more of her and I’m actually looking forward to that.

Apparently I’ve seen Asaka Koudai before in Boku no Yabai Tsuma, but it’s been too long so I don’t remember him from there. There are so many Japanese dramas that I watched before I started writing reviews, so I barely remember anyone from those. I wish there could’ve been a bit more consistency in his character. Despite his eventual revelation as a plot-relevant character who know more about what happened to Takumi in the past, he was introduced as a kind of comical and even slightly perverted character, with this “Take off your clothes! 📸” joke. In the end, he only made this joke three times before it disappeared from the dialogue completely and he was suddenly attributed a more serious part. Still, he was a good person and his acting was fine, so I don’t have much more to comment on.

Ishida Nicole looks so familiar to me, but I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything before. Despite being a side character and only getting so much screentime, I actually really liked her performance. She just had a nice presence within the Solo Design studio and it helped to get a little arc about her character and how she came to work at the company. I hope I get to see her in more dramas in the future!

I would’ve liked to see some more action revolving around Kusakawa Takuya’s character Amari. The actor was also in Tantei no Tantei but, as with almost all of the beforementioned Japanese dramas, I barely remember anything about that, let alone the supporting cast. It would’ve been nice if Amari could’ve also gotten a tiny arc like Urae, at least to explain how he’d ended up at Solo Design. In a short series with such a limited cast as this, I think it’s good to explore whatever characters you have. I would’ve liked some more scenes with Amari and Urae in-between all the drama going on between the main leads. A more occasional pallet cleanser would have been very welcome. I see that he’s also done a whole bunch of dramas starting from 2008 so chances are I might come across him again in a future watch.

I’m going to leave it at that for the cast comments and, consequently, this review. I went through it really fast and I’m honestly going to say that I’m glad it’s over. I didn’t enjoy the story or the romance as much as I’d hoped – I was basically just wrecking my brain in confusion because so little things made sense, lol. Still, it managed to make me curious to the original story and if it did anything, it was to make me watch more series with these actors just to confirm that they participated in better written projects than this.
As always, I don’t know what my next watch is going to be, but the review will at least have to wait until mid-June because of my final deadline.

Until next time! x

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.

Sashidashinin wa, Dare desu ka?
(差出人は、誰ですか？/ Who is the Sender?)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Heya-heya-ho! Just wanted to drop one more review before the end of the month and before I get busy with my final college assignments! I’m really liking how my Spin the Wheel app is picking out these varying series that I wouldn’t have been able to get to this soon otherwise. This show proved to be another hidden gem which I enjoyed a lot and I can’t wait to share my thoughts and feelings about it. I didn’t exactly know what it was going to be about before I started but I never expected it would be wholesome in the end – it actually made me tear up a couple of times. I’ve really missed feeling getting this touched by a drama. It’s been a while since I got really caught up in something and I had a really good time watching it, so this will be a pretty positive review. Now, without further ado, let’s start!

Sashidashinin wa, Dare desu ka? is a TBS Japanese drama with a unique format of 40 episodes of 15 minutes, which makes it incredibly addictive and bingeable. The story focusses on Class 2-D of Arakawa High School and their homeroom teacher Tachibana Junta (played by Emoto Tokio). At the start of the first semester of their second year, Tachibana suddenly announces a new element to their homeroom class – something he calls the “Letter Game”. Basically, every single student in their class has to submit at least one handwritten letter to another classmate that contains their honest feelings about something. There are no conditions on what the message should contain, so it can either be positive or negative, and the sender doesn’t have to sign their name under it. The only rule is that, if even one student doesn’t send in a letter before the end of the second semester, the whole class will fail the year.
The main character that the story follows is Kuwazuru Mitsuki (played by Kouzawa Sara). She lives with her extremely lovey-dovey parents (Shimada Tamayo and Kaneko Noboru) and cat, and is childhood friends with her classmate Mitarai Ken (played by Komagine Kiita). While it is revealed that she used to be very outspoken and used to protect Ken from being bullied when they were little, she has become quite timid and now prefers to stay in the background. Her favorite snacks are Cat Potato chips, which she often goes to buy at the convenience store. Her best friend from the same class is Saeki Ayaka (played by Otake Aika) and she has a secret crush on the quiet and mysterious boy in class, Ichinose Touya (played by Fujiwara Taiyu). All in all, she gets along with everyone and lives a peaceful life, but that all starts to change when the Letter Game starts. Suddenly, brutally honest feelings and secrets come to light which only start adding up to the rising tensions within the class. Soon, the question of who sent the letter will turn out to be less important than the issue of communicating and resolving issues between people.

First of all, let me say that this show gave me major 3-nen A-gumi vibes. Even though Sashidashinin is much milder – the kids aren’t held hostage and there’s no threat of killing anyone (I was half expecting Tachibana to go, “If even one of you doesn’t submit a letter before the end of the year, you will all die“) – the elements of the eccentric homeroom teacher (who turned out to be terminally ill), the increasing tensions within the class and the fact that the whole Letter Game was tied to getting the students to spend less time venting their unfiltered feelings on social media really took me back. On the other hand, I think Sashidashinin did a really good job of creating a situation that enabled these kids to open up to each other in a very healthy way. Even when the letters started revealing dark secrets and things got intense, it always ultimately led to honesty and genuine conversations and I loved how the students initiated that all by themselves. Even though Sashidashinin only focussed on a specific group of students within the class (3-nen A-gumi highlighted every single classmate), it was more than enough to build sympathy for everyone and it actually made me like every single person in the end.
Despite the fact that I was really invested in the story and I couldn’t stop binging it, there was one thing that obstructed me from getting “too into it”, and that had to do with the episode format. I honestly feel like I would’ve gotten more emotionally immersed in it if the episodes had been longer and included more content. Having to jump out of it and click on the next episode after every ten minutes broke the flow for me a little bit. Although I still really enjoyed the story and indulged in all the (spilled) tea between the students, I feel like they would’ve been able to build up the tension in certain arcs better in slightly longer episodes. I definitely wouldn’t have been as immersed in 3-nen A-gumi if it would’ve had this format. I think the format played a big part in keeping the series quite light and mild, even though some of the revealed secrets were pretty intense.

I’d like to go over some of the mainly featured characters and their respective stories/secrets that were revealed through the Letter Game.
To switch things up, I’d like to start with Tachibana, the teacher. The whole truth about his decision to start the Letter Game is revealed in the last couple of episodes through flashbacks after he’s already passed away. Throughout the story there are several clear hints that indicate that he is sick, mostly the amount of time he spends with the school nurse, Obata Kimi (Susuki Miyuki). At some point he tells the class that he was inspired by the suicide letter from some famous athlete in which he was finally able to share all his honest feelings to his family members. However, in reality it all started when Tachibana discovered the words “I want to die” on one of his students’ career questionnaires. The forms was anonymous, so he started the Letter Game in order to make his students express their honest feelings and identify who’d written that message in the process. He realized what a lousy teacher he’d been and now that he knew he only had three more months to live, he wanted to make one final attempt to get his students to tear themselves away from their phone screens and communicate openly with each other.
Regarding Tachibana as a person, not much is revealed. We only learn about his motives for the Letter Game after he’s already passed, and we see that he’s concerned for his students’ wellbeing in-between his erratic outbursts and casual dismissals of their problems. Other than that, we don’t get to know him very well, which adds to the enigmatic element of his character. I don’t think he was meant to be a mysterious character per se, because the students also seemed to feel comfortable enough around him, but he kind of made himself stand out more as an eccentric figure after announcing the Letter Game. As I mentioned before, his character reminded me a bit of Suda Masaki’s character from 3-nen A-gumi because even though he freaked everyone out at some point, he still managed to get everyone to be deeply touched by his actions in the end.
I personally would’ve liked to get a bit more information on him as a person, and also on his relationship with Kimi-sensei. I really loved their friendship and even how it was suggested they may have been romantically involved. He was such a different person when he spoke with her and I would’ve liked to get to know him a bit better and not just after he already passed away. But all in all, I thought the way he was portrayed, silently watching the chaos unfold while hoping that everyone would make it out okay, was quite powerful. Unlike the teacher in 3-nen A-gumi, apart from reading the letters out loud he deliberately stayed away and left his students to patch things up by themselves, and that was probably the best way to fix it. By not taking the initiative to solve whatever issue was raised by the letters, he managed to make everyone aware of each other’s situations and get them to stop relying on adults for solutions. It was a really good strategy which could’ve also gone completely sideways.

