Friends (2002)

This drama was interesting, and I liked it, but I didn’t love it as much as I thought I would. The first episode was utterly adorable and cute. While the rest of the story had its cute and interesting moments, I felt that it didn’t quite live up to the promise of the first episode.

I understand that the drama is special because it is collaboration between Japan and Korea, and it shows that the relationship between these two countries is complicated, which makes the relationship between the two main characters complicated as well. That’s why I felt that I learned a few things from it, but I wish the conflict had been explored more; that the story had been deeper. I won’t go as far as calling it plot holes, but near enough…

The basic plot is good – two young people from different countries meet and fall in love, only to discover that being in a relationship isn’t always easy. Especially not a long distance relationship, since that is another complication in and of itself. However, I feel that the story was too rushed. Sometimes, the characters did and said things that didn’t quite make sense, and many of the expected misunderstandings and conflicts seemed stupid and plain ridiculous, because it was hard to understand the character’s motivations. If the characters had talked more with each other, and explained their ways of thinking (and not to mention the differences in their respective cultures) it would have been easier to relate to them and that would in turn have made the drama more interesting to watch. I feel that we are expected to understand everything without any explanations, but just like Tomoko, I found myself confused a lot of the time.

I liked the acting, though. The actors did a good job, and this was the first time I watched anything Korean (MDL has labelled this as “Japanese”, but they do speak Korean about half the time) so it was interesting because of that, too.

So, to sum it up: the drama had its good points, the ending was satisfactory and the first episode was excellent. Overall, though, I found it to be a bit disappointing, and I wouldn't want to re-watch it because I would only be annoyed by the same things all over again.

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