Not as good as the manga...
Firstly, I chose to watch this for Suzuki Yuka. I thought she was under used in Nanba Mg5, and this is the only drama (so far) in which she has a major role.She was fine in this, some solid performances from the rest of the cast too, but I didn't like it overall as I thought the way it was presented ruined the story- the 4th wall stuff was way overdone. It takes the place of the internal monologues of the manga, except it doesn't, in the manga everyone's feelings and impressions are revealed but this 4th wall just serves as a lesson in retirement planning. (However it did teach me the rule of 72!)
There is also a really annoying running gag that just spoils things further.
I know manga adaptations are hard, as it is so difficult to condense thousands of pages into 8 episodes, but this seems to have ignored some of the best plotlines as well as changing the message- which is why I rated the story so low, if I were writing about the manga I'd give the story 7.5/8.0.
Overall I was left very disappointed by this one. (And to be clear, I hadn't read the manga when I watched the drama)
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