Ironically, even though Mitsuki is the only student who ends up not submitting a letter, she still ends up playing a very central role in the majority of her classmates’ “letter experiences”. What I thought was so good about this show from the start was how it depicted typical teenage anxiety when it came to friendships, amplified by the influence of social media. Although the overall vibe in class 2-D was great, we are immediately introduced to strained relationships as well, for example in how Hikari has started to crop her former friend Hana out of her Insta photos. It made for a very strong start of the show to see Mitsuki react to herself being cropped out of a picture by her best friend Ayaka, and this worry was immediately amplified by her reception of a letter saying, “I hate you so much”. Little signs that indicate something is wrong while the other person is acting like nothing happened can only drive you crazy with anxiety and confusion, and confronting that weird tension is always scary. However, Mitsuki takes the leap and this not only brings her closer to her best friend, but also to herself.
I think Mitsuki was a very well-written character, all in all. Despite her being such a typical teenager and student, I also thought that her backstory justified very well why and how she became the person she was and how realizing this made her reconnect with her past self. The information that she used to be super upfront and basically got diminished by other people’s negative opinions about her outspokenness really helped me empathize with her. Although it was clearly difficult for her, she really became more open about her feelings and she started talking things through rather than just pretending everything was fine to spare everyone else’s feelings. As she so fittingly says, just trying to get along with everyone without talking about what’s important is basically the same as ignoring people’s feelings. I found it really wholesome to watch how she learned from the lessons the Letter Game and her classmates taught her, and how she used them to reflect and grow as a person.
The only thing that kept puzzling me is how the heck she was related to her parents, lol. Her mom and dad were basically a lovey-dovey comedy duo and Mitsuki was so reserved in contrast. Admittedly, her home situation was super warm and loving, but sometimes I really found myself wondering how Mitsuki could be the product of those two, lol. I really loved her cat, by the way.

I think Ayaka may have been my favorite character in the show. She was such a good friend and she dealt with everything so maturely, even when things got tense and awkward. I loved the way in which she came clean about cropping Mitsuki out of that picture and how she just wanted her to rely on her more. Despite being a typical moodmaker and always acting cheerful and unconcerned, Ayaka was incredibly invested in her friends’ situations and feelings. I have to admit I was kind of scared that her walking in on Mitsuki and Ikuru after she’d told Mitsuki she liked him would burst another bubble, but it was so mature of her to trust her friend instead of lashing out at her. She didn’t even confront Mitsuki or get angry at her for keeping it from her. Their friendship was so wholesome and I loved it.
Besides standing up for Mitsuki when she got that hate letter, Ayaka also proved her solidarity to her classmates in other ways. Although it was very ballsy of her, she actually exposed Hikari’s domestic abuse. This really put Hikari on the spot and I understood why she got angry at first – imagine this suddenly being brought up through an anonymous letter in front of the entire class. But I found it so touching that Ayaka had actually caught her hidden video message and immediately decided to find a way to help her. Others might have seen it and decided to stay away from it, but Ayaka actually went around asking people for advice and searching for solutions. She ended up playing a major part in getting Hikari to safety in the end. The fact that she was prepared to get herself involved in trying to save a classmate/friend was such a redeeming characteristic of her. She kept standing up for her friends, she kept supporting everyone’s crushes even when her own didn’t work out, and she kept supporting her classmates through everything. She was literally the best person.

One of the characters that I found most interesting to dissect was Narita Ikuru (played by Sakurai Kaito). He’s revealed to be the son of a big construction company’s director who grew up in a wealthy family. I guess this initially made him popular on a shallow level as people just liked to ask him for things since he was rich. He would offer to host birthday parties for his friends in his family’s buildings and things like that. Besides that, his big passion is soccer, which he started pursuing with professional ambitions. He’s introduced as the most popular guy in class, and Ayaka has a blatant crush on him.
What made him such an interesting character to me was his duality. On the one hand, he’s depicted as an incredibly cool guy and caring friend. He treats the girls in his class especially respectfully and always offers to help people out when they express their worries and troubles. After Mitsuki receives her hate letter, he constantly asks her if she’s okay and offers to find the culprit for her, and he also acts like a protective older brother to Hikari. This respectful and genuine side of him has attracted a lot of affection from girls around him, but he never plays around with anyone. When Ayaka confesses to him the first time, he apologizes and seems to be genuinely touched even though he doesn’t feel the same. Their friendship doesn’t get strained because he exudes such a genuine and caring energy. In contrast to this soft side, Ikuru can also be seen as kind of a bully. He always sleeps through class and asks others to make his homework for him, and he blatantly bullies his classmate Baba Hiroto (Kubozuka Airu). This duality made him a really intriguing character to gauge, because he really didn’t seem like a bad guy.
His image ultimately started to crumble when someone exposed him with a letter that revealed to the whole class that his family’s business went bankrupt and he also quit playing soccer. Despite everyone’s expectations, Ikuru may have actually been the one suffering the most all this time.
Through an initial letter stating that he’s been bullying his classmate, it’s revealed that Ikuru and Baba are actually childhood friends. With Ikuru pursuing soccer and Baba pursuing shogi – a form of Japanese chess – they started out rooting for each other and having each other’s back, but when Baba kept losing tournaments he started criticizing Ikuru for retaining such a carefree and positive mindset when he wasn’t even as ambitious as him. This caused their friendship to become strained and Ikuru started venting all of his frustrations from his home situation onto his old friend without actually meaning to. I honestly found the arc about their friendship very heartwarming, because you could also see how frustrated Baba had become in constantly being bullied by the friend he still cared about so much. It actually made me tear up when Ikuru finally read Baba’s letter and bowed his head to him in apology in class. Men expressing emotion still gets me.
In their final expressions to Tachibana during his funeral, Ikuru admits that he was the one who wrote “I want to die” on that form. I just found it so heart-wrenching that, for the guy who was always reaching out to his friends and classmates to rely on him, it was the hardest thing to reach out himself. Still, he really grew as a person and it was so satisfying to see how he started talking things out with his male friends as well. I personally found it surprising that he only admitted to having feelings for Mitsuki after she told him that it didn’t matter what he did because he would always be himself. I actually thought he had feelings for her from the start, lol. Despite his genuine intentions, the kabedon and immediate unconsented attempt to kiss Mitsuki before even getting a response from her did surprise me, but he definitely redeemed himself by how he handled her rejection. The fact that he let it go so respectfully and told her he would root for her no matter what was such green flag behavior. He was a really good guy and I’m glad that we got to see his emotional development in this story, especially because he was made out to be the toughest guy in the crowd.

Another character whose duality intriguid me was Ichinose Touya. I think it’s safe to say he went through the biggest character development out of everyone. In class, he’s the silent and stoic study genius who never really engages with everyone. If this had been an anime, he would be the dreamy guy you spot reading a book against a fluttering curtain with cherry blossoms drifting around him. We are introduced to him through Mitsuki’s eyes, whose curiosity in him quickly turns into a crush. As dreamy and mysterious as he might seem, there’s actually a very serious backstory to Ichinose’s character. He lost his father recently and now has to help his single working mother to take care of his two younger siblings. This situation has inevitably caused him to grow up very fast, and now he’s just focussing on getting through school and working hard at his part-time job in order to take care of his family. His situation has led him to avoid other ‘unimportant’ things such as participating in events and dating – he simply can’t afford to think about enjoying leisure activities at the moment. Despite this, Ichinose has a very surprising side to him which he only shows outside of school after he finishes his part-time job. He spends the final hours of his day skateboarding and rapping on the streets. The manager of the gas station he works at is a professional rapper (Cypress Ueno) and it’s clear that Ichinose really admires him. Although he means to keep this side of him a secret, he inevitably ends up bumping into Mitsuki one night and she is more than happy to have a shared secret with him. Through this first encounter, the two gradually become a bit closer and throughout the story Ichinose learns to open up more in class as well. He starts showing more surprising sides of him and participating in social events more as well.
The buildup in the relationship between Mitsuki and Ichinose was one of my favorite dynamics in this show. The more he became certain of his feelings for her, the cuter Ichinose became and it was so adorable to see him try and get friendlier with her. It happened so gradually and naturally but it didn’t take away the euphoric effect when they FINALLY confessed their mutual feelings for each other in the final episode. Admittedly, I didn’t like that he temporarily reverted back to his original ‘leave me alone/it’s none of your business’ attitude towards Mitsuki after his mom collapsed, especially when he’d JUST admitted that he wanted to get to know her better. Still, it just made the way Tachibana and his classmates made him face the fact that he was allowed to be a kid for a bit longer and didn’t have to take on all his family’s responsibility by himself extra moving. Realizing how literally every single person in the room had his back must have meant a great deal, especially since he was so used to avoiding getting involved with anyone in the beginning. I really loved the person Ichinose became when he finally let go of those heavy responsibilities he felt towards his family. It was so sweet to see him finally allow himself to actually be interested in Mitsuki and express that to her, even though it still took him some time to act on it. The way he asked her permission to send her a message on LINE had my heart🥹. Seriously, what a cinnamon roll.

