Great introduction to the genre and to dramas in general, but rushed ending wastes its potential

TL;DR at the end with no spoilers.

I stumbled upon My Calorie Boy by chance three months ago, and up to that point I had never shown much interest in dramas, to be honest. After all, I already watch anime and that alone eats away at my limited time on this planet more than I'm comfortable acknowledging in public. Now, from all these years lost to anime, I've gotten to know my tastes. When I read the synopsis and saw the poster, this looked to be exactly my thing. I'd managed to hold off until a few days ago, but boy was I hooked as all hell the moment I gave in and clicked play. The outcome is that I created this account to come here and write this. Why, you ask? Well, with your permission, I'll begin talking my way through this coping mechanism of a review while I wait for the feeling of existential emptiness to wear off.

I've been wondering for a long time now how would I go about fleshing out characters and the relationships between them, were I to write a story. When it's well done, you can feel it, but it's hard to pinpoint why. I still don't have an answer and wouldn't know how to do it myself. However, shows like My Calorie Boy have helped me realize one of the keys: it's all in the small things. This is a story about normal people, and normal people don't face life-altering challenges every day; a great deal of substance is hidden in the mundane. You can tell that the writers handled this aspect with care, sprinkling details, actions and passing comments that are later remembered or brought up by other characters. The main actors in particular also convey the progress in the leads' relationship very well through their body language, their use of personal space and their everyday banter. This gives the show a down-to-earth feel: in the real world, you can't help but leave tiny traces of your existence in other people's lives, for better or worse. My Calorie Boy excels at keeping daily life interesting, like any good slice-of-life should do. Now, you may be asking yourself why I'm spending so much time on this part. This is one of my favorite parts of the show as I love over-analyzing these things but, that aside, I believe it's important for the next point.

In a character-driven show like this one, the plot is less about external forces taking over the lives of the characters and more about giving them smaller prompts and exploring what they feel and why they react the way they do. For their actions to be believable, especially when they make mistakes or objectively bad choices, you have to understand where they're coming from. This is where the subtle development in between subplots is crucial. Now, I won't claim every choice is equally realistic even with the characterization, but it works very well for the most part. For the most part, because the ending is a painful exception. I'd like to group my spoilers together and keep this section clean so I'll just say that the ending throws away a lot of character and relationship building. It's not a sad ending, though; it's rushed, poorly-executed, and happy. You have to accept it because we have nothing else, but you're probably in for some disappointment. If I had to say something positive, it's that by the end all the relevant characters had improved as a person, achieved some of their goals, or formed more meaningful relationships—which is the bare minimum, I know.

Before going into spoiler territory, I want to talk about something I only noticed while writing this review: I'm not sure the ML evolves in any significant way beyond not being fat anymore—which happens pretty early on. From then onwards, he has good looks, good grades, and a brand new entitled facet to his personality. Don't get me wrong, he does plenty of good for the FL and for his friends, and he's cool most of the time, but sometimes he displays a mix of entitlement and insecurity about the FL that he never really fixes. At some point during the last third of the series, when his petty jealousy was getting on my nerves, I asked myself if it was poor writing that broke character or simply character development that I just didn't like. I'll leave that up to you. In contrast, the personal growth of the FL is stronger and more readily apparent. Nonetheless, I have the hypothesis that something forced the writers to give up some loose ends, perhaps among them a solution to this guy's biggest personality flaw. Let me explain.

SPOILERS BELOW

As stated previously, this show pays attention to the details. Several things from earlier in the story go from filler to meaningful because they have some kind of influence at a later time. Some of them you can guess they're not random right away, some of them you can't. But, anyway, the show makes it clear that it's deliberate by doing it multiple times over the thirty episodes. You can call it foreshadowing if you want; I don't feel it's exactly the same—not always.

However, there is one object that doesn't get used and, without a doubt, was meant to: the FL was painting a picture of the ML which she planned to give to him as a belated coming-of-age gift. Several scenes feature her either working on it or looking at it. They made a point of highlighting it, only for it not to come up ever again. Based on what I said before, I don't think this is an oversight, nor do I believe the writers would make the plot go this route without even showing her regretting the lost opportunity. You can't just squander your limited money by abandoning plot points like that and, given the rest of the writing, I suspect they didn't want to either. My bet is on budget or time constraints.

But the element that took the biggest hit from the lack of resources is also the main argument for my hypothesis. Episode 29 ends just after the graduation ceremony (by that point the ML was already gone) and episode 30 starts with a 4-year time-skip. The ML moves back home from overseas, waltzes into the office where the FL works and proceeds to talk to her with his same old attitude like four years of no contact whatsoever didn't happen. As the episode goes on, it's revealed that she missed him too, then their friends help the ML to get her to stop being cold to him, and he reveals that he blocked her because of something he misunderstood during their freshman year. Finally, they reunite at the gathering of their former classmates and they kiss after theatrically telling each other what was on their minds the last day they saw each other before the time-skip. There's the happy ending you were made to expect from episode 1, but gloriously underwhelming.

