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.
Gisou Furin
(偽装不倫 / Fake Affair)
MyDramaList rating: 5.5/10
Hello there! Has it been less than a week since my last review? It certainly has, but again, I chose a fairly short drama and I went through it very fast. In all fairness, my impatience to finish this particular drama also had to do with my impatience to just get it over with, as it didn’t take long for me to get incredibly frustrated while watching it. I’ve had my share of typical Japanese drama series, but it’s been a while since I got this agitated during the development of the story. On the other hand, this means that I have a lot to share about it and I’m eager to express my thoughts in this review. Even though my personal criticism on it won’t be that positive per se, I hope I can still make this a worthwhile read.
Gisou Furin is a 10-episode Japanese drama series (episodes lasting about 52 minutes each) which centers around Hama Shoko (played by Watanabe Anne), a 32-year old temp worker who just can’t seem to succeed in finding a suitable marriage partner. She’s been actively participating in so-called ‘marriage hunting activities’ (kekkon katsudou – ‘konkatsu’ for short) for three years, but it’s become apparent to her that guys just don’t seem to be attracted to her. On the other hand, she’s had to watch how her older sister Yoko (played by Nakama Yukie) traveled the ideal path a woman should: a stable job, a good husband, a steady marriage. Yoko’s husband Yoshizawa Kenji (played by Tanihara Shosuke) is now even living with them at their parents’ house. When Shoko’s current temp contract ends, she decides to give up on konkatsu for good and go on a trip to celebrate this liberation for herself. She enjoys traveling and going on solo trips every so often, and this time her destination is Hakata. She even manages to persuade Yoko to lend her one of her more expensive dresses so she can really get into the self-treating holiday mood. However, when she boards the plane, Shoko finds her sister’s wedding ring tucked inside one of the dress pockets and she accidentally drops it when a piece of luggage hits her on the head. The person who happens to pick it up for her, the person she happens to be sitting next to on the plane, is Banno Jyo (played by Miyazawa Hio). Immediately struck by his handsome appearance and still fuzzy from the hit on her head, Shoko thoughtlessly confirms that the wedding ring is her own, leaving Jyo to believe that she is married. As it was his luggage that hit her, Jyo offers to take her out for dinner at Hakata as a way of apologizing. He is originally from Hakata, and he knows his way around the place, so he offers to show her around. By nightfall, things escalate even further and before Shoko knows it, Jyo suddenly asks her if she’s up for having an affair with him, just for the duration of that short holiday.
Just to give a little more context to the situation in which the story is set, it’s a period in which the news is overflowing with cases of the so-called ‘affair boom’, in which many scandalous affairs amongst celebrities are revealed. It seems to have become a trend for married people to have affairs, and this is also something that Jyo refers to when he asks Shoko the same thing. Of course, we know that Shoko isn’t doing anything wrong – she’s not actually married, so she doesn’t have anything to feel bad about. However, in the spur of the moment, Shoko decides to keep up the lie and goes along with his proposal. They spend the night together. Shoko initially thinks that Jyo is just looking for some fun, and that’s why she tries not to feel too guilty about lying. During their last night together, she takes off her sister’s wedding ring and in the rush of catching her flight early the next morning, she forgets it in the hotel room.
In the meantime, Yoko, Shoko’s 37-year old sister who is so seemingly happily married, is facing a situation of her own. Turns out, she is having an actual affair herself, with a boy 14 years younger than her. Yagami Futa (played by Seto Toshiki) is a 23-year old aspiring boxer with bright pink hair who’s managed to provide Yoko with a sense of youthful freedom that she doesn’t feel in her marriage with Kenji. However, as she doesn’t intend to divorce Kenji, Yoko is keeping up appearances. That is, until Kenji starts noticing she’s not wearing her wedding ring all the time, and she also keeps postponing and last-minute cancelling their plans together.
Initially Shoko is forced to get back in touch with Jyo after losing her sister’s wedding ring. The two sisters find themselves in new predicaments as their situations start getting intertwined more and more. As Shoko’s relationship with Jyo becomes more serious and she finds herself trapped within her own lie more and more, Yoko starts asking for her sister’s help in covering up her affair more often, all the while invoking more and more suspicion with her husband Kenji. As it turns out, literally no one’s life is what it seems, everyone has their own objectives and reasons for their actions, and seemingly decent relationships are revealed to have less ideal hidden layers.
One thing that I want to admit I found good about this show was that it dealt with the relativity of relationships. Nothing was as perfect as it seemed from the outside, and it sure made me change my mind about several characters throughout the show. For example, while I initially judged Yoko for constantly sneaking out of her engagements with Kenji, I did come to understand her point of view when she eventually explained her attraction to Futa, and while I constantly felt sorry for Kenji, his objective to marry Yoko was also put in perspective. While I was initially against Yoko’s relationship with Futa, I did come to see that Futa was kind of a victim in the whole situation as well, as Yoko had also been lying to him from the start. It just proved that every person’s story had a double side to it. Shoko is the main character so we’re primarily shown her story and her thoughts on everything, but the other characters’ truths all take a while to come out, and once everything was out in the open it definitely helped me understand everyone’s situation better. This doesn’t mean I agreed with the way most people chose to deal with their issues, but I’m glad they at least managed to come out with everyone’s truths at the end of the show, for better or for worse.