On a side note, I just want to mention how much I loved Mr. Harada from the gas station, the rapper manager. He was awesome. He talked like Killer Bee from Naruto.😂 I loved how he would encourage both Ichinose and Ikuru to talk things out like ‘real men’. On the other hand I thought it was hilarious how he just owned up to the fact that he had no romantic experience whatsoever and would be of no help when it came to advise on women. He’d be like, ‘Bro, I ain’t got nothin’ for ya there. Peace out.’✌🏻😂

The storyline that probably touched me the most was Ken’s. Seriously, bless Ken. As mentioned before, he’s Mitsuki’s childhood friend and classmate and he’s often depicted playing basketball, either at school or by himself in the evening. In the beginning, he’s often shown asking Mitsuki to walk to or from school together and being disappointed when she rejects him, and this is later revealed to be connected to the fact that she doesn’t want Ichinose to see her walk home with another guy. While it would’ve been predictable to interpret Ken’s approaches as an expression of interest towards Mitsuki, this is called into question when it’s revealed that he used to date her classmate Momoko (Ohira Kurumi). They even get back together at some point. Throughout the story, Mitsuki often talks to him about her feelings for Ichinose and he’s always there to lend a listening ear and a supporting shoulder. However, things are not as they seem.
I just want to take this opportunity to say that I was so proud of myself for calling this. I don’t even know exactly when it was, but I definitely knew by the time he started crying when Momoko kissed him during the school trip. I just KNEW it and I’m so happy it played out the way it did. It just makes me so grateful when Japanese dramas include LGBTQA+ issues in their stories and normalize it, because it still feels like such a general taboo in Japanese society.
At some point in the beginning, Ichinose receives a love letter through the Letter Game which is beautifully written and mentions a book called Night on the Galactic Railroad (which is also a main reference point in the show Gisou Furin). Towards the end of the series, Mitsuki finds the book in the library and sees that, several weeks after Ichinose borrowed it, Ken did as well. Instead of creating an awkward situation of confronting Ken with this and people making fun or something, the show treated the topic in such a heartwarming and normalizing way and it actually made me cry. First of all, because Ichinose is a walking green flag. He already figured out the letter had come from Ken but never confronted him or made him feel embarrassed about it. ON THE CONTRARY. During the afterparty of their second year graduation, he actually insists on dancing with him. Not just because they were picked out as dance partners but because he actually wanted to. Seeing him be so accepting and respectful of Ken’s feelings for him despite not being able to reciprocate them was so freaking touching. I was so happy for Ken that his feelings were validated like that. Also seeing Mitsuki express to him that she’d always be his ally…😭 this whole arc was just so wholesome and I loved it. Ken was so freaking brave for sending Ichinose that letter, even if it was anonymous, asking him if he could just keep loving him in secret. It was so fulfilling how everyone who knew validated his feelings so much. He was just Ken and he was Kenough.

Which brings me to Momoko, because despite her fickle attitude in the beginning it can’t be denied that she made a huge sacrifice for Ken. I thought their shared (secret) bond was really touching. At some point towards the end it’s revealed that Momoko had a part-time job as a cosplay model, but she quit after a creepy otaku client got handsy with her. It’s not explained in detail what happened, but I guess we can fill it in by ourselves – it ended up traumatizing her. Still, she could never bring herself to delete her social account because she had a lot of fans waiting for her to make a comeback with new cosplay shoots. When she returned to school, Ken was always the person that sought her out and she ended up trusting him enough to share her secret with him. His constant support made her fall for him and they started dating, but then he suddenly broke up with her. Momoko eventually figured out by herself that he fancied guys and she offered to be his beard despite the fact that she was still genuinely in love with him. Seriously, her feelings were still so strong after they broke up that she became bitter about how friendly Mitsuki was with him, and she ended up sending her that hate letter. As much as I didn’t particularly like her in the beginning, I started liking her more during Hikari’s arc, because that’s when she admitted about Mitsuki’s letter and she just became much more likable. I did feel like something was off when she and Ken started dating again and when it was revealed that she was basically acting as his beard it just clicked. It hit hard that she sacrificed her feelings in order to protect him, after he’d been there for her after that traumatic experience. Still, it did confirm that she had a good heart and cared a lot about her friends.

I’ve already mentioned her a couple of times, but I also want to devote a paragraph to Hikari’s story. Hiiragi Hikari (played by Umakoshi Yuri) is initially depicted as this super bright girl who also works part-time at the students’ regular meetup diner, Bunny’s. She has a blatant crush on Ikuru and she occasionally lets a sneery side shine through, for example when Ikuru pays a lot of attention to Mitsuki or when it comes to her classmate Hana, with whom she’s apparently had a fallout before the start of the series. She also really loves gossip and is very active on social media. She can be described as a bit nosy, as well: she has the habit of secretly filming people and then sharing that as a buzz, which doesn’t always go down well. In any case, she never lets anything slip that would suggest her to be a victim of DV.
I know that in Ayaka’s paragraph I mentioned that I understood Hikari for getting angry at her for exposing her secret like that, but on the other hand I also found it confusing. After all, she reached out herself by uploading a video of her dad coming at her with the words “Help me”. By doing that, did she really not mean for anyone to figure out that it was her? Why else would you upload a video like that? In any case, the arc in which they ended up getting her out of her parents’ house and Tachibana telling her she did so well on her own for so long had me choked up as well. Apart from the fact that this experience really helped her mature, I think she was also one of the people who needed to learn the risks of freely spouting stuff online the most. Considering this, it made all the more sense that she was the one crying the most at Tachibana’s funeral, because he had played such a big part in that lesson for her. If it hadn’t been for him and the Letter Game, nothing would’ve changed for her. I loved that they brought these reasonings back in the students’ respective responses to Tachibana’s passing, because they all related to him in different ways.

Finally, I’ll say something about the most ‘buzzing’ couple of class 2-D: Hana and Yutaro. Watanabe Hana (Utsumi Seiko) and Moro Yutaro (Miura Ryota) had their own livestream channel together, called ‘Hanataro Channel’. When the Letter Game started they often shared details about the daily letters on their channel, which not everyone liked. I’m actually not sure if they were a real couple or that they were pretending to be one for the channel – or both. I believe the reason they broke up at some point was because Yutaro was seeing different girls or something – which I found kind of hard to believe seeing how blatantly unserious he was. Anyways, not long after breaking up, Hana comes to the discovery that she’s pregnant. Not gonna lie, my first reaction to this was, “right, of course, because a teenage pregnancy was the only type of drama we didn’t have yet in this classroom🥲”. But I actually really like what they did with this plotline. After trying time and time again to get Yutaro to talk about it and accept that she intended to give birth to the baby, Hana actually mustered up the strength to take her fate into her own hands. If he was not going to own up to his responsibility, then she was going to raise the child by herself without him.
Honestly, while I wanted to slap Yutaro in the face multiple times, I still found his character so well-written. He was so typically the kind of guy that’s in that phase of trying to act cool but who just can’t own up to it when things get serious. Admittedly, it’s more than valid that he didn’t feel ready to take responsibility for being a father, but he was just so immature about it. He didn’t just literally run away everytime she tried to talk to him, but he also had the audacity to straightout tell her to get an abortion before even asking about her feelings or even properly reflecting on the matter himself. I was so, so, SO proud of Hana for letting him go even though she still loved him. Also, when he had that letter he’d written to himself read out like that and still came back to take responsibility, it was such a freaking power move of Hana to be like, “Yeah, PASS.” I loved her for calling him out for the fact that he was just trying to take responsibility despite still not being ready for it. This made me respect her so much more than if she’d been like, “Yay, now everything is well between us again🥰”. I loved how she took on the responsibility for her baby the SECOND she found out she was pregnant and how she just moved on by herself when Yutaro couldn’t do the same. She was so freaking strong throughout it all and I was really proud of her maturity compared to his. All respects to Hana-chan!🫡

While these were the characters that were predominantly featured throughout the events the Letter Game brought on, there were also some fun side characters that added to the atmosphere in class, like Nogi Shizuka (Nasu Hohomi) who kept falling in love with every single guy in class and Matsuo Akito (Shiroma Taiyou), the class clown who was all muscles but no brain. I also liked that there was some ethnical diversity – I believe two of the students were mixed-race. A general shoutout to the show for inclusion!

