Fake Messiness

The drama started with enough intrigue to keep me curious for where it was heading. However, it quickly became apparent what type of drama this was going to be. Things were messy and over bloated with way too many plotlines that were forcefully connected to the mother's pregnancy to give the illusion of a grand story. Most of these plotlines didn't get the treatment they deserve and were brushed off hastily, take for example the younger daughter at school. On the other hand, the older brother story with the gang business and whatnot was just seriously stupid writing that didn't mix well with the overall story at all. The drama was also painfully filled with extreme cliches at every turn, scene and dialogue, which the Japanese consider mandatory for every 'family' drama. If we were to focus on the mother (and maybe eldest daughter?) then the drama is decent enough.

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Delusional Love

Surprisingly atrocious! To start, reading the synopsis would give you all the spoilers you need as it will play out exactly as suggested. Given the supposed 'moral' dilemma, the drama resulted to shifting genres at around episode 9 to diverge the attention from the characters' relationships when it reached a pivotal moment, which is why we ended up with a corporate corruption plot. This was the main reason why the plot crumbled under its own weight, because the writers couldn't follow through with what they created. Well, it was problematic from the beginning, there was simply little to no room to navigate such a set up for a story where the FL fell in love with her brother-in-law immediately after her sister's death. The plot wasn't particularly unique but other ones at least had a reasonable justification by utilizing a time-skip or concealed identity. All of that doesn't come close to the tone deaf ending where the entire cast were casually hanging out at the bar as the credit rolled.

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Love? Never

The drama’s main plot revolves around a woman whose one defining characteristic is being perpetually sad. Why is she sad? Who knows! The writers certainly didn’t seem to. Maybe because the men in her life are about as reliable as a dial-up internet connection, or maybe it’s because the script was clearly written by someone going through a mid-life crisis and decided, “You know what’s relatable? Pain. Just… constant, nonsensical pain.” Nothing really makes sense, it was unbelievably dull as everything kept going in empty circles through the same events. Every man and woman were interested in the leads for some reason. Breakup was an expected element in such a plot but it was seriously poorly executed. It's the type of breakup you might see in an anime at the first slight misunderstanding, justified by a cheap trope rather than proper character writing. Why would their love be so great? The leads romantic chemistry has all the fire and passion of a wet sponge, it just couldn't sell the viewers on the long distance relationship and love. The drama was just a bloated, meandering, self-indulgent slog that mistakes misery for profundity.

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Generic Lustful Men

Imagine a love triangle that’s less about romance and more about how spectacularly uncomfortable and contrived things can get. A plot that goes absolutely nowhere for a full fat 11 episodes. A blind man could recognize and see the outcome of this empty mess at first glance. It was unbelievably obvious from the beginning that Tsubasa will refuse to choose between the two. Well, it was also obvious this wasn't meant to be serious drama comedic, light and playful play on the given situation, however, the execution was the farthest thing from displaying such needed attributes. The storyline teetered between laughably implausible and downright tedious. It's a joyful love story, yet it lacked love, logic, joy or likable characters. The male characters were too damn one-dimensional, they make cardboard cutouts look like complex psychological studies. I've seen more emotional depth in a traffic report. All things considered, the dram was still not as bad as Nakayama Miho's other project "Suteki na Kataomoi (1990)".

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Dead End

This drama proved to be much worse than expected and ended up being my least favorite Nakayama Miho project thus far. It’s a 90s slog that moves at the pace of a drunken snail trying to cross a busy freeway. It got some charm buried under all the emptiness and shortcomings, but you’ll need an archaeological dig to find it. The plot was full of second-hand cringe distilled into indigestible form and the lack of chemistry was shocking and deadly with all of her male co-stars! The supporting cast fares slightly better but they were clearly there just to pad out the runtime. To be fair, it’s not all bad. The drama did occasionally capture the bittersweet pain of unrequited love but those moments were few and far between, and they were buried under so much fluff and filler that you’ll wonder if they were worth the effort.

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Fairies, innit?

For 100 episodes sitcom, it needed a bit larger cast with a few more plotlines. This is why there was some irrelevant guests episodes in the middle parts. After these parts, there was also a weird shift happening. They removed the canned laughter and promptly replaced the mother fairy with a grandmother with no valid explanation. The character replacement wasn't good and messed up the dynamic with the fairies since the grandmother had the opposite personality. Some other characters also promptly disappeared but with no replacement. Most of the material involving the younger cast members was mostly bad, however, the rest managed to make up for that. On the bright side, the twin brothers, fairies and Tae Hee had a good dynamic going on. Some running jokes were pretty decent. Cha In Pyo and Hwang Woo Seul Hye were a great choice to play their respective characters. The wrap up could've been better but it was decent as is.