A couple of things that I hated (yes, I used that word) about the show is that it incorporated a couple of my least favorite tropes into one series, making things actually go from bad to worse throughout the story. The trope in which a lie gets bigger and bigger, the trope where the main leads don’t communicate properly and where one just pushes the other away harshly to ‘protect’ them, the trope of a terminal illness and on top of that, (faked) amnesia. Seriously, whenever I thought things couldn’t get worse, another one of these tropes would present itself to make me go, ‘you know what, never mind’. I was almost constantly frustrated about Shoko’s inability to own up to her lie, the way it kept being postponed for no reason, and the way it took people so long to come out with their honest feelings. Especially in Jyo’s case, his tendency to not even talk to Shoko, to just jump to conclusions and give up and run away so easily without telling anyone anything were all major red flags to me.
I have to admit that I had a really hard time feeling any real chemistry between the two leads, as every single thing that happened between them was kind of problematic and even when they finally managed to see eye to eye and Shoko managed to convince Jyo that he needed to stop lying and running away, it was all wrapped up conveniently easy and I just didn’t feel it.
In the first part of the first episode, I really liked Shoko’s personality. She seemed like a very individualistic woman who accepted that finding a marriage partner and living life the way society expects her to isn’t for her. I thought the fact that she chose to go on a trip to celebrate giving up on marriage hunting was very characteristic of her, especially because traveling is established as something she often does to take her mind off things. I immediately rooted for her to find her own happiness, with or without a guy. However, as soon as she meets Jyo, it’s like her personality changes completely. She immediately starts acting like a helpless damsel in front of a handsome guy. While she tries to convince herself that this is her own decision, that she’s just going to pretend she’s married and enjoy this fake affair for the duration of this trip, I couldn’t really see this reflected in her behavior. To me it seemed like she just became super antsy and stiff. Rather than taking control of her own life and owning up to her self-made decision, it was more like she couldn’t stop herself from getting pulled in this specific direction.
In all honesty, they only met each other that same day, and Jyo was only showing her a very generic type of kindness. I felt like Shoko just kept blaming everything on that bump she got on her head, and the truth was that she immediately wanted to believe they shared some kind of destiny. After all, while three years of marriage hunting in which she’d always been completely honest about herself didn’t work out, one accidental encounter resulting in a lie about her marital status led her to this instantly successful romantic connection. She couldn’t stop romanticizing even if she tried. On top of that, she also finds out that their names are both similar to the names of the main characters in this book called “Night on the Galactic Railroad”, about two friends who travel together in search of true happiness. It all inevitably makes Shoko expect things, and while I couldn’t fully blame her for that, I still don’t think she handled it very well. After meeting again in Tokyo and getting her sister’s ring back from him, Shoko finds herself unwillingly continuing the lie of being married. That is, she actually wants to tell him the truth, and she tries to bring it up multiple times, but it’s always either the wrong timing or an interruption that keeps her from confessing that she’s actually single. It all becomes even more complicated when she makes Jyo believe that Kenji is her husband, and all the while she’s being involved in her sister’s affair as well. It just becomes very messy, and it leads to a lot of misunderstandings that aren’t communicated properly.
Needless to say (but still saying it), the continuous lying and postponement of honesty amongst all the characters formed the main cause of my consistent frustration while watching this series. While I initially liked Shoko’s personality and the way the show started, the story becomes increasingly tedious as she continues with her lies. It’s not just that she kept lying for no solid reason, but the thing that annoyed me the most was that she literally had every opportunity to tell Jyo the truth. She was able to tell him on every single occasion they were together, but for some reason she kept tricking herself into believing she continuously missed her chance. Admittedly, she kept being interrupted whenever she tried to bring it up, but if she really wanted to say it she should’ve just interrupted the interruption. She could’ve just been like, ‘NO, I promised myself I would tell him, I still have to say it’. Instead she’d just go, ‘whelp, missed my chance again’ after every single minor interruption. While I get that it became harder for her to say anything as time went by and the lie became bigger and bigger, she should have still told him. She kept making excuses for herself for not being able to tell him while there was literally no reason to lie. The truth needed to come out sooner or later, and I just couldn’t help but feel annoyed by how she kept putting it off.
