Inu to Kuzu (2023)

This story revolves around three people who were highschool friends, Sakuraba, Reika, and Shinji. What I liked about the story was that there wasn't any unnecessary scenes and the way the story progressed was exactly how I wanted it to be. The story makes you feel confused in every turn but also were able to make things clearer for the bigger picture. I was constantly saying "Huh?" and "Ahhh" . While things confused me, my initial thought on how the story progressed were on point. You can really predict which is which but the constant turn makes you think otherwise.

For the acting, Reika's loneliness and mysterious aura were perfectly acted. Mihara Ui were able to portray Reika as cheerful and as lonely as Reika would be. Kura Yuki did great in portraying Sakuraba's inferiority complex and anxious demeanor. Both of them had great delivery of speech and their facial expressions especially whenever Reika's whole aura change. Her eyes and expressions were able to pull me. Shinji's actor made it easy for me to have bad feelings for Shuji but at some point his delivery can feel flat. But it was good overall

I liked the OST, "Liar Life", which was the outro song. When it comes to these types of doramas, their outros usually hits hard.

I might rewatch this again, just to have a different POV, wherein the twists weren't twists but a secret that Reika was holding.

Overall, this is a story that makes you confused but still I liked the story even though I rarely watch thriller dramas/movies. I liked the acting of FL and I might check her other projects.

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Not a love story...

Two boys meet at a playground and since then are often together. Both can't communicate well. One is "docile" and bullied a lot - at least at the playground and the other is a "cool" boy but void of emotions. That's a typical J-Drama, full of misunderstandings and poor communication. In highschool they meet the same girl, and the "docile" boy falls in love but again no communication. The "cool" boy says bad stuff about the "docile" boy, but he seems to be jelous of his love and so he takes interest in the girl and after university they marry. You may think it's a love triangle, but it's not. And then all the bad stuff happens.

While the story is not as good as it could have been, it's consistent and logical. The acting is top notch, I guess you can say it's not natural and a bit over-acted for dramatic effect, but all chars are still believable. Camera, Lighting everthing was very good too giving this series a special vibe (which gets a bonus point in my rating). I would have wished, they would have expanded on the flashback as boys to see if the "cool" boy was always an asshole especially to the "docile" boy, but we will never know. For me it had some bromance vibes surpressed by the "cool" boy.

Overall a vey good show, but nothing "entertaining" in the usual sense.

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Good for Japanese immersion, bad for entertainment.

Saying this without meaning anything negative, I usually have pretty low standards for modern J-Drama, that is because from what I find, they are ALWAYS poorly made in many categories, including story, but still manage to be logical enough and/or funny enough for me to enjoy it (ex. NekoKare, Super no Kago, etc.), this one couldn't manage even that.

Inu to Kuzu is a short drama that by going off of purely the description: appears to be about adultery between a man and his best friends wife.
This is partially true, the part about a "relationship" between the wife and man, not the adultery because the friend is dead! (Wow big spoiler, it plays a very minor part in the story who cares).
The true story is that there is none, I'm writing this on episode 7 and I STILL don't know, ML and his past with the friend and wife get established and that's it, suddenly they're living together too Yada Yada Yada FL is apparently pregnant, ML lost a VERY SPECIFIC part of his memory in an unimaginable way (and managed to not have any hints in his mind about leading up and from it, very convenient) yeah you get the point.
If anything we can sort of see the story build in ep7, as they introduce an important character for the very first time 💀.
Everything in the story reeks plot convenience too, like a little bit here and there is good, yk to get the ball rolling, but how on God's green earth can you have 90% of every happening in this show be so coincidental (I will not list them because that would go on forever, but some are FL and ML's first encounter, FLs wealth, the crazy Yandere happening to work at ML's work, etc.) Like I'd first believe Densha Otoko being a true story than people thinning this drama was realistic 😭
I won't speak more about the story because I've practically spoiled all of it.

Beyond that, everything was pretty good, Acting was really good, surprised the FL is a year older than me but so good at acting already, others were alright too, ML was so pushoverlike (his character) that I genuinely disliked him. The friend was the only really bad character, not from acting but because they purposely wrote him to be so dislikable that it's obvious he's supposed to be the villain.

Technical aspects were great, lighting, sound, cinematography, etc. All on point.


TL;DR skip this crap, watch only for Japanese immersion as even though I disliked it, I understood 85% of the Japanese (wirh subtitles), usually it would be less for bad content.

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