I don't know if it's that I keep stumbling onto this format of romantic dramas, if josei and shojo manga these days all have the same premise or if the manga they choose to make dramas out of are all with the same formula. No matter the reason, this is the 3rd drama of 2016 I watch with the same premise and this wasn't the best or the worst. It was barely ok. This has the same formula: "troubled jerk" male lead and "sweet and innocent" (and sometimes annoying) female lead get themselves in a situation that throws them together against their will, insert "nice guy" who likes her and dislikes the way "troubled jerk" treats the girl, but who she doesn't notice (in this one you have two of those). Add some other characters to make the triangle more of a square or a pentagram and you have your show. You've seen it pretty much everywhere and this year, specifically, in Please Love the Useless Me, Happy Marriage and A Girl & Three Sweethearts, at least.

As it sounds, it's filled with expected situations: misunderstandings, girls hating the lead because two of the guys who are into her are from a "top 3 most handsome" in the whole school, the male lead hurting her because he "doesn't know how to express his feelings" and "he wants to protect her", the female lead losing a lot of her character once she starts having feelings for him. You know, that questionably somewhat toxic relationship dynamic that, if you're anything like me, makes you wonder why you're doing this to yourself again. There's also a situation between Uehara, the male lead, and his brother and said brother's girlfriend, much like in Please Love the Useless Me, but here it goes around in circles rather than really helping the development of the character. Actually, a lot of the things that happen go around in circles, the same situations happening over and over and the amount of episodes seeming too long for this story. But, like I said, it's not the worst I've seen, not even this year, so there's that.

The bunch of friends Nao, the female lead, acquires and has by her side make the story a bit more worthwhile: her unconditional friend Marina (played by Arai Moe), who is more upset about her friend not trusting her than about boy competitions and is openly interested in both boys and girls without batting an eyelash about it, the well-intentioned yet pretty clumsy Jun (played by Nagasawa Koya) who is rejected by girls on a daily basis yet doesn't become enraged or vengeful at all for it, and my favorite character, Nozomi Kitaura (played by Tezuka Mai), a "Girl Prince" type who isn't really there to become part of the love pentacle situation and offers a tough female perspective to the whole thing, giving a short but extremely memorable speech to Uehara at one point in defense of Nao's situation as a girl and calls him out for thinking that, as a man, he understands her position. Those characters are worth me giving this drama a higher score than I gave to Happy Marriage, although they aren't as prominent in the show for me to give it a higher score than the one I gave to Please Love The Useless Me. All in all, it's passable yet annoying at times, the performances are generally good and it is visually nice looking, plus, it's on Netflix.