I was also confused about the inconsistency of Shoko’s personality. Even though she seemed so determined and liberated in the beginning, her behavior sometimes just changed randomly and I couldn’t put my finger on it. For example, there’s this one time when she’s with Jyo in Asakusa and a group of tourists asks her to guide them around Kaminarimon. There she suddenly reveals herself to be an amazing tour guide, just like that, she’s immediately like, ‘Sure! Let’s go!’ Same goes for when she helps out at Jyo’s sister’s restaurant at some point. She suddenly just starts waiting tables and showing this super social and hospitable side of herself. In my opinion these moments stood in stark contrast with how she acted while she was at home or when she was with Jyo. There, she constantly acted like she was a victim of her situation, she was always driving herself crazy and overthinking every single thing, deeming herself to be incapable of anything useful both in terms of work and romance. Usually, discovering this kind of social skill would serve as a plot tool for a character to realize something they’re good at, ultimately leading to finding a successful career for themselves. But even this didn’t happen. The fact that she just randomly happened to be good at spontaneously helping people out wasn’t linked to anything else in the series, and it also didn’t make her realize a new side of herself or anything, so it just seemed random to me. Despite initially seeming so determined on living her own life, it was also interesting to see how much of a pushover she actually turned out to be. She kept going along with whatever Yoko asked of her to keep her affair a secret. She’d be like, ‘No, I’m not doing this anymore, sis!’ and then still accepted 10,000 yen to help out. Like, seriously? Also, in terms of her dynamic with Jyo, I will say more about this later but I actually didn’t think she looked comfortable around him at all. I didn’t really feel any chemistry between them, which was strange considering that they actually sleep with each other a couple of times, starting with that time in Hakata. You would think sleeping with someone would make you feel more comfortable around them, but in their case it really didn’t do anything in terms of improving their communication. Shoko kept feeling immensely insecure and antsy, she’d overthink it whenever Jyo wouldn’t immediately respond to her texts, and she definitely didn’t look like someone who was confident in her relationship at all, even after Jyo had already told her he was in love with her.
Speaking of Jyo, I have a lot to say about him, and not much of it is positive. We meet him as this seemingly nice, handsome young man on the plane, and his request to have an affair during their holiday definitely makes for a major ‘well, that escalated quickly’ situation. He reveals himself to be a photographer who’s lived in Spain for a long time, and now he’s back in Japan to visit his family there. Throughout the time he spends with Shoko, from her point of view he just seems like the most nice and decent perfect guy. Everything he says seems to come straight from a fairytale, he’s almost unbelievably ideal.
Of course, it doesn’t take long for us to learn that Jyo too has something to hide, and that something is a terminal illness. In Spain, his doctor diagnosed him with a malignant brain tumor, and as the surgery is very risky, Jyo has decided to give up on undergoing it and instead enjoy his remaining time back in Japan without ever telling anyone about it, including his older sister Akari (played by Yamano Megumi). Even though his doctor in Japan encourages him to inform his family of the seriousness of his condition, he chooses not to and he also asks his doctor to keep it a secret from his family.
It’s eventually revealed that as a part of Jyo’s plan to spend his remaining time making up for whatever he still had on his bucket list, he also decided it would be nice to have a final love. Within a world of booming marital affairs, he comes to think it would be ideal to have an affair with a married woman, because when he’d have to go, at least she would have someone to go back to. Even after he starts falling for Shoko for real, this plan of his remains very solid. Despite his growing love for her, he keeps pushing her away when his situation worsens, he never tells her about his condition and he keeps making decisions about what’s best for her without actually communicating with her directly. All the while, his dizzy spells worsen and he keeps collapsing and all the while he keeps lying to everyone that it’s just anemia.
Akari appears to be Jyo’s only present relative and she truly cares a lot about her younger brother. I was seriously glad that Akari was there, because she was one of the only characters who called people out on their BS and who saw the craziness of the whole situation for what it was. I was honestly so glad when she scolded Jyo after she’d found out about his condition – thank god for the doctor who didn’t feel it was right to keep quiet about it. I remember I talked about this before in my review on About Time, but it just really annoys me when people who know they’re going to die don’t even rely on their family members and friends, only because they ‘don’t want them to worry’. Like, are you kidding me? Isn’t that what your family and friends are for? They’re gonna worry if you just die one day unexpectedly, so why aren’t you thinking of what your condition means to them? I just can’t understand how people can be so selfish in trying to appear noble by not telling their loved ones that they’re seriously sick. Maybe it’s easy for me to say as I’ve never been in a similar situation, but it just annoyed me that Jyo kept lying about his condition, and especially how he kept pushing Shoko away and breaking her heart even when she finally managed to tell him the truth about her pretense. Just like with my most hated tropes piling up, the same went for Jyo: just when I thought he couldn’t get any worse, he just kept making another decision that made me go 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️. He kept jumping to conclusions about what was best for Shoko without directly talking to her, he kept doing stuff ‘in her interest’ while never even considering what she might have wanted, and it was very irritating. He just became a major red flag to me, and at some point I even found myself thinking that Shoko should just get over him. Honestly, that Todo guy who expressed interest in her in the final episodes seemed like a really great guy, and she also seemed much more comfortable around him, so I didn’t understand why she’d still go for Jyo after everything he put her through. Seriously, Jyo is as ambiguous as Shoko about his initial feelings for her. When he hears about Shoko’s pretense from Akari, he’s not even mad and immediately acknowledges that she must have had a reason for it, and then when Shoko finally finds the courage to tell him the truth, and he knows how hard this is for her, he literally goes, ‘yeah sorry no I was just having fun, bye now’. Even though he tells other people he left her behind to take a chance on that surgery so he could still be with her, like, why would he then break her heart like that? And then after she comes to him again, rejecting Todo and a new possible chance at happiness, he has the audacity to lie to her face AGAIN that he doesn’t remember her as a side effect of his surgery. The guy was a complete mess and I couldn’t find it in myself to feel for him. Like, why was he continuously not allowing himself to be with Shoko even though he told everyone else that he loved her so much? The lying just took on bizarre proportions and it was all so meaningless that it stopped making sense to me at some point. Shoko had to literally corner him at the airport because he was trying to sneak away to Spain again, and only after hearing some basic encouragement from her, he was like ‘okay you’re right let’s be together😀’ Like… I don’t even have words for how idiotic this was.
