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