All in all, despite the unique format I think this show did a really good job building its characters’ stories and personalities, they justified everyone’s feelings and created a show in which communicating openly was central. I really love it when dramas use their platforms to advocate for honest connections and shine light on the risks and dangers of spouting your unfiltered thoughts online. Although I was mentally preparing myself for an escalation like in 3-nen A-gumi, I was really touched by the way the Letter Game actually enabled openhearted conversations about topics they’d otherwise never felt comfortable bringing up. Shortly after Tachibana shared the “I want to die” message with them, the class went on a school trip and I remember a group of students gathered around a campfire and started sharing experiences about times when they went through something that made them ‘want to die’. Not to share exciting buzzing stories, but to actually relate to one another and not feel alone. I thought that was really beautiful because talking about serious things really helped them to understand each other better. Everything that happened through the Letter Game ultimately helped to bring the class together more closely than before and I thought it was a really powerful thing. It actually made me want to start writing letters to convey my true feelings to certain people, because it would come across much more genuinely than through a text or DM. I really appreciated the openness with which this show dealt with all sorts of topics, from typical teenage misunderstandings to family troubles and future responsibilities. Rather than adding these elements in for shock value – which many Japanese series tend to do and just makes everything overdramatic and angsty without adding any actual depth to the story – I really felt like this series had the educating purpose of making certain topics discussable and highlighting the importance of honest communication. I can’t remember a Japanese series which centered so much on talking about one’s feelings, and especially encouraged it among its male characters. It was a very enjoyable and touching watching experience. It’s been a while since a Japanese show both made me laugh out loud and wipe away a tear every now and then. I found it incredibly wholesome and I liked the way the writers didn’t settle for standard solutions. It would have been so typical for the censored and conservative nature of Asian dramas in general to problematize Ken’s queerness or Hana’s decision to take full responsibility for her pregnancy without the support of the father. Topics like this need to be talked about more openly to become less of a taboo, and shows like this are such a beacon of hope for that.

I’m really glad I got to watch this when I did because it lifted my spirits in this time of widespread worldly crisis. I just wished we could all focus on what’s most important: talking and really listening to each other. Besides being a typically enjoyable romantic high school story, the discussion of contemporary issues for the sake of promoting their importance in this social media-peppered society made it even more resonating and valuable. You never know what someone is struggling with and sometimes something as simple as a handwritten letter might be able to save a person in whatever way. You’re never too cool or mature to rely on people around you when you can’t get out of a situation by yourself. No matter how hard it is to ask for help, you’re never alone and sometimes support manifests itself in unexpected ways, from unexpected people. I’ve personally also learned that my friends tend to be grateful and appreciative when I open up to them, especially because everyone knows how hard it can be. This show definitely teaches a very important lesson and I would absolutely recommend it.

Having said that, I actually feel like this is a good point to end my review. I know I usually include cast comments but for some reason it doesn’t feel necessary in this case. Apart from Emoto Tokio, who I’ve previously seen in Watashi, Teiji de Kaerimasu, all actors were new to me and I saw that a majority of them haven’t done much besides this project. Overall, I think everyone did a really great job. Sure, there were some typical cringy Japanese acting habits here and there, but all in all I think everyone had great chemistry and the acting was pretty natural. Despite the usual tendency to act overly dramatic and angsty, the actors all remained very sincere and credible in their delivery.
Because of its parallels with 3-nen A-gumi, this show made me realize that I really like stories like this, where a group of people is put in a situation that makes them open up and be honest about their feelings. Of course there will be drama and tensions and nasty confrontations, but in the end it will all contribute to a better and safer atmosphere. I guess it all comes down to the fact that I’m a sucker for open communication, and for men who aren’t afraid to show emotion amongst each other.

Although I’m going to start on my next show right after publishing this review, I’m going to be busy with my final college assignments in the next few weeks so I don’t know when I’ll be back with a new review. Just to inform you and keep you on your toes in case you’re keeping track of my review activities, lol.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put my honest feelings in a letter.

Until next time!
xx

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.

The Secret Life of My Secretary
(초면에 사랑합니다 / Chomyeon-e Saranghabmida / Love At First Sight)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10

Hello hello hello! It’s review time again! I’m so glad that my schedule is a bit less busy than the past few months and I was able to watch this (and some other shows) without too many breaks in-between. I was really excited when my Wheel of Fortune app landed on this show because it’s been on my list for ages and I was ready for a new cute office romance story. It had some actors that I was familiar with and I had only seen some minor clips of it before (mostly just the iconic Veronica Park introduction). Apart from that, I had no idea what the story was about and I like going into something without any idea of what to expect, so that was nice. Of course I’m going to be sharing my thoughts and opinions in more detail throughout this review, but all in all I can say that I found it enjoyable. Although it was a bit silly and unserious at times and lacked some depth here and there, there were cute and touching moments and I found it amusing to watch.

The Secret Life of My Secretary is an SBS K-Drama which you can either watch as 32 back-to-back episodes of 35 minutes or as 16 episodes of about an hour. I watched it in the latter format on KissAsian. The story is about Jung Gal Hee (played by Jin Ki Joo), who works as a secretary for Director Do Min Ik (played by Kim Young Kwang) at T&T Mobile, a mobile media company. Despite being the middle child, after losing both her parents Gal Hee was put in charge of taking care of her two siblings. In order to take care of her older brother Joong Hee (Seo Dong Won), who is blind, and send her younger sister Nam Hee (Kim Ji Min) to study abroad, Gal Hee has devoted all of her energy and focus in her job as a secretary. She’s worked herself to the bone under Do Min Ik for the past year, even sacrificing her own meals in order to get everything in order for her demanding boss. With her signature appearance and characteristic red cardigan, everyone has come to refer to her as the OG minion of the company. What’s kept her patient throughout her job is her family motto: “One moment of patience may ward off great disaster.” She strongly believes that as long as she remains patient and keeps her head down, she will ultimately be rewarded for it.
Her boss, Do Min Ik, is one of the head directors of the company. His mother Shim Hae Ra (Jung Ae Ri) is the Chairman and his uncle Shim Ha Yong (Kim Min Sang) is the CEO. However, Min Ik is not actually blood-related to his mother and uncle – he was born out of an affair on his father’s side. After his father passed away he was kept in the family but never completely accepted as a member of it. He, his mother and uncle are basically putting up a show of a happy harmonious family for the public (reminiscent of the male lead’s family situation in Radio Romance). After surviving the accident that killed his father (if I understand correctly) at the age of seven, Min Ik severely hurt his head and had a surgical clip installed. Ever since then he’s been very cautious about getting into any kind of situation where he could get hurt. Apart from that, having been raised in such a ‘pretense’ family environment and being betrayed by a very trusted secretary once, Min Ik has closed off his heart and trust to anyone he hasn’t known for an extended period of time. After the secretary betrayal he has also consistently taken on a new secretary every year, never extending any contracts. His most trusted person at present is his childhood friend Gi Dae Joo (played by Goo Ja Sung), who also works as a director at T&T. Min Ik’s main talent is that he is excellent at reading people and remembering faces and names after only meeting someone once.
Despite Gal Hee’s devoted service and strong belief in her family motto, she faces a harsh disappointment when she too is fired after her one-year contract ends. However, her anger towards her boss is short-lived when she witnesses him getting attacked by a masked person and taking a serious fall from a balcony.
Due to this fall, the clip in Min Ik’s head moves and results in a serious case of prosapognosia – the inability to see or read people’s faces. In fact, it’s so serious that he stops being able to see people’s faces altogether, they just turn into blank canvases, which causes him a lot of anxiety and stress. That is, until Gal Hee appears, because for some reason, she’s the only person whose face he can still see. It turns out that, because of her consistently familiar appearance, the image of her in her signature red cardigan was imprinted on him. With Gal Hee literally being the only ‘familiar face’ around, Min Ik begs her to stay on as his secretary for as long as he has trouble seeing people’s faces.

I typically mention comments on the series’ title at the end of reviews, but I just wanted to point out that I really like the original Korean title, ‘Love at First Sight’, as it directly refers to the cognitive error aspect of the series. The English title ‘The Secret Life of My Secretary’ refers more to the misunderstanding that occurs once Min Ik’s prosapognosia causes a mix-up between Gal Hee and his blind date, Veronica Park (played by Kim Jae Kyung). I still think ‘the secret life’ may not be an entirely appropriate reference, because it’s not like Gal Hee is actively impersonating Veronica Park as a secret second identity or anything. It’s more A Business Proposal than Her Private Life, if you get my drift. Gal Hee gets herself into trouble which results in her having to pretend to be someone else to her boss. So yeah, I actually like the Korean title a bit better as it is both a play on a common expression and refers to the sight-related issue in the story.

