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