So yeah, I did not feel the chemistry between the main leads at all. It didn’t feel to me as if Shoko could be herself when she was with Jyo, and for some reason this kept going against what she herself was saying. It was like she kept defending her love for Jyo time and time again, but in their actual scenes together, it didn’t seem like she felt even physically comfortable around him. Even their kisses and supposedly ‘passionate’ nights together were super stiff and dry, and they definitely didn’t give off the vibes of a couple that had slept together multiple times. It just felt off. In Jyo’s case, I consistently found him stiff and apathetic. He was always just standing there with the same exact look in his eyes, and only the occasional sweet smile. I didn’t feel any personality from him, and that’s why it was even harder to pinpoint where his decisions kept coming from. In a story that emphasizes a relationship built on a lie, and two people falling for each other despite their misconceptions, I would’ve liked to at least get some more ‘feeling’ from the main leads, and the lack of communication again proved to be a major annoyance.
Let’s switch to Yoko’s story now. Yoko is five years older than Shoko, and she’s basically the embodiment of a woman who’s done everything by the book. She graduated with the highest marks, she got a good job, met a nice man who even agreed to live with her at her parents’ house and who gets along well with the rest of her family. Kenji seems to be the perfect husband and son-in-law, he cares for Yoko a lot, always makes time to eat together, he makes sure he doesn’t have to work until too late, etc. Their correspondences always show that they are very gallant and patient with each other. Almost a little too much.
When Shoko first learns of her sister’s affair and Yoko starts trying to get Shoko to assist her in getting out of plans with Kenji, I really judged Yoko for doing so. I thought that she wasn’t dealing with her own issues well enough, and she was making it very obvious. I couldn’t blame Kenji for getting suspicious. Especially when it became super obvious that she was trying to get out of having a simple dinner on her wedding anniversary, which was supposed to be a simple engagement that would keep up the pretense of her successful marriage. I was surprised that she even tried to get out of that. It just made me feel sorry for Kenji, because it didn’t seem like he was a bad person and he appeared to love his wife very much. He always smiled when she sent him a text, he was constantly telling people at work about her and he kept making effort to leave work early so that they could at least have dinner together. This was only strengthened by the fact that I personally felt very uncomfortable with the age gap between Yoko and Futa. Futa was such a young kid and I wondered if Yoko was actually willing to give up her marriage for this boy.
I honestly found it quite inapproppriate of Yoko to keep asking Shoko to help her out – even if she wasn’t able to keep it under wraps by herself it was still her own problem and Shoko already had enough lies of her own to deal with, which Yoko was aware of as well. Yet she never offered to be of any help to Shoko’s situation. At least Shoko tried to deal with her own issues without involving anyone else. Shoko righteously didn’t want any part in her sister’s affair, she also had a good relationship with Kenji and it was low of Yoko to try and bribe her into going all sorts of places just so she could keep lying to Kenji. Shoko naturally felt bad towards Kenji and kept urging her sister to break it off with ‘pink-head’. As a grown woman who was knowingly having an affair for a while already, I thought Yoko must’ve had a clearer idea of what she was doing and how she had to keep her story going without having to ask people to jump in for her.
It takes a while before Yoko reveals the entire truth about her marriage to Shoko, and only then do we understand her reasons for yearning for something that actually makes her happy inside. This actually brings me to another topic of which I’m glad this show addressed it: the fact that in Japanese society, marriage is viewed as an unmissable step in a person’s life plan. The marriage between Yoko and Kenji went by the book, they basically picked each other based on their qualifications and they checked all the boxes. They got married within a year of meeting, and while they haven’t even spent much time as a couple yet, Kenji already starts pushing Yoko on the topic of ‘children’. When she asked to first spend some quality time together as a couple, he only agreed to that as an additional step in their life plan. For Yoko, there never seemed to be any love involved from his side, he was just going through his plan step-by-step. Of course, it’s more than understandable that Yoko felt uncomfortable having children in that situation. It would purely be for the sake of reproduction and heritage, not a decision made out of love. On the other hand, I still couldn’t understand why she found an ideal alternative in Futa, of all people. I get that she was charmed by how hard he was training and making his way with his own bare hands rather than following a path that was laid out for him, but in practical terms, he really was still a kid. It reminded me a lot of the relationship between the leads in Hajimete Koi wo Shita Hi ni Yomu Hanashi (where the boy also had pink hair, by the way – what is up with that?).