I mean—it shits on everything that made the story great for 85-90% of its run:

1) It forgoes the opportunity to use a relevant plot object. Though, to be fair, they do feature—never thought I'd use these words in the same sentence—an important dog from before the time-skip, which is how we're informed that the ML somehow still has his chances intact with the FL.

2) It fails to fix the entitled yet insecure side of the ML, who's also still unable to communicate important matters assertively and has a tendency to instead write a letter and call it a day unless the situation is already one step away from too late and he decides to finally express himself out loud. Well, that was one long sentence. This was okay-ish before the time-skip, when the leads often got around to talking things out early and they weren't expected to be emotionally mature, but now it's aggravating on top of his other actions. It's not a crime to be this way, but people won't put up with that indefinitely.

3) It handwaves off the zero communication in four years by stating that the ML misunderstood from a social media post that the FL was going out with another guy from her university and he didn't want to bother her. It's idiotic in its own right, but more when we remember that their friends had already helped them out in the past with other misunderstandings and conflicts. There's no way the ML wouldn't have asked them about it even once. He may be insecure and an occasional prick, but he knows what he wants.

Anyway, there are already excellent rants about the ending in this review section, so I'll just end mine here and encourage you to check them out. I hope my arguments about money and/or time being the culprits are also clear by now. To me, it's obvious the ending needed more episodes to prevent the improvisation of an unfortunate mess whose main purpose was to wrap everything up within 45 minutes. It can also be argued that other content could've been cut to make space; however, in my opinion, that amount of cutting would've caused the story to fall apart in other places.

SPOILERS ABOVE

Moving on to the music, luckily I've run out of rants so it'll be short. I like the opening and ending a lot. The FL sings the ending and the ML sings one other song—I found out after the fact—, and it's a sweet, sweet touch when they're used as insert songs. I've listened to the tracks and I can tell from the vocals that neither of them is an accomplished singer, but it's actually better this way because neither are the characters they portray. What I found a bit jarring was the go-to 'problem time' piano track, which evokes impending medical emergency in a hospital-themed drama even if the actual situation is two teachers arguing about school policy.

Speaking of school policy—and to leave more visual safety margin between the spoilers and the TL;DR—, I was surprised to learn that dating while in high school can get students expelled in China. Here I thought Japan shared the top spot in the ranking of academic pressure with countries like China and South Korea, but it turns out it can be taken one step further.

I really liked the theme of freedom of choice for students about to decide what to do after high school. Here, on the other side of the world, parents don't usually force their children to follow pre-determined paths in life. Be it for better or worse, the emphasis tends to be on deciding for yourself—though we've become a bit complacent lately—, so from this point of view it's satisfying to see the kids being allowed to figure that out by themselves. I must say, however, that over here it's easier to let your children experiment more since we don't stake our futures on a single, mind-bogglingly competitive exam like the gaokao.

By the way, that fat suit for the ML was quite convincing, though I can understand why they had him lose 30-40 kilos offscreen in one go during a school break. It's unrealistic, but progressively thinner fat suits would've gotten expensive and would've eaten up—no pun intended—a bigger chunk of screen time. It adds a bit of depth—again, no pun intended—to the ML, yes, but what sells is a hot actor.

Anyway, this is not an in-depth over-analisis but a review and the length has already gotten out of hand. I'll wrap up now with the scores.

Story: 8.5. Despite the considerable wall of text I've devoted to my complaints, they're only about 10-15% of the story and I had a blast during the other 85-90%. Don't worry about the ending, you'll get over it. Keep in mind, however, that it's my first drama and the overused clichés of the genre might be flying all over my head. My review won't warn you if that's the case.

Acting/Cast: 9.5. These people have some serious acting skills, especially the two leads, and more especially the lead actress. They also fit their characters quite nicely. All from the point of view of a newcomer, of course.

Music: 8.5. I like the opening and the two songs performed by the two leads. The soundtrack works well in general, but the 'piano drama' insert track has a vibe that sometimes clashes with the actual drama it's paired with. You'll know what I mean.

Rewatch Value: 9.0. This is the most subjective one. For me, it boils down to my willingness to tolerate the ending, since stopping at episode 29 would be even worse with no resolution at all.

TL;DR:

Though I'm biased toward this kind of show and I'm new to the clichés of the genre (and of dramas in general), I honestly think it's really worth it. For the first 25 episodes or so—maybe a little more—we get smooth, meaningful character and relationship development for the main cast and the most relevant of the supporting cast. The plot is a bit secondary to the characters, although there are relevant events slowly building up in the background that come up in time to make the characters evolve; there's a coming-of-age feel of university being just around the corner, but it saves some learning and some drama for the adults too. Around episode 25 the biggest subplot starts to unfold, and it features a complex dilemma for one of the characters that, by its nature, affects the ending. Unfortunately, by the last episode they had probably run out of money or time, and we're left with an unsatisfying and rushed attempt at a happy ending that also has a negative impact on some loose ends that it was meant to address, including the consequences of the subplot I just talked about. Such a shame, really. You can still love the rest of the show like I did, because it's great at what it does best, but be warned about that.

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