At some point, shortly after Min Ik stops being able to see faces, his mother sends him on a blind date. She and Park Seok Ja (Baek Hyun Joo), the CEO of Park Group which owns the several “CinePark” cinemas, decide that, because they have a son and daughter of the same age, their children should meet. Min Ik’s intended blind date will be Park Group’s eccentric heiress Veronica Park (NEVER to be named by her original name Park Ok Soon!), who is not only renowned for her critical eye regarding movies, but also for her notorious reputation with men. Her nickname is literally ‘Suction Pump’, as she ‘sucks in’ men and goes through them in a very quick succession.
Gal Hee actually worked as Veronica Park’s secretary before she came to T&T, and she is NOT keen on seeing her more often, so she really hopes her boss won’t date her. However, because of a mix-up with a different appointment at a different meet-up place, Veronica mistakenly ends up going to the wrong hotel and meets Min Ik’s friend Dae Joo instead, for whom she falls immediately. Anxious to fix the mistake, Gal Hee (who was just about to go clubbing with some other secretaries and therefore happened to be all dressed up) goes to the hotel Min Ik is waiting at to tell him about the mix-up. Instead, Min Ik mistakes her for Veronica Park because of her outfit – he doesn’t recognize Gal Hee without her cardigan and there wouldn’t be a reason for her to turn up at his blind date dressed like that. Meeting her boss like that, Gal Hee succumbs to the temptation of finally being on the receiving side – to have someone serve her and cater to her instead of the other way around. Just for one night, she thinks, I’ll allow myself to have a fancy dinner with my handsome boss. The idea is to repel Min Ik from wanting to see Veronica Park again, so she tries her best to come across as extravagantly and off-putting as possible, but the caring secretary in her still ends up being considerate enough to make him interested in her. As expected, it doesn’t stop at ‘just one night’. As Min Ik’s feelings for her version of Veronica Park increase while he simultaneously starts trusting her more and more as his secretary, Gal Hee ends up stuck in a web of lies and pretense. It only gets more messy when she starts developing romantic feelings for her boss herself.

All in all, the central trope of this drama is the classic ‘one time mix-up leads to lie that keeps growing bigger and bigger until it explodes’. It reminded me a lot of shows like I’m Not a Robot (where the male lead also had some sort of handicap and starts relying on the female lead) and A Business Proposal, (where it also all starts with a blind date that leads to a misunderstanding, and the repelling actually leads to increased interest on the male lead’s part). In this case, the problematic part is that Min Ik actually couldn’t see faces, so it felt extra wrong that this was taken advantage of.
Besides the main storyline of Min Ik and Gal Hee/fake Veronica Park, there’s also the love story between the real Veronica Park and Dae Joo. While Dae Joo initially only approaches Veronica Park for work reasons, Veronica Park’s infatuation with him ultimately results in affection from his side as well.
Apart from the romantic storylines, there’s a third supporting plot in which Dae Joo’s secretary and aunt Lee Eul Wang (played by Jang So Yeon) secretly started a fund to compensate drivers and secretaries within the company who suffered from bad treatment or actual injuries on account of their bosses, with money that was illegally obtained by the company through bribes and wasteful expenses.

Much according to Min Ik’s wavering trust in people, we as viewers are put on the wrong path and led to suspect the wrong people from the get-go. We see Dae Joo meeting up with Min Ik’s uncle in secret. We see Dae Joo inviting Min Ik to their special boat where Min Ik is then surprise-attacked. We see Dae Joo is spotted interacting with the masked guy on CCTV and we see him getting his alibi debunked. Everything points towards the suspicion that Dae Joo has something to do with the attack on Min Ik, and this is only emphasized when he suddenly raises his hand against Min Ik during a vote concerning Min Ik’s potential presidency. Min Ik’s prosapognosia is a very inconvenient factor in the police investigation, because even though he saw the guy’s face during the attack, he’s now not even able to recognize him if he were standing right in front of him. This, again, is taken advantage of. Shortly after the incident, Min Ik is appointed a new driver, Eun Jung Soo (Choi Tae Hwan), unaware that this is the same man who attacked him and caused him to fall. Seeing Dae Joo and Jung Soo’s short interactions at the company, it’s suggested that they know each other and/or are in cahoots with each other. It’s all very suspicious.
The only ‘villain’ character that remains consistently bad throughout the series is Min Ik’s uncle, Shim Hae Yong, because he takes every opportunity to use anything he can against Min Ik. Finding out his nephew has a severe cognitive illness is the best news he can get.
My point is that in this regard, we as viewers are very much led to sympathize with Min Ik as he now can’t even rely on his talent of reading people and determining who is on his side anymore. He can’t even recognize the people he grew up with, so this hits him very hard. Again, it reminded me a lot of the male lead’s situation in I’m Not a Robot because he actually developed an illness which was directly linked to his ability to trust people.

I’d like to go over the four main characters of the series in a bit more detail before I elaborate on some minor characters and my more critical opinions of the story.
First of all, Gal Hee. From the moment we are introduced to her, we can see that she is a very caring sister who is willing to sacrifice her own (mental) health to work herself to the bone to provide for her siblings. After her mother died when she was nineteen, she has bulldozered on working as a secretary for many demanding bosses, accepting her fate as a minion while believing that one day she would be rewarded for her persistence and patience. That in itself already shows a lot of determination. You almost wouldn’t expect it from the way she presents herself and how submissively she acts, but she actually does have a backbone. This is also shown initially when Min Ik asks her to come back as her secretary after firing her, because she doesn’t hesitate to voice her disagreement with the situation and she doesn’t shy away from standing up for herself on how hard she works. What I liked about her was that, contrarily to my expectations when she was first introduced, she wasn’t as much of a passive insecure heroine as I thought she would be. Usually, when characters are portrayed like her, this is immediately linked to an image of being ‘unattractive’. Despite the stark contrast between how Gal Hee looked and how she dressed up as Veronica Park, there wasn’t any recurring element of Gal Hee being put down for her looks per se, so that was nice. She also didn’t keep putting herself down compared to other women, she really stuck to herself and her own strengths and that was admirable. The simple fact that she got angry at Min Ik for firing her because she knew she was worth more than that was so great.
It was nice that it didn’t start out as a romantic story with one party already harboring feelings, because it would’ve been so frustrating to see Min Ik’s behavior at the beginning being condoned through rose-colored glasses. He actually treated her like a doormat, I couldn’t believe he actually made her apply his lip balm for him and called her away from her own meals to feed his office fish. Of course, once the whole fake Veronica Park thing was set in motion, things became messy and complicated because she just couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth and put an end to it. On this topic there’s actually something I need to reflect on, because I usually tend to get too frustrated with characters that start making up excuses so they won’t have to tell the truth. I remember how frustrated I was while watching Gisou Furin because the female lead was getting so stupid in ‘missing’ every opportunity to be honest. In the scene where Min Ik came to confront Gal Hee with the fact she’d been lying to him when she was just planning on telling him and all she could do was apologize, I was all, ‘well if that’s all you’re gonna say he’s never going to understand!!’ I remember being frustrated with Gal Hee for not standing up for herself more in that situation. But then, when she got back home and had another ‘talk’ with her mother, she came back to it and admitted that she hated how she couldn’t say anything else even though she prepared a whole speech, and that actually took away my frustration. Additionally, I’m also in a situation at the moment where I’m not 100% honest about my feelings for someone out of fear that it might ruin things, and I can admit that it’s definitely NOT always a matter of ‘if you wanted to, you would’ve done it already’. I actually started relating to keeping quiet about some things more than I did before. Still, when it involves actively tricking someone and lying to them about pretending to be someone else, it’s a bit different, but at least I stopped getting too annoyed with Gal Hee’s struggles in trying to muster up the courage to tell him.
I liked Gal Hee’s ‘talks’ with her mom, by the way, especially because it tied in with the fact that she was still relying on her mother’s presence so much when trying to take care of her siblings. I thought it was really sweet that she made up an image of her mom to go to for comfort when she was feeling down. In the end it made me feel like Gal Hee was making up sweet and encouraging words from her mother as a way to keep picking up the pieces by herself. When in the last episode her mother told her that she wouldn’t come back now that Gal Hee had another person to seek comfort with, that pretty much confirmed it for me.