This is just my personal opinion, but even in their scenes together it felt more as if Yoko was expressing a kind of motherly affection to him – I think there was one scene in the beginning where they met up at a hotel but I couldn’t even begin to visualize them in bed together, it just felt weird. They didn’t even express any intimacy except a few hugs, and it was all really decent and friendly. Also, to make matters even more complicated, Yoko doesn’t even tell Futa that she’s married. While Futa is getting excited about his ‘unproblematic’ relationship with an older woman, he unknowingly becomes a pawn in the whole affair as well.
By the way, I think there was a major hole in the cover-up plan that Yoko and Shoko were trying to hold up. They were so caught up in not getting caught with ‘the other person’ themselves that they seemed to forget about the fact that the guys they were trying to fool also walked around the same city every day. Kenji and Jyo could’ve easily met by chance and they would recognize each other from when Jyo and Shoko were supposed to go to Hanamaki together. They could’ve started talking and the whole truth could’ve come out. Just like how Shoko accidentally let it slip to Futa that Yoko was married, just like Kenji just went over to Futa as soon as he learned about where he was training. The fact that the sisters didn’t even consider that possibility was kind of a plot hole.
When it came to Kenji, in the end I still felt that it was a bit unfair to him. Even if his main objective was to keep going by the book to fulfill his life plan, I still believed he must have loved Yoko. He wouldn’t have gone as far as he did to keep their marriage going if he didn’t really love her. I think this proved to be true when looking at how they eventually decided to part ways, but also through the fact that Kenji went as far as to challenge Futa to an actual boxing match. For a grown established businessman to literally resort to fighting a boy half his age to defend his marriage surely must have meant something. I kind of liked that he remained a good person, in hindsight. They could’ve made him into a secretly evil tyrant who was abusing Yoko or blackmailing her into doing stuff she didn’t want, but that wasn’t the case. I liked the dynamic between Yoko and Kenji because they were both aware of the other’s objective, and when push came to shove they were able to end things on a friendly note. Kenji reflected on how he’d dismissed the signs that Yoko was drifting away from him, and Yoko reflected on how she’d hurt his feelings. Despite not wanting to continue her marriage with him, she still cared for him, and I think this proved their bond to be quite strong, even if there was no true love between them.
Finally, I want to talk about the handful of people that didn’t annoy me in this show. First of all, Akari. I don’t exactly know what the siblings’ linkage to Spain was, but while Jyo was living there as a photographer, Akari started running a Spanish restaurant in Tokyo, with paella as the main featured dish. I also found it interesting that they both saved each other’s names on their phones written in the Roman alphabet. I guess they must have both experienced life in a foreign country and gotten used to the familiarity of that? Anyways, despite the two siblings living completely seperately from each other, they care for each other a lot. There isn’t anything revealed about their parents, but Akari is definitely a caring older sister to Jyo. When his complicated affair with Shoko becomes known to her, her first instinct is to disapprove of it. There is this moment where Shoko ‘accidentally’ sends Jyo a text message in which she confesses that she’s single. Akari spots the message before Jyo, and while I initially got mad at Akari for deleting the message, I did like how she truthfully told Shoko what she’d done. In hindsight I think it was for the better that she deleted the message, because it was just after Jyo had told her about his initial reason for approaching Shoko and also it really wasn’t something that should be confessed through a text message. At least Akari was honest, and I’m not even mad at her for exposing Shoko’s lie to Jyo before Shoko got the chance to do it herself – it was taking her way too long already. Once Akari realized that Shoko was single, she didn’t even object to their relationship. She could see for herself that the two liked each other and in her (rightful) view, there was literally nothing that stood in their way. And then, when all the misconceptions finally seemed to be tackled, Jyo still started making everything more complicated than it needed to be. Seriously, I still can’t believe that he wouldn’t tell his sister about his illness. I really loved it when Akari went all, ‘you don’t get to decide how I feel about your situation, what the heck were you thinking keeping this from me?!’ on him.
In connection to Akari, I also really liked Dr. Ichinose Takami (played by Mashima Hidekazu), Jyo’s doctor. I liked that at least he had a conscience and couldn’t keep Jyo’s condition a secret from his closest relatives, because it just wasn’t right. I liked how he just deducted that Jyo didn’t know what was best for him, because it really seemed like he didn’t. It was also funny how Akari developed a crush on him, I kind of wanted them to end up together.
