This series started strong and I was looking forward to seeing where it would go. More or less nowhere, it seems.

I don't like to criticize actors, and it's possible it was the directing, but Kazuma was bad. When he was angry it was embarassing. Ren was a little better, but he didn't have to do much more than mope and be pathetic.

The directing drained all the life out of the story, and they followed the manga too closely instead of adapting it. But the writing was inexcusably lousy, so the screenplay might as well be too, I guess?

Example: a manga can give strong forward motion by portraying someone running for a panel or two. But when it's live action, you stop paying attention because your mind is preoccupied by two questions: if he's in that big a hurry, why is he running across Tokyo instead of taking a cab? And, how did he manage to do that in dress shoes and a wool suit without breaking a sweat? As if that wasn't bad enough, in the finale he did it again. Twice. (To be fair, the third time taking a cab wouldn't have helped, but I was still preoccupied wondering how Ren got past Kazuma to leave the building. The core where the elevator is would make him have to go past Kazuma, or at least run all the way around the core to the other side of the elevator lobbly.

The series is jammed full of tropes without giving us any compensation. Ren is one of the worst examples of a weak infantilized uke, who can't even defend himself against a falling-over drunk man that's at least twice his age but half his size. Because he takes it up the a$$ and Sanada is a man, I guess. It's ridiculous and offensive. A 12-year old girl would have been able to deal with Sanada, let alone a grown man.

The coincidences are absurd. The population of Tokyo is 40M and it's not a very dense city - so after search the world for 10 years and coming up with nothing, he happens to get a job at the same company? I took if for granted thta Ren arranged for Kazuma to work there, but nope, just a coincidence. Then Ren runs into Kazuma's mother. Then runs into Sanada when he goes to get his things. Why would Sanada go back to the office after going out and getting drunk? And in the brief window where Ren is there?

The relationship between Ren and Kazuma is passionless. At the end they spend the night, and don't even cuddle in bed - in fact Kazuma is actually holding Ren at arm's length so their bodies don't touch. Come on. It's 2023. They don't need to have sex, but they need to look like they want to. It's really sad and weird that the two child actors had way more sexual chemistry than the adults. And apparently more sex.

The end is totally anticlimactic. Kazuma's mother explains she was only upset because they were underage - so then why did she whack Ren across the face? It doesn't make sense. And why did she tell her maid or whoever that was that she's afraid if Ren and Kazuma meet up, they'll never part, but then in the next scene tell them she has no problem with them being gay. What? That makes zero sense - someone behaved completely illogically to throw a red herring at us to generate artificial and pointless drama that doesn't go anywhere and instead deflates like a sad balloon that wandered away during a party and deflated in some dark corner.

In the end, there's just no point to the whole story. What is it about? There were interesting dynamics set up at the beginning, with hints of Ren's depression and trauma, but it goes nowhere. This is just some weird fantasy of the writer to get a strong man to take care of her. Great.

I'd skip this. You'll like it at first, but it becomes a big disappointment.