I think it’s safe to say that Do Min Ik is the character that goes through the most significant development in this show. I really liked how gradual his development occurred, how it just went from an inconvenient situation to him actually realizing how important it was to keep his friends close while not closing himself off from everyone. He went through a very traumatic experience, not only physically from the fall but also mentally as he suddenly couldn’t see faces anymore and that made him feel so incredibly lonely. Imagine being alone in a crowd of people you don’t know and suddenly seeing one friendly familiar face, the only one you can make out well enough to ask for help – that’s the kind of person Gal Hee became to him. To be honest, I wondered about his true feelings for his secretary for a long time before he started thinking about it himself. There were just some things he did and said to her that really didn’t seem like things a boss would do/say to his secretary without any meaning behind it. Sometimes he’d look and smile at her and I would be like, bro, that’s definitely not how a boss should look at his secretary when he merely just ‘appreciates her work’.😏
You could say that the prosapognosia ultimately led him to develop feelings for Gal Hee. He had no one else he trusted enough to rely on besides her, and I honestly don’t feel like anything would’ve blossomed between them if they’d just parted ways after she was fired. In that regard, it wasn’t a typical ‘meant to be’ romance story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it would’ve been even more typical if it had been revealed that their pasts were also linked in some way. But I still found it interesting to realize that if it weren’t for the prosapognosia, they would probably never have grown closer. Min Ik started developing feelings for Gal Hee next to his blooming feelings for (fake) Veronica Park, so I don’t feel like it only started after Gal Hee pretended to be his blind date.
I saw a lot of synopses of this show that described Min Ik as a ‘cold-hearted boss’, but I actually don’t agree with that. He seemed to be a very mischievous person from the start. Even when he called Gal Hee over and asked her to do all kinds of tedious stuff, there was always a twinkle in his eye that made me feel as if he just liked teasing her. He may have only started becoming aware of everything she did for him later on, but I don’t actually feel like he thought she wasn’t good at her job. He may have held onto her purely because of his prosapognosia, but remember that he also ended up coming to that company sports event that he never went to and even did a piggyback ride with her, purely because she (unknowingly) persuaded him to come. Even though he was going to fire her, he still did something she wanted, to show at least some appreciation for her. I just don’t agree with the use of ‘cold-hearted’ here because that’s not what he was. If you look at his relationships, with his mother and uncle and Dae Joo, you can see that he cares a lot and it actually hurts him to mistrust them. I personally think his upbringing didn’t make him a cold person, but rather someone who hid how much he actually wanted to trust and rely on someone. After being betrayed by a secretary once, I think he just became more cautious in getting attached and started setting boundaries by only employing secretaties for a single year. I think he just spent a very long time trying to protect himself (from both people and situations that might (physically) hurt him) whilst maintaining a cheerful and sharp-witted attitude. He never seemed cold-hearted or shallow to me from the start. Think about it: he literally couldn’t see faces. He fell for (fake) Veronica Park without even knowing what she looked like. His entire attraction to her was based on Gal Hee’s considerateness and kindness, not on her looks. Of course, he kept thinking about what she looked like and how pretty she must be, but he still fell for her without knowing. Falling so hard for someone purely based on their actions and personality is quite rare, because looks always play at least a little part, whether we want to accept that or not. On the other hand, he also fell for Gal Hee knowing what she looked like and didn’t even care that she was his secretary when he finally admitted his feelings for her. All in all, I just want to say that Min Ik wasn’t as bad of a guy as he was made out to be. He lost his most defining ability and fell into a pit of anxiety and loneliness, only to fall in love with what he thought were two different women whose faces he couldn’t even see. He went through a lot of emotional rollercoasters and ended up resenting a lot of people who (sometimes inadvertently) caused him all this, and still he could find it in himself to forgive Gal Hee and even support her when she joined the secretary hunger strike protest against his own presidency. He literally gave up his own chance of becoming the next president so he could get Gal Hee to eat something. You can say a lot about him, but not that he was ‘cold-hearted’.

You may have noticed that so far I’ve referred to Veronica Park by her full name and not just by calling her ‘Veronica’. There’s a simple reason for that: Veronica Park is not just a name. It’s a statement. As I mentioned in my introduction, I’d only ever seen clips of Veronica Park’s iconic self-introduction before I started watching this show. I had no idea who she was going to be – for all I knew she was the female lead. I know that she’s a very popular character and I’ve seen many comments saying that they finished the show because of her. I’d like to contribute to that.
Veronica Park is introduced as a very strong caricatural character, from the way she talks to the way she walks. Her use of exaggerated gestures and expressions immediately causes her to appear as a comical character. I have to admit that I was a bit sceptical in the beginning because I don’t really care for characters that are comical for the sake of being comical. If she’d continued to remain such a caricature, I probably would’ve gotten a bit tired of it eventually. However, she grew on me more than I expected, especially after finding out that Gal Hee had been impersonating her. I am so glad that they motivated her personality with the story of how she never thought anyone would go the extra mile for her. Everyone she met was always just interested in her money and heritage to her family’s company so she just gave up on finding something genuine and started having fun. The side of her that came out during the part where she confronted Gal Hee with the impersonation and tried to convince Dae Joo of her true feelings for him was my favorite. I really loved seeing that mature side of her come out there, it really made me respect her character a lot. She was probably the last character you’d expect a heavy background story from and although it wasn’t that heavy, it was still enough to make her character more appealing to me, so I’m grateful for that. Apart from that I also came to like the eccentric ways in which she tried to seduce Dae Joo. She somehow managed to be vulnerable by completely going for it and that actually made me want to try being more honest and direct about my own feelings as well. She won Dae Joo over by being her genuine messy and funky self, no shame and no regrets, and I think that’s something to be admired for. I also loved how unapologetically crazy she was together with her mother. I mean, you could see where she got it from, lol. I loved how her mother also introduced her to Min Ik’s mother as ‘I have a crazy daughter available’, lol. Like, even her mom didn’t try to hide that she was eccentric or try to make her behave differently, and I really liked their dynamic.

Because of the misleading events in the beginning of the story, I really wasn’t sure what to think about Dae Joo initially. For me it was mainly because he was already shown having secret dinners with Min Ik’s uncle before I got a good understanding of what kind of person he was. From then on, everything just seemed to point towards him as being suspicious and secretly villainous. Honestly, I kind of judged him for lashing out at Min Ik when he openly confronted him with his suspicions. It couldn’t be denied that the circumstances were suspicious and everything seemed to point to him. Also, it was clear that Min Ik didn’t want to believe it but just needed clarity about the situation. The way Dae Joo started guilt-tripping Min Ik for suspecting him didn’t seem very Dae Joo-like, although I understood how hurt he must have been by the suspicion itself.
Apart from that, Dae Joo was a perfectly pleasant character. Pleasant, leaning on bland, if I may honestly say so. I didn’t really feel much for him throughout the show, only that he was a good friend with a nice personality. I actually feel like he gained more personality throughout his relationship with Veronica Park, although I definitely cringed when he said, “Awesome~!!” in the same way as her in the final episode, lol. She definitely rubbed off on him. But yeah, even his background story was mostly explored through the eyes of his secretary, and he never talked about what losing his mother at a young age was like for him, so there weren’t that many aspects about his character or story that allowed me to get more (emotionally) attached to him. I would’ve liked to get a bit more in-depth information from him about how he was always the poorer friend to Min Ik, or how him having to work his way to the top from a poorer background shaped him as a person. I liked the scene where he gave Min Ik his boat as a kid because he felt bad for how his mother treated him and then later admitted that it was a lie that he gave that boat away willingly. Like, there were some aspects of their friendship that came out that I liked, but I still don’t feel like his character was explored as much as the other three main leads. Everyone else had at least one crying or emotional confession scene, but Dae Joo remained pretty much out of sight in that regard. Although I think that putting him next to Veronica Park made for a very interesting romantic dynamic, I do feel like his character could’ve been attributed more characteristic features or interesting elements, because now he just kind of went along with what happened to the other main characters.

I want to talk a little bit about Lee Eul Wang and her secret secretary organization. It’s revealed at some point that Eul Wang was the sister of Dae Joo’s mother, and that the two sisters used to work for Min Ik’s father. There’s a flashback of the two at Min Ik’s house when he was little, and they were also seen in a flashback running errands for Min Ik’s father at the company, which simultaneously reveals that he didn’t treat them very well. One day, Dae Joo’s mother got into a car accident while trying to save the fish that was meant to be a gift for Min Ik. After losing her sister, Eul Wang decided that she would try to do what she could to compensate drivers and secretaries suffering at the hands of their bosses. She started to intercept items that were bought with bribe money and replaced them with fakes, for example. She managed to get together a group of drivers and secretaries to help her out, ultimately forming the organization Euldoguk.
I remember being very intrigued by her relationship with Dae Joo in the beginning. It seemed like they grew up together although she was clearly older than him, but he still called her ‘noona’ rather than ‘imo’. I do believe that she was his aunt, his mother’s sister, but it’s also not that she took over the motherly care for him or anything. I found it quite mysterious. It was clear that she cared about him more than a secretary would normally are about her boss, and this was later confirmed when she told him she’d promised his mother she would keep protecting him. This also resulted in the fact that a large part of the money from the fish incident was given to his tuition to study abroad. Other than that, Dae Joo didn’t have anything to do with the organization – he didn’t even know it existed – and his previous encounters with Min Ik’s driver were also purely coincidental.
Eun Jung Soo, Min Ik’s attacker-become-driver, was also a victim that Euldoguk strived to protect. He used to be the driver of Min Ik’s uncle, but was mistreated so badly that he got into a traffic accident and ended up at the hospital with several fractures. Seriously, this made me so angry. Shim Ha Yong was literally kicking him in the shoulder from the back seat, screaming at him while they were on the freaking highway. He caused the accident by himself and then proceeded to sue Eun Jung Soo for intending to harm him. Eun Jung Soo didn’t get any compensation for getting hospitalized, and Eul Wang reached out to him. The attack on Min Ik was unintentional, as Eun Jung Soo was only trying to get back a USB stick with the information of Euldoguk that Eul Wang had entrusted to him. After that, Eun Jung Soo met Dae Joo, who just happened to know that Min Ik was in need of a new driver. Eun Jung Soo didn’t even know that the client he was getting introduced to was the same guy he attacked before. In any case, none of it was intentional or part of some plan to undermine Min Ik’s chance at becoming T&T’s new president.
While the last couple of episodes reveal what had truly happened and kind of redeem Eul Wang and Eun Jung Soo’s actions, I still think they could’ve made themselves way less suspicious from the start. While I thought it was nice to have some underlying mystery story to be solved besides the main love stories, I did feel like it could’ve been built up a little better. They made Eun Jung Soo seem like such a suspicious person despite his timidness, and the in-between random scenes of the secretaries running errands for Eul Wang, such as stealing that painting from Shim Ha Yong’s office, were kind of confusing. In hindsight I understand it better, but throughout the rest of the series I couldn’t really find myself to be that invested in what was happening in the background.

