Honestly, I loved everything about this drama: the plot, the cast and their chemistry, production and even the OST. The only aspect I wasn't a huge fan of was the ending. The ending despite being complete seemed a little incomplete. Part of reason behind my dissatisfaction was because it all seemed unrealistic and left me wondering whether things would truly work out the way they have planned. In my view, it would have been better and even practical if the drama had explored this aspect as well before giving us the 'happily ever after'. Other than this, I don't have many complains nor could I find any major flaws.
Overall, I loved this drama and even found it very motivating (being a student myself). I know many of us were/are hesitant to watch this drama because the 'student-teacher relationship' tag but let me reassure you that this drama does NOT romanticise nor involve paedophilia. So do give this light-hearted drama a chance and I'm sure you won't regret it.
Enjoy the Drama :)
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Exams, lots and lots of exams...
This is a drama about the failed 32 year old who is a pretty cool adult but way, way, way to obsessed with getting a guy with pink hair accepted to the University of Tokyo... Bringing new meaning to the idea of it takes a village to raise a child and apparently it takes half of them to try to get one delinquent to get accepted in to the University of Tokyo. Or just one obsessed lady with a pretty smile and a bunch of people who will do pretty much anything to see that smile of hers.Unfortunately the plot gets both repetitive and draggy,...
The male leads are all interesting, the female lead is a blast and her bestie has a charm of her own. However it is just not enough to keep me interested trough out the endless ups and downs of exams...
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This review may contain spoilers
A pleasant surprise
I've watched this show a couple of times and have really enjoyed it. The acting was good, the characters were interesting and it was a nice change from the long, drawn out Chinese drama or the angst-filled Korean drama.I know that some people had a problem with the age difference of Harumi and Yuri. I didn't, mostly because I felt that she was very immature, and he seemed to be very mature for his age. I think the Asian cultures can get away with wider age differences, because you can't tell what age they really are, and they age so well.
Let's start with Harumi. She was a mess. She called herself a failure, everyone else called her a failure and I think that, in a way, it became kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy. I think there was an element of her being desperate for Yuri to succeed because she wanted to live vicariously through his victory. I thought the writers overplayed the back problems - sometimes she acted more like an 80-year-old lady, walking in an ungainly way with a cane (yet still wearing high heels at times!). And could she BE any more clueless about the men that like her?!?!
Yuri - I loved that they gave him that beautiful pink hair. He was all hard edges until he started working with Harumi. He was, for the most part, very unemotional, which made the steamy looks he gave Harumi so special. And the couple of times he cried I really felt for him, because you know he had to be in the depths of despair to have that kind of reaction.
Harumi and Yuri's relationship was, for the most part, platonic. I would have liked to have seem more romance, but I think the writers played it that way because of the age difference. The obligatory separation toward the end was short-lived: I really appreciated that they didn't drag it out over a couple of episodes.
Masashi and Yamashita, both interested in Harumi. I didn't feel that Masashi deserved her, he wasn't strong enough to tell her how he felt. Yamashita had some issues of his own. I really liked how the writers wrote the three main male characters. They all wanted her love, but they still supported each other when needed, and didn't resort to dirty tricks.
I felt the same way about Eta Mika, the student that liked Yuri. She was upfront about liking him, but they didn't make her an evil character. I really appreciated that.
Miwa, Harumi's best friend, was lovely. She was trying to help Masashi as best she could, she was always supportive of Harumi and wanted her to be happy, and I loved when she decided to try and help Yuri. I also enjoyed her taking Yuri's friends under her wing and trying to teach them about group dating.
I especially liked that the writers didn't use either of the storylines that I was afraid they were going to use 1) evil young girlfriend making up a story about an inappropriate relationship between Harumi and Yuri 2) Yuri's father getting Harumi fired because he thought there was something going on between them.
I thought this was a fun, light, easy and enjoyable show to watch. It's one of those shows that you can watch between the more intense shows.
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The music is nice too. I am addicted to Black Number's Happy Birthday. The lyrics fits so well too!
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One of those dramas I actually wish I didn’t watch
Out of the three potential relationships, one is paedophilic, an other features ‘fun’ moment of non-consensual sexual touching, and the other is incest. The female lead had potential to show a woman who isn’t perfect trying her best, but they made her so emotionally unintelligent and 1 dimensional. The biggest growth for her character is between episode 1 and 2. I genuinely was almost unable to stomach the second half of the show, but kept going because I just couldn’t believe they were actually going to make the final decision they did.Lastly, if like me you despise watching a character that is so nice (to the point of self-destruction)and that deserves to be happy getting treated like dirt, then you will not enjoy this at all.
If you can stomach watching a 34 year old woman consistently lead on an emotionally-vulnerable child because she’s so dopey (but also maybe not) and prefer your dramas to disappoint you with an unintelligent and frankly stupid ending after promising better, then you might like this.
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Dense and clueless is cute?
