I needed a few days to recover from this drama - I didn't know what to expect as I do not watch J-Dramas often, and I did not read the comic or watch the anime version on this drama beforehand. Plus, I do know that J-Dramas tend to have looser boundaries than other dramas as well as speed up the action since they are usually shorter. And I am not going to lie, I still don't know how to even go about this review, BUT what I can say about it is that for what it was, it was very well done and extremely unique. For that, 10/10. But I won't be rewatching this drama anytime soon or ever.

I first came along with drama on viki as well as because one of my favorite actors, Sakurada Dori, was the male lead in this, so I instantly wanted to watch it. Plus, my roommate had told me she watched the anime and it was instantly one of her favorites. I was also hooked after episode one and decided to binge watch it in a single night. Was that a good idea? probably not.

After watching this drama, I realized that there is a genre of romance dramas that I do not like. Even though the story was very unique and kept me intrigued as the characters represented different types of "scum"-y people, I did not like a single person in this drama. Of course because this is a "romance" drama, I want the leads to get together, and I was a little heartbroken about the ending, but at the same time, they were both terrible people.

Hana had many layers to her which is why I did not like her most of the drama. She was lonely, so her and Mugi formed a relationship with one another, pretending the other was the person they loved. After learning about Akane's secret, she realized that maybe she was similar to her and how she had been using Mugi because she also loved other people showing her affection. After, she decided to start another relationship with her best friend Ebato who was deeply obsessed with Hana and was ok with her using her to fulfill her needs. From my understanding, she thought that she needed to "evolve" into someone else in order for Narumi to love her. Hana then decided that to beat Akane, she would make all the people who are in love with Akane, fall in love with her, without actually having intercourse. It wasn't until the moment where Hana confessed her feelings to Narumi, that she became a little more grounded and realized the type of person she wanted to be.

Mugi...I am still trying to figure him out. He also had so many layer that I am still trying to peel back. In the beginning, we believe that, like Hana, he is in love with his tutor/teacher and uses Hana to fill in his emptiness. Which he does. But later we find out that she actually has this love hate relationship with her. Yes, he hates her because he knows that Akane manipulates men to fall in love with her, but he loves her at the same time. Later, after the audience is convinced that he started to fall for Hana and was getting jealous that she was having relations with other people, he pulls a 180 and he starts to have relations with other women (clearly not enjoying it) as well as reveals to have a complex where he hates Akane, but wants to be the man who changes her into his faithful woman.

Akane and Narumi's story was extremely odd to me. Akane is revealed to be a love and sex addict, never falling in love, but needed affection to fuel her. Narumi seems like a very familial guy who is sweet and caring and "perfect" yet his "flaw" is that because he is so in love with Akane, he is willing to let her do whatever she wants to make her happy including having out of marriage affairs. I disliked how this is the thing that makes Akane full inside and accept his marriage proposal. Like all she wanted was someone to love her and her adultress ways in order to be completely happy. PLUS, my roommate had told me in the anime that (her words) he is only obsessed with her because she reminds him of his dead mother.

I was not a fan of any of the characters, especially Ebato, who made me uncomfortable because of how strong she came on Hana. Yes, Hana was "scum" but I felt like she also felt like she was pressured into a lot of stuff because she wanted to maintain a good friendship with Ebato and because she loved affection. But every time Ebato would come on screen, I would tense up on my couch and tell Hana to run away. Fast.

Then we have the ending. For what it was, it made complete sense. Actually, it was probably the best outcome for all of the characters learning about who they were and who they wanted to be. But the drama decided that it wanted to have a touching final moment for Hana and Mugi where they were finally in a place where they could be fair to one another and were in a place where they could be with one another fully because they had complete love and respect for one another. They were both finally on the same page and free from their own personal scumminess (yes I created a new word), and ready to find true love in others, as they found it in themselves. But they decided it wasn't in each other. I was devastated. I ranted to my roommate who tried to comfort me by telling me that her interpretation from the anime was that, yes, they decided that they couldn't find that "true love" in one another, but only in that moment in time. That they needed to figure out how to love themselves fully before they let anyone else in, and hopefully they would cross paths in the future. So...yeah...that is what I'm holding onto even though these aren't real characters and this isn't a real story and we will never know if they do meet in the future. But I do hope that they cross paths in the future once they are healthier people.