Before I move on to my main criticism of the show, I want to devote one last paragraph to the secretaries at Gal Hee’s office. Their bond really reminded me of Jugglers, which is also basically an homage to secretaries who have to bend over backwards for their demanding bosses. Goo Myung Jung (Son San), Ha Ri Ra (Kwon So Hyun) and Boo Se Yeong (Choi Yoon Ra) were three other secretaries that stuck with Gal Hee throughout the show. They were the people Gal Hee was closest to in the office, but they were also active members of Euldoguk without her. I found them a very funny trio and I enjoyed their scenes, especially Myung Jung, she cracked me up.
Speaking of these three, does anyone know what the heck happened to Mo Ha Ni? Ha Ni (Han Ji Seon) was Shim Ha Yong’s secretary and seemingly the secretary Gal Hee was closest to at the office. It seemed like she’d get a much bigger part to play when Shim Ha Yong asked her to keep an eye out for Min Ik and his secretary, and all the more when it was revealed she knew Eun Jung Soo, she even called him ‘oppa’. I was so intrigued by how she could be related to Eun Jung Soo (although now I suppose she just knew from Euldoguk) and if she would go against Gal Hee as Shim Ha Yong’s secretary (again, Jugglers flashback) but she just disappeared altogether! I think the last scene where she appeared was during the funeral where Min Ik momentarily regained his cognitive ability, when she called Eun Jung Soo to get out of there, but after that she never appeared again. That was kind of a bummer. I always find it a bit sloppy when series don’t deal well with the sudden disappearance of a character. Even if an actor is cut from the show halfway through, at least make up an excuse of what happened to them. Sometimes this doesn’t make it better (I remember this happening to a key character in The One and Only and the excuse they made for it was also very sloppy) but don’t just omit an entire character and stop mentioning them altogether after giving them some interesting information that could impact the plot. Maybe not everyone who watched it noticed this, but I did, and I want to know what happened to Ha Ni.😤 Anyways, I liked the secretaries, they were a fun bunch.

I found Min Ik’s mother, Shim Hae Ra (Jung Ae Ri) quite difficult to gauge. In the first flashback we see of her she didn’t seem fond of Min Ik at all, but in the present I couldn’t help but feel like she was hiding the fact she actually developed affection for him. She appeared cold throughout the story and she kept telling him to put up a good show, but in the meantime I felt like she didn’t actually resent him. She even agreed to make his favorite dish for him after he’d be elected president and that wasn’t something they would show off to the public. It was nice that she finally accepted him in the final episode though, when she introduced him as her son to the new housekeeper. I found it hard to determine at what point her feelings might have changed or if they had already changed, but I kept feeling like she at least cared more about him in a sincere way than his uncle did.
Speaking of that uncle, I just need to address him as the official antagonist of the story. What a childish jerk this guy was. He literally didn’t care about Min Ik at all, family or no, he grabbed whatever he could to use against him, including such a delicate issue as his illness. He didn’t even stop to think about how awful it was for his nephew to suffer from this, no, it just meant he wasn’t qualified, ha! Also the way he treated Eun Jung Soo and the other secretaries was just wrong. For a middle-aged man he acted like a spoiled little child. He’d literally point and laugh at someone and then skip away humming as if he just stole another kid’s marbles. Pathetic little man, that guy. I don’t have any good things to say about him, really.

As I also marked down the previous series I watched for being a bit unserious regarding certain topics I hope I don’t seem too uptight about how I review, but I find it important to voice my own perspectives and opinions. I saw that this show got a lot of high ratings on MDL because people loved its unseriousness, so it’s really just a matter of taste. As I mentioned earlier, I had an overall good time watching this, so it’s not that the unseriousness made me dislike it, per se. It’s just a very typical K-Drama with typical tropes and misunderstandings, which has both its charming and frustrating aspects.
I think I felt it the most with Gal Hee’s older brother. The thing is, I felt like the fact that he was blind didn’t actually contribute as much to the story as it could have. The moment Min Ik lost his ability to see faces, I immediately thought that helping him out would actually suit Gal Hee well because she had a brother who couldn’t see. Like, I thought that aspect might have become a significant link to how she would start helping her boss out, because she knew how to treat people who couldn’t see (well). However, I don’t think they actually created a direct link from that at all. I think Gal Hee only once mentioned that she had a blind brother but never really made a connection between him and her boss. I don’t know, it just felt like her brother’s blindness would’ve actually contributed some more to the depth of their relationship or something. Contrarily, the brother was made into quite the comical character. While I was appalled by the fact that Eun Jung Soo literally broke into their house and attacked a blind person for a laptop, the scene suddenly became comical because of Joong Hee’s actions and that changed the whole mood of the situation. It was a serious break-in, but then I suddenly couldn’t take it seriously anymore. I guess I found it a pity that the blind person became the clown. I don’t know if his representation of someone with blindness resonates with some people, but I wasn’t really able to take him very seriously. On the contrary – it started to annoy me a bit at some point. While he was a very loving brother to Gal Hee, and their hugs really warmed my heart, I did start feeling like he was doing it on purpose or something. I wasn’t really sure what to think of his character.
I also had mixed feelings about Nam Hee. She lies to her older siblings that she’s admitted into Pennsylvania University with a fake admission letter, only to hide away and do some auditions to try and become ‘a star’. Like, I understand that she wanted to find a way to contribute to the financial situation and it was sweet that she wanted to do it for Gal Hee because she saw how much her sister was carrying on her own (Backstreet Rookie vibes). Still, I found it a bit random how she ended up at Veronica Park’s place because she didn’t actually do anything there, she was always just sitting around in her office, bickering with her. Gal Hee eventually busts her at a theatre show and then she comes back home and that’s it. I get that they wanted to give Gal Hee’s siblings some storylines of their own, but this again didn’t really add anything to the story for me.
The part in the second-to-last episode where Joong Hee and Nam Hee intrude on Min Ik and Gal Hee’s date, was one of my least favorite ones, lol. I got so annoyed at them for knowingly tagging along and then just changing the trajectory, making it impossible for the two lovers to spend a single moment together. What was that about? Was it a test or something? I was really irritated by their interruptions there, and I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t just allow them to go on a date together. It’s not as if they hadn’t been seeing each other before that, so why the sudden urge to intrude now? Again, maybe I’m just too serious but I didn’t understand why they had to do that.

My general criticism of the show is that I felt like it was a bit sloppy in terms of consistency. I don’t just mean the fact that they omitted a character without explanation, but the plot just felt a bit wobbly to me all in all, as if they went with the flow without paying too much attention to detail. The humor was a bit slapsticky and random and it lacked depth. I don’t like comparing things to each other, but one thing I liked about A Business Proposal for example, was that they used the classical slapsticky jokes and tropes as a kind of reference to the old-school series but supported it with two very solid love stories built on genuine trust and emotional connection. I felt like this series leaned too much on the comicalness of the tropes but struck out on adding a certain layer of depth that I personally would have appreciated.

The main inconsistency for me came from the details of Min Ik’s prosapognosia. When it first happens, we experience it together with Min Ik: first people’s faces start changing and morphing into other people’s faces, and then they disappear altogether, leaving a blank canvas. Even though he sees Gal Hee’s face, he later says that he still can’t read her expressions very well. As in, he can’t see if she’s laughing or crying. But, so, what, does he just see one neutral expression on her face the entire time? One time they were on the beach and Gal Hee was making a really troubled expression because she felt so bad for misleading him, yet she told him that she was smiling very widely because he extended her contract. Like, it was clearly audible from her voice that she wasn’t smiling, but apparently he missed that too? Also, even after it was established that he could only see Gal Hee’s face when she was wearing her red cardigan, there was also one scene where she was wearing the cardigan and he told her he couldn’t see her face. So… I didn’t get a very clear image of what exactly he could and couldn’t see, and how his prosapognosia worked. His doctor started sharing ways with him to increase his blood pressure, as this seemed to help with a different patient, but in the end his ability only came back on three occasions.
His illness is never fully cured, as the final dialogue in the last episode reveals that Min Ik and Gal Hee basically continued to thrive on the short-lived moments where he regains his sight and they can make out whilst he can actually see her face. Doesn’t seem ideal, but hey, if it works for them, who am I to judge? In any case, my point is that, while the prosapognosia was the key instigating event in the series, they sure managed to keep its details and conditions vague until the very end.