The Story To Read When You First Fall In Love is the title of a book Harumi, the FL, throws down in anger and is really seen for the first time by Yuri.Harumi is, by all japanese standards, a failed individual. She was a smart studios pupil who failed to pas the prestigious Tokyo University entrance exam. She failed to get a good job and she failed to get married. Now she is 32 years old working without enthusiasm as a tutor in a low level cram school.
Yuri is a pink haired 16yr old high school student who is just waiting to grow up by sleeping on the desk in the worst high school. His father, in the last attempt to have him graduate at least from high school, takes him to Harumi's downtrodden cram school. Harumi is angered by the way he speaks of his son and throws the book down while telling the father off. Yuri is impressed and decides to start studying but only with Harumi. Because it was love at first sight for him.
Harumi is a woman lost, looking for the purpose in her life. Yuri gives her that and while teaching him, she starts to change as well. But not fast enough. Basically she's a sweet but completely dense, she's always been incapable of seeing what is right in front of her. There are three (maybe four) men in love with her and everyone around her noticed it except for her. While her being so dense was cute and adorable at the beginning it quickly became annoying and I kept wondering why do the man still insist on pursuing her!. She's rather straightforward, sweet and helpful, holds no grudges and does not really see anything bad in anyone. She is oblivious of other people's feelings though she is quick to see if someone is troubled (bullied etc.) and is quick to help: she is very clairvoyant in these situations. When it is about romantic feelings, she is totally ignorant! But she still lives with her parents and a huge fluffy dog (by far the best character in this drama!), she is pretty but dresses as a 50 year old spinster who had never dated (which is definitely her case!), wearing frilly blouses closed at the neck with huge ribbons. But on feet wearing stilettos. And some strange, asymmetrical coats. Ugly! On the other hand the pink haired guy was cool. Such an odd, unlikely pairing which probably will not last long: youthful arrogance will be soon replaced by adult reality!
While I was watching this, I liked it less and less as the story progresses. I kept saying to myself, it is a japanese drama, they are usually different, they tackle taboo themes, they are weird and original, you should not judge.... Still I could not help myself: the noona romance was not convincing enough: teacher/student and mother/son relationships were what I saw. And I love noona romances and have no problems with age differences but it did not work for me here. There are too many taboos broken by this drama for it to be convincing enough: 16 years age difference, a first cousin in love with Harumi, a divorced teacher who sacrifices his own happiness for a student....no, this was so wrong!
Apart from the FL and her three suitors, there was an interesting cast of support characters. Yuri's school friends were a strange lot: on the surface delinquents but not really. Supportive and kind and fun. Harumi's best friend Miwa, a no nonsense bar owner Harumi and her cousin both confide in. The parents were there as well but they worried more about work and exams than the romance. And of course, teachers in cram schools!
The drama surreptitiously denounces the exam system in Japan and the pressure parents and society puts on the young to succeed showing at the same time that you can be successful even if you do not go to top schools. It all depends on you!
I had another problem with this drama, apart from unconvincing pairings, which was the perceived length of each episode. Let me explain. Each episode is about an hour long. There are a lot of things happening, nothing is ever boring, no useless and superfluous events. And still I had the impression of extremely long episodes, like over two hours long. During the episode I kept checking the time stamp and repeatedly being surprised by how much I had left to watch; Such a weird feeling!
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This review may contain spoilers
This drama was one of the best Jdramas I've seen so far. At first, I thought it would be your usual easy and uncomplicated "a student falls in love with his female teacher" story but, boy, was I wrong. It was really, truly amazing!Why?
Because Junko was very much aware of the fact that a) Kyohei was her student, b) he was underage which meant no, never, not in your dream, it's illegal, I'm not doing it! and c) she was much, much older than him - 16 years! - which she never let him forget and even after he turned 18 and after he got accepted into the Todai university and after he openly confessed his feelings for her, she made sure, double sure, triple sure that he knew what he was doing, getting involved with her, what it would mean, their age gap among other things, she made sure he actually thought it through, that it wasn't just some boyish crush or temporary fancy. That was fantastic!
And because the friendships were just ah-amazing. Like between Junko and her nightclub owner friend Miwa - Miwa was always first and foremost on Junko's side! Or Kyohei's "delinquent" friends - the way they wholeheartedly supported his drive to get into Todai, the way they defended him against their schoolmates when his politician father got into trouble! And then Kyohei, Masashi and Yamashita!
The relationship among these three was simply fantastic. They were all rivals for Junko's attention but both Masashi and Yamashita really supported Kyohei's dream to get into Todai, they helped him and they took care of him - and when Junko rejected them, both Masashi and Yamashita stood by Kyohei, they wanted Junko to get together with him, they went as far as actually telling Junko to choose Kyohei and warning her that she would regret it if she didn't...
And the ending!!! That was *chef's kiss*
It was so good! It was inspiring and satisfying and there were no truly bad characters in this, just flawed people who learned and grew and it was fantastic to watch!