I also liked Shoko’s friend and co-temp worker Yamada Masako (played by Tanaka Michiko). Shoko really needed a friend who went through the motions with her, and Masako was the voice of reason when Shoko was making an absolute mess of things. She was always thinking in Shoko’s best interest and kept supporting her even though she was also her own person with her own life. Like Shoko, she’d been trying to find a marriage partner through konkatsu for a long time, but she kept trying until she found someone and I liked how she was always really bright and energetic – her energy really contrasted Shoko’s at times, even though they were still pretty close and got along very well.
Lastly, I just want to devote a few words to Todo Hajime (played by Kiriyama Ren). When he entered the scene I really went, ‘Yay! Finally a green flag guy!’ Although of course I knew he wouldn’t stand a chance in winning Shoko’s affection, I really wished she would’ve given him a chance. He showed so much genuine interest in her personality, while the only reason Jyo gave her when she initially asked him, ‘Why me?’ was, ‘Cause you’re beautiful’. I also thought his response to her rejection was a major green flag. He actually ended up advising her on what to do about the Jyo situation and he made her laugh by doing the funny faces and I was like, ‘Yooo, forget about photo-guy, get yourself a guy like this’.
Before I move on to my cast comments and conclusion, I just wanted to write a bit more on the topic of ‘affairs’. I’ve already covered the topic before in my review of Valid Love, but I remember I thought about it a lot after seeing the Japanese drama Hirugao as well. I think there is something relative about the concept of having an affair. First of all, when dramas depict ‘affairs’, I don’t always find it clear what that entails exactly. What, for example, is the difference between having an affair and two-timing? What is the difference between having an affair and cheating on someone? To me personally, having an affair is when you are married, but you’re seeing someone else in secret on the side. Your relationship with the side person might not be as serious as your marriage, but you might get something out of it that your marriage doesn’t provide you with. People can start affairs for many reasons, like a need for physical intimacy or just to feel something else, to escape from their ‘designated life plan’. In any case, in my opinion an affair has to consist of at least some romantic and sexual element. If all you do is meet up with someone to talk over a cup of coffee, I don’t see that as having an affair. An affair is kept secret for a reason, it can’t be found out or there will be trouble. That’s why it has such a scandalous connotation. If you find yourself falling in love with someone else while you’re married, rather than start an affair I personally think it’s best to figure out for yourself what it is you truly want and cause as little drama as necessary in the way you choose to deal with it. As I’ve mentioned many times before, you can’t control your feelings. People shouldn’t get to blame each other for the fact that their feelings change, but creating a secret around it and lying about it does give people the right to get angry. I personally feel like, if you’re able to deal with the situation on your own, no matter what the consequences are, your choices can be justified. But I think what bothered me about Yoko’s situation was that, while she initially seemed really self-assured of what she was doing, at some point it started to feel like she didn’t have the situation in hand at all. I mean, in the beginning she kept saying that she didn’t intend on divorcing Kenji, but would she have gone so far as to actually give birth for him? How far was she willing to take her marriage in order to cover up her affair? She also lied to Futa about not being married, giving him hope. I just couldn’t fathom how she ultimately placed more expectation in a relationship with a kid than in her own marriage. Futa was only 23, he was still in the bloom of his youth, his preferences and tastes could still change, who knows how long their relationship would last? It’s not like I wanted Yoko to continue in a marriage that she didn’t feel happy in, but to make ‘the other guy’ such a young and naive boy kind of rubbed me the wrong way, I guess. The way she doted on him made me feel like he was her favorite nephew or something. I’m not gonna lie, it was cute how they talked about him catching her when she dared to jump and how she hugged him when she finally decided to live with him, but all in all it made me feel a little icky.
In the end, I actually found myself disagreeing with all of the main characters’ relationships. Jyo in particular was a major red flag to me, but I found everyone at least slightly problematic in their ways of dealing with their own problems. I didn’t feel any chemistry between anyone, and it was as if everyone was constantly saying that they were in love but I didn’t actually feel it. I’d really been hoping for a cute love story, but I ended up spending too much time cursing Shoko for not growing a spine. I really hated how she kept telling herself she missed her chance when she could literally call Jyo up at any time to tell him or ask him to meet up or whatever. It just went on for too long and it became really tedious. When she finally told him face to face, the effect was kind of gone because Jyo already knew the truth, but then my frustration switched to Jyo when he started lying again. After finally resolving that big lie that their whole relationship was based on, he still continued to lie. In the end, he lied more than Shoko did during the entire duration of their ‘relationship’ and I genuinely had the urge to punch him in the face on several occasions. What saved the series for me were the side characters like Akari and Masako, and the fact that the story was based on the Japanese societal norm of that marriage is an accomplishment in life. Going by that ‘affair boom’, this clearly did not prove to hold well with many married couples, and I think that’s definitely important to keep in mind. Marriage doesn’t equal or guarantee happiness.
I think I’ve gone through all my main criticisms of this story and the characters, so I’m going to discuss the cast now. There were quite some familiar faces, but also some people I hadn’t seen before.