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Too Sexy to Stop

Sexy, unique, provocative and silly. It's quite rare to have a drama with adult rating let alone a long running sitcom. What makes matter ever rarer than it already is, the consistency of the adult theming in a long running format. Usually, these type of shows drop the rating to +15 or something after a few episodes. Basically, the typical bait and switch tactic. The current video quality is super scuffed, unfortunately, I don't see this show getting a proper quality release as it was even neglected by its broadcasting network. Although it had a decent variety in stories and characters but it needed more consistent plotlines running from start to finish. It also needed a better introduction because it threw us right in with barely any introduction of the characters and setting. Anyway, while it had a handful of shortcomings but it offered something new and entertaining.

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Too Sexy to Stop

Sexy, unique, provocative and silly. It's quite rare to have a drama with adult rating let alone a long running sitcom. What makes matter ever rarer than it already is, the consistency of the adult theming in a long running format. Usually, these type of shows drop the rating to +15 or something after a few episodes. Basically, the typical bait and switch tactic. The current video quality is super scuffed, unfortunately, I don't see this show getting a proper quality release as it was even neglected by its broadcasting network. Although it had a decent variety in stories and characters but it needed more consistent plotlines running from start to finish. It also needed a better introduction because it threw us right in with barely any introduction of the characters and setting. Anyway, while it had a handful of shortcomings but it offered something new and entertaining.

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Too Poor to Love

The endless chase of money. It started off with a catching premise with some predictable routes that didn't seem to be enough for a full story in 11 episodes package, which is why they had episodes dedicated to some cases at work. These cases affected the story negativity and caused delays that pushed the main story as far as the last 20 minutes. As you may read from the synopsis, her ex began working at the same company but he has a girlfriend who wouldn't reject his poor status which caused a lot of pointless back and forth. His girlfriend didn't offer something worthy to the dynamic of the trio. Instead of some of the cases, I wanted to see better side characters with stories integrated into the main theme. It was an okay drama but it doesn't have much to offer.

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Would Rather Be Homeless

It was really not good. The extreme hyper reactions, interactions and acting were unsettling. I'm familiar with this style from Japanese movies/series themed around life/family but they went totally overboard in this one. It was just too forced and fake at every step of the way, even for a theatrical play. The synopsis talked about entrance exams but that was mostly just for the setup and setting while the rest was about some family problems and cheap affairs baits which all were poorly written from start to finish. Due to the lack of any interesting merits, I found myself examining the 90s set design more often than not.

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Watch 1985!

Compared to the original, this remake was a total flop in every aspect without a single redeeming quality. It's significantly shorter than the original to the point it could only present general outlines of the story, stripping down all the details and relationships. The cast was questionable and their performance was a disappointment. Even the production value is incomparable to the original that came in the 80s! The split personality showcase was just comical here, as well as the FL's relationships with those around here. This remake did nothing but tarnish the original work. Perhaps, it serves as a good example for a bad remake and even a more generalized example to the severe literary and artistic decline of Jdrama in general.

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Delinquents, Rise Up!

A ridiculous amount of face slaps with every other scene regardless of age and gender which was very fitting for the 80s vibes. It's a surprisingly good well-written drama, well, for the most part. The drama had a solid run checking all the boxes for its first half, but, for some reason, they couldn't keep the same momentum for its 2nd half. There was a significant drop in quality and the story took weird turns especially with that creepy classmate. Maybe its length was problematic for the writer and he couldn't plan for 18 episodes properly. Even the ending was kind of whatever, not much thought was put into it. I will probably only remember it for its first half. In comparison, the remake was the definition of pure manufactured waste. Utterly shameful to have a remake as that one. Just stick to the original one even with the 2nd half being a bit of a let down.

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Kidz Bop Makjang

This was an attempt to make a melodrama from the kids' perspective and there's a very good reason why there's not many like it. Mainly, because it's utterly absurd to showcase this, especially for events related to the kids between themselves. It's less of a problem when it's between the kids and the adults. When looking at the whole picture with the adults, it's a pretty standard watered down melodrama because of the given theme. It wants to be targeted at kids/teens but it doesn't do a good job in that regard so it end up being stuck in this weird middle ground. Earlier on, the drama had plenty of animation but they stopped doing these because they realized how atrocious and unnecessary these were. The story, cast and performance were all pretty average and lazy.

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Too bored to date

They should've removed the boyfriends from the equation and made it about life in general, otherwise it was cheap in its current state. A new profile picture every episode with no change/growth/development between each. Each episode was just a long montage of speed dating a new guy. Nothing connected or clicked in relation to her life. The main character herself wasn't appealing to begin with. Her personal life beyond the relationships had little to no role despite having an introduction that indicated otherwise. There was an attempt to do things differently for the last episode, especially in regard to her childhood, but things were more or less the same. On the bright side, it was shot nicely.

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Too sweet, no salt...

It's surprising this drama managed to go on for 10 full episodes considering the bulk of its content. The drama had a sloppy poor blend of workplace setting, food and a love triangle. The office related events were the worst as these were extremely generic auto generated fillers just to give the illusion that it's a workplace setting. The food scenes were okay at best but nothing stood out even the food shots. The romance was just bland and weird, it was only there because they didn't have anything else to do or show for a story, not even if they were aiming for a slice of life/episodic formula. If anything, they should've cut its runtime in half and double the focus on food.

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