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Two full semesters of developmental psychology flashed before my eyes as I was watching…
And with that, I just could not with this romance. That said, the drama was still extremely entertaining and fun to watch and had a lot of other great elements working for me quite well.What I loved about it was the whole supportive community around Yuri - each and every character trying to help him, putting aside their own feelings. It was heartwarming and extremely enjoyable to watch. I especially loved his interactions with two 2nd male leads.
I also appreciated Harumi Junko in the context of her work - slowly learning how to enjoy what she does, what her strengths are and how she can motivate her students to strive for improvement and enjoy learning.
Sadly, it was hard to watch her in terms of romance. Being indecisive when you don’t know how you feel about people around you is one thing, but with her, she knew she has little to no romantic interest for the guys, yet still did not set proper boundaries for quite some time. Not only the truly questionable age gap (the romance became legal literally almost at the end of the show), but also the female lead’s personality made me not really interested in her journey to a happy relationship. Not to mention the lack of chemistry between her and the male lead.
The acting was quite good. It’s a rare case when the cast truly matches the age of the characters they are playing (we all know that mid 20’ actors usually play all the characters in the late teens to 40’), which helped a lot with creating a realistic portrayal.
I don’t really have much to say about the production - it’s a rom-com and it fits the standards of the good quality one.
Overall, it works better as a motivational and heartwarming slice of life than romance drama.
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We'll, I may be biased since I like Ryusei ( who wouldn't? right?) but I still think that this is a really great drama. The storyline was light, the actors we're great and they played their roles really well. I guess that must've been the reason why I liked it.
It also gives a realistic vibe. Although this genre is somewhat common to J-Dramas, the execution was good. If you ever find yourself, wanting to watch something but don't know what to watch, I recommend this to you.
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Okay, about the romance drama:) Despite her friend (cousin?) Masashi being hot and trying to tell her that he would in fact like to date her (she's a funny one to court, her character is oblivious, also some scenes her back is acting out and she needs to use a cane to walk:) that's more or less swept under a rug and she repeatedly keeps running into a bunch of high-schoolers, which is presented as a major plot. Indeed there is one high-schooler in particular. He has a cute, attractive face, somehow that is even magnified by the ridiculous pink hair. For his age, he is also rather observant and his personality is not uninteresting. His life is currently at crossroads, similar to which the main heroine once passed. So, she kind of finds her fulfilment now in helping him. And he, kind of starts liking her as a woman...? There's quite an age gap.
I continued watching on and I did like. I liked the characters, the cast (the main actress looks great of course, and she doesn't seem too old) and the relaxed slice-of-life kind of vibe it all had. By the way, Nagayama Kento looks gaunt and tired on this show (though still very handsome), it looked really convincing when his character fainted from being overly exhausted. Junko indeed is in a reverse-harem situation, as apart from Masashi she has yet one more suitor to choose from. While I thought both the other guys were more suitable for her than her student, I was definitely drawn in the small story about whether he suceeds in his studying. It also meant whether she succeeds in teaching him.
Things turn quite dramatic at one point (8/10), the lives are seriously affected and it turns out, all 3 suitors our main heroine has are not only exceptionally handsome, also exceptional people. She's almost ordinary in compare, but she is likeable. Then we continue like almost nothing happened, only the boy improved his relationship with his father and one of the suitors got definitely side-lined. Then it's only between the guy who's like a brother to her and the one too young for her.
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Part of that part of the romance that just didn't feat for me, the story was kind of slice of life and cute, but, sometimes, it lacked intensity and there were some scenes that were, unfortunately, boring. That said, the performances were really good from everyone and the story's pace well managed.
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The cast are all great in their own ways, especially Adachi Yumi (Miwa) and Nagayama Kento (Masashi). Adachi Yumi really surprised me because I'm quite used to seeing her portray really sad or angry roles, but lately, her more peppy and positive sides are so fun to see. Nagayama Kento is really handsome and his character is funny too. Though you may be surprised to find Masashi is Junko's cousin (the whole time I watched I wanted to believe that was a lie). Fukada Kyoko (Harumi Junko), on the other hand isn't the most versatile actress in my opinion. She seems to act the same as she does in other dramas I have seen her in. But hey, at least she is super cute in this, and to be honest I don't really imagine anyone else pulling off Junko. The last thing I watched Yokohama Ryusei in was Nijiiro Days, and he is tons better here in my opinion. I love his character Yuri Kyohei (Yuri Yuri) a lot. He is an amazing person and Yokohama Ryusei delivered 110%. The side characters were fun and did add a little bit more depth to the story too.
There isn't much to say about the music because to be fair there isn't much of it. However, the ending theme Happy Birthday by Back Number is amazing and I couldn't help but hum along to it every time.
So anyway to conclude, don't be deceived by the tags, Haji Koi is an inspirational and light-hearted rom-com drama about a teacher and her student working hard on a common goal. There are many moments it tugged at the heart strings but overall it didn't fail to put a smile on my face.
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