Wherever you go, there you are.

Even if "there" is the body of the cute and popular girl with the perfect boyfriend - the girl that you desire to be.

Tomita Miu truly shines in this body-swapping tale of Ayumi Kohinata; a friendly, happy, pretty and popular girl who finds herself swapped with ugly, overweight and miserable fellow student, Zenko Umine.

At a short six episodes, this mini-series is tightly and expertly-written and explores not just adolescence, bullying and beauty standards but also envy and the