Busu no Hitomi ni Koishiteru (2006)

Busu no Hitomi ni Koishiteru starts out a fantastic drama. Its premise appears a little typical - the "ugly" girl having the "hot" guy fall for her - but this drama has a sincerity to it that's often lacking. The female lead, Miyuki, isn't the typical glamour model type who has simply been given old fashioned clothes and a dodgy hairstyle to make her a "busu". She genuinely is an average lady, whose charms lie more in her personality than her looks. I liked this aspect of the show a lot. It can be frustrating to be regaled with how ugly a character supposedly is when the actress or actor who plays them clearly wouldn't look out of place on the front cover of Vogue.

For the first few episodes, Busu no Hitomi had everything for me. The characters were built to be very likable and human, and there were lots of laugh-out-loud funny moments. However, after these introductory episodes, things started to go a little awry and I found the character's actions and motivations less and less easy to understand as they strayed further from those core values exhibited at the beginning. By the end, I had little emotional investment left in any of them, and the drama just kind of petered out for me with a lackluster, and laboured, ending.

Overall, I wouldn't say this drama was bad, per se. It had a lot of potential, and it was just frustrating that it wasn't realized and optimized. If the characters could have been more consistent, with the story having less complete u-turns and need to throw in unnecessary and often confusing conflict, I would have scored it much higher. As it is, I'd consider it worth watching, and I'm glad I did, but it's probably better to go in without hopes raised too high by how good it appears to be at the beginning.

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