To conclude my main analysis, I want to go into a little more detail about things I liked about the relationship between Min Ik and Gal Hee. There were several scenes that I found really sweet and even gave me some butterflies. All in all, I really liked to see Min Ik register the level of considerateness Gal Hee was giving him, even when she was pretending to be Veronica Park. The way she jumped up when she saw him eating peanuts, how she massaged his hands to stop his indigestion. Things that she learned during her work as his secretary now suddenly got a more romantic layer to them, and it was nice to see Min Ik suddenly take in those gestures differently. Receiving this treatment from fake Veronica Park ultimately made him realize that Gal Hee was the one who’d always treated him like that, which made him come to accept his feelings for her. Sure, it was a bit awkward to see him struggle with his feelings for both women, not realizing they were the same person, but I do think that the way he bounced back had a really good build-up to it. The time it took him to forgive Gal Hee was also well-paced, it wasn’t too short or not too long.
The scene that probably gave me the most goosebumps was the scene where he helped her wash her hands in the sink. I don’t know, it was oddly sensual. Also I have a thing for hands. Anyways, it was so weirdly sweet and typical that Gal Hee was the only one going, “uhm, sir?? 😳😳” while he was so focussed going, “no, we have to finish all the steps, Secretary Jung.”😂 I think that was even before he admitted his feelings for her, so it just added to the things he did and said to her that made me sceptical about whether he really didn’t realize his true feelings for her way earlier than that. I mean, he was so incredibly sweet to her. He hugged her and sent her appreciative texts… I mean, I don’t think that’s the norm for typical purely professional boss-secretary relationships.

I’d like to go over some cast comments now!
Since the last association I have with Kim Young Kwang is that of a psycho serial killer, it was kind of refreshing to see him in an innocent romantic comedy again! I’ve seen him in a bunch of shows such as Pinocchio, Go Ho’s Starry Night, Lookout, Room No. 9, and most recently Somebody, and his appearances throughout have ranked him on my list as an actor I always like to see in dramas. I feel like there are so many sides to his acting and it’s nice that he gets to explore a wide variety of roles in his repertoire. I think he had a very nice character presence in this show. It was nice to see Min Ik grow as a person in a very gradual and natural way. I honestly felt for the guy, because there were a lot of shitty aspects to his life and the way he grew up but he couldn’t exactly step away from those things either. In hindsight I really think that he knew his family wouldn’t fully accept him no matter what he did, and that he thought he ended up at least protecting himself by staying out of trouble and keeping people he spent a lot of time with at bay. He needed a caring person like Gal Hee to lower his walls a bit and admit that he needed some real comfort and TLC. I liked seeing Kim Young Kwang in this, it was nice to see a more comical side to his acting again after all the angsty stuff I’ve seen of him lately. I always like seeing him portray different emotions like sadness and fear, because he just naturally exudes confidence.

I’ve seen Jin Ki Joo before in Moon Lovers Scarlet Heart Ryeo and Come and Hug Me. The latter was the first main lead role she landed, and it was nice to see her as the female lead in a romantic comedy, as I hadn’t seen her in that genre before. Can I just say that she has such a cute doll face and the most adorable smile ever? Every time he faced changed into a smile I was like 🤗🤗. Anyways, it was nice seeing her portray the character of Gal Hee, as I had never seen her in something comical before. Come and Hug Me was a love story but with a super intense layer to it so I don’t remember her smiling a lot. It was nice to see a different side of her acting and she surprised me, to be honest. Her emotional scenes in particular were very good, but it was also funny to see her expressions go all over the place in the more comical scenes. Now that I’ve seen her in three completely different roles, I’m curious to see more of her. I’m still a bit new to her even though she has been a leading lady for some time now. I guess I just have to see more of her!

As iconic Veronica Park’s character was, I was actually surprised I didn’t know Kim Jae Kyung from anything else. I see on MDL that she was in Madam Antoine, but I don’t actually remember her from there, it’s too long ago. I think her performance was my favorite in this show. She did a great job at balancing Veronica Park’s eccentricity with the deeper layer that was beneath it and the switch to her more serious acting happened so naturally, it really surprised me. She’s the kind of comical character that I like because despite her caricatural tendencies, she delivered 100%. I’ve said this multiple times before in series, but for me humor only works when the actor isn’t trying to be funny and it’s just the character that takes themself super seriously. In Veronica Park’s case, she may have been a bit cray-cray but she never once apologized for it, she embraced it and the actress embraced it and that’s ultimately what made me love her so much. In fact, she even inspired me in a way, because it actually dawned on me that being unapologetically yourself, not caring what other people say of you, can also attract the right people. I would really like to see Kim Jae Kyung in some other show again, I really loved her performance.

For some reason I expected Goo Ja Sung to be an idol actor or something, but he’s not. He’s the same age as me, I found out! He hasn’t done that many acting jobs yet and I haven’t seen him in anything else. I hope he’ll get more opportunities to act in the future. As I said in my review, his character didn’t leave as strong of an impression on me as the other main leads did. However, I don’t want to blame the actor too much for that, because it mostly has to do with the fact that I feel like the show could’ve given Dae Joo much more to work with in terms of storyline and character development. He remained the same throughout the show and I would’ve really liked to get some more emotional depth from him. His acting was good and I liked the unlikely couple he made with Kim Jae Kyung. I just wanted to get a more insight into his background and perspective of the story.

Ever since I discovered Jang So Yeon in Touch Your Heart, I keep discovering she’s in so many other (older stuff) as well! She also appeared in While You Were Sleeping, Something in the Rain and Crash Landing on You and probably a lot of other shows that are still on my list. I really like her as an actress. She has such a sweet motherly face but I really like when she gets a role that has some edge to it. I liked seeing a bit of that edge in her character Lee Eul Wang, fighting for fair treatment of drivers and secretaries belonging to large companies. Despite the futility of it I really liked her spunk when she started calling Shim Ha Yong out for his mistreatment of his employees and how she was prepared to take all the blame for what she’d done and wouldn’t even judge the others for wanting to stay on with the company. On the other hand, I would’ve like to see her relationship with Dae Joo get established a bit more thoroughly. It kept me guessing as to how exactly they were related and I really liked their dynamic in the few scenes they had together, so I would’ve liked to see a bit more of that. I really like that Jang So Yeon keeps popping up in both new and old shows I watch, it always makes me go, ‘Hey, it’s the lady with the nice face!😀’ I hope I’ll get to see her in more series to come.

Note: I am aware that my cast comments have started to become shorter recently. I’ve started focussing more on the lead actors and only adding comments on specific supporting characters when I really want to give them a special shoutout. In this case I didn’t really feel the need to do that, as I’ve already mentioned the characters in my review. That’s not to say I think the cast was bad! Just thought I’d clarify that.

We’ve reached the end of this review and it took me an entire day, again. To sum up my thoughts about it in one concluding paragraph: I thought it was amusing. I had a fun time watching it, it was a very typical romantic comedy with some occasional emotional and touching moments that added a bit of depth to it. It reminded me a lot of several other shows, which I have also referred to in the review. It was kind of mixture of classic office romance dramas that I’d watched already, so it felt very familiar.
Still, it was a little bit too slapsticky and tropey for my taste and I missed that bit of depth. While I do like me some light and comical stuff without too much drama every once in a while, I would’ve liked to get some more depth and consistency within different aspects of the story. The love stories were all very lovey-dovey and sweet but lacked real passion, I didn’t feel as much chemistry between the respective couples as I would’ve liked, and I feel that that’s because of the light and comical tone of the show. Nothing became too serious or too heavy and that’s definitely not a bad thing, but I guess I was just in the mood for something more serious and passionate. It happens. Still, I don’t want to take away the fact that I found it very entertaining to watch and some scenes really put some things into perspective for me. I’m glad I finally got to watch it.

My hope is that I can’t finish another show before the end of May, but on the other hand this month is going to get a bit busier again with some deadlines (including me finishing my thesis) so we’ll see when I’ll be able to upload the next review! I’m super excited to spin my Wheel of Fortune app to see what’s up next, so I’m going to do that for starters.

Until next time! x