I realize that I haven’t actually seen Anne in anything before, but I definitely know her by name and face. She’s the daughter of Watanabe Ken, I never actually realized that. Anyways, it was interesting seeing her in a lead role, and I really wish I could’ve kept liking her performance as much as I did in the first half of the first episode. From the start I really liked her expressions, but as her character plot was dragged out I kept getting annoyed by her behavior more and more. She couldn’t even keep a straight face when she was trying to cover up for her sister, and honestly I was surprised Kenji didn’t bust her much sooner. Whenever she ran into Kenji or Futa and they asked her something about Yoko, she became this super angsty, shifty-eyed mess. She could’ve at least tried to come up with something that would make her less suspicous. Anyway, I’m only assuming Anne just did what the director told her to do and what the script said so maybe I shouldn’t be too harsh on her, but at some point the exaggerated expressions just weren’t funny to me anymore. I wanted her to show more spine and determination, like she’d done in the very beginning. Her portrayal of Shoko made me think of her as passive. When she ultimately came out with the truth she conveyed her feelings so well, so why did she have to drag it out for so long? I didn’t like how she kept making excuses for herself, constantly being like ‘I want to tell him, but…’ NO. If she really wanted to tell him she would’ve done so already. It’s not rocket science. I wish she could’ve focussed more on acting from within and not just rely on exaggerated expressions and dramatic gestures, because her character’s situation really wasn’t as dramatic as she made it out to be.
I was really disappointed by Miyazawa Hio’s performance in this show. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him perform so weakly in a series before. I’ve seen him before in Todome no Kiss and Boku no Hatsukoi wo Kimi ni Sasagu and he still needs to prove to me that he’s more than just a pretty face. In all honesty, and I feel slightly bad about saying this, but there really wasn’t much more to his character than his handsomeness in this series. I felt Jyo severely lacked any kind of personality, and sometimes he was literally just standing there, like a game character in idle mode, without any kind of expression, just staring blankly ahead. His performed feelings towards his co-star didn’t feel real to me at all, I think the couple lacked chemistry in all aspects. The hug they gave each other in the final episode just felt like two friends hugging, I didn’t feel any romantic tension between them, even when they were pressing lips together. So yeah, that was a bit of a bummer.
As soon as Nakama Yukie appeared on screen I squealed, haha. One of the first Japanese dramas I watched was the Gokusen series, and it feels like ages since I’ve seen her appear in something else. I love Nakama Yukie and I think she’s absolutely gorgeous. Apart from the fact that I had trouble relating to her character, I did think she portrayed the layers of emotions and feelings that Yoko was struggling with pretty well. She also stuck to the same kind of expression throughout the series, but I liked that eventually her side of the story allowed me to relate to her more. Despite using her younger sister in her antics, I feel like Yoko was able to reflect on herself very well and I liked how at least she ended up wrapping things up with Kenji. I felt that despite their mutual ‘love’, it felt like they were comfortable around each other, and they even addressed each other by their first names without any suffixes, which I don’t think is very common among married couples per se. As I said, I also didn’t really feel her romantic chemistry with Futa (the age gap is basically the same between the actors as their characters so I can understand if that must have made things a little awkward). But she’s Nakama Yukie, I can’t help being a little biased😇.
I realize that I must recognize Tanihara Shosuke from Otona Joshi, as that’s the only thing I’ve seen of him, even though I don’t remember a lot of it. I thought he looked really familiar. Anyways, I think it was actually an original decision to not make him a bad guy. In series like this, depicting a picture perfect marriage, it would be quite predictable if the guy actually turned out to be a monster, but they actually succeeded in making me feel worse for him than for Yoko. Although I didn’t approve of how he kept urging Yoko for children while she clearly having second thoughts, at least he didn’t force her to do anything against her will. And although I did think he showed a slightly lame side in challenging Futa to that boxing match, I did appreciate how much effort he was willing to make not to divorce Yoko. I really felt like he loved her, even though it wasn’t received or reciprocated as successfully as he would’ve liked. But seriously, when she cancelled that trip to Atami last-minute, I really felt bad for him.
I didn’t know Seto Toshiki from anything either, but his portrayal of Futa just made him seem so young and naive to me. I compared him before to the boy from HajiKoi, but he seemed to be even less mature than him despite being older in age. In HajiKoi it was between a 17-year old and a woman in her early 30s, here it was a 23-year old and a woman in her late 30s, so I guess it’s about the same idea. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him to act out a romantic relationship with Nakama Yukie, who was 39 when this show came out. I can’t even blame him for the fact that it looked a bit awkward and lacked romantic tension. I personally thought he pasted on the ‘cutesy’ side of his character a bit too much, the pink hair made him look more child-like than mature in my opinion. Honestly, what is it with the pink hair? So far I haven’t seen a single series in which pink hair actually worked, so it just didn’t have the effect on me that it should have, I suppose.
The only things I could possibly know MEGUMI from are Dear Sister and Ishitachi no Renai Jijou, but I believe she only had guest appearances there. As I said, Akari was one of the few characters that I actually liked in this show. In a story that invites so much (unnecessary) drama, it’s always a relief to have a few down-to-earth side characters watching everything unfold from the sidelines going, ‘what the heck is even happening?!’ If it weren’t for Akari, things wouldn’t havve been put in motion. It would’ve taken Shoko an additional three years (at least) before she’d have mustered up the courage to say anything, and probably just as much time to even figure out that Jyo was suffering from a brain tumor. I was beyond happy with her interference. I also liked that she portrayed her as a rational person. Of course she worried when she learned about the suspicious circumstances of her younger brother’s dating partner, but as soon as all that was over, she easily accepted Shoko into the family. She helped her get involved in Jyo’s life more, she invited her to the restaurant and told her to come by once Jyo came back after finishing his surgery, etc. She wasn’t judgemental based on Shoko’s first introduction as a married woman, once she saw for herself that they both really liked each other, she easily gave her the benefit of the doubt.
I must recognize Tanaka Michiko from Kizoku Tantei, although it’s been a while since I watched that. I liked her portrayal of Masako, mostly because she remained her own character outside of Shoko’s drama. Despite being asked to lie for Shoko that she is married a couple of times, Masako isn’t personally involved in the whole thing and I liked that she remained a bit on the outside while still continuing to be a source of support for Shoko. Just like with Akari, I just enjoyed the fact that within all the dramatics, there were still uncomplicated characters like Masako to lighten up the atmosphere.
I’ve seen Mashima Hidekazu before in Youkoso, Waya he, Boku no Yabai Tsuma and Erased, but I think this is the first time I really noticed him in a more apparent role. Thank goodness for Dr. Ichinose, seriously. I’m so glad he chose to inform Akari even though Jyo had asked him not to. I know there’s such a thing as patient confidentiality, but seriously, Jyo didn’t know what he was doing, and literally everyone needed to know what was going on. I liked that he became a more regular ely appearing character, that he got involved a bit more than just remaining Jyo’s doctor. Jyo even told him about his whole situation with Shoko, and I liked that he decided to step in as a friend rather than a doctor at the end. I can’t emphasize enough that it was down-to-earth characters like him that allowed me to have some peace while watching this series, haha.
Not me gasping when I found out that Kiriyama Ren played Arata in Switch Girl!! That’s such a throwback!
Even though Todo was only a minor character that only appeared in the last couple of episodes, I really liked him and I would have liked it if he had been there from the start. I liked his spontaneity in trying to make Shoko laugh with those tricks when she was crying, and how genuinely he approached here. Even when he was rejected, he didn’t take it as a stab to his pride or whatever, he genuinely watched Shoko and listened to her and understood her feelings. In just two episodes he showed more sensitivity towards her than Jyo did in the entire series, just saying. I liked the energy he brought, even as just a side character, he immediately lightened the mood for me and I really needed that.
Finally I just want to give a shoutout to the delightful guest appaearance of Tomita Miu as Kanae, the restaurant owner’s daughter who spontaneously decided to accompany Jyo during his solo trip to Hanamaki. I love Tomita Miu, she makes everything better.
By the way, I just found out that the original manga series that this drama is based on comes from the same author as Princess Jellyfish and Tokyo Tarareba Musume, which I both really like. I’m having a hard time believing that this story belongs to the same author, haha.
Okay! So there we are. I wish I could say I enjoyed watching this drama, but that wouldn’t be completely honest. If I had to sum up the things I appreciated about it, it would be the fact that it dealt with the relativity of ‘affairs’ and the concept of marriage as a ‘life plan’ accomplishment rather than something one does purely out of love. I liked that every character’s story and objective had at least two sides – at least none of the characters were one-dimensional. I guess they did manage to keep it interesting by revealing everyone’s true intentions one by one. The thing that kind of ruined it for me was just the endless dragging out of the lies that both Shoko and Jyo were keeping up. It took way too long for them to finally see eye to eye, and if it weren’t for Shoko, Jyo would’ve just fled back to Spain without looking back, not even caring that he’d broken Shoko’s heart twice for no reason at all except his own cowardice. It’s been a while since I disliked the male lead character this much, the choices he made just didn’t make sense to me. In terms of chemistry, there was also a lot left to be desired. Both in Shoko and Jyo’s case and in Yoko and Futa’s case (or Yoko and Kenji’s case, for that matter), I didn’t feel any kind of ‘love’. I wish they could’ve conveyed it better through body language, gazes and gestures rather than only using words to say it. Besides this, I just really loathe the terminal illness trope because it always ends badly one way or another, and it usually entails the sick character pushing their loved ones away. Also, if it wasn’t enough that I hate the amnesia trope just as much, the fact that Jyo faked it to get away from Shoko (“to protect her”) pissed me off even more.
I really hope the K-Dramas that are next up on my list will give me some more feels because I’m definitely craving some actual romance now, haha. I’m not sure how long it will take for me to finish my next watch, so it’ll be a surprise for both of us when my next review will drop.
Until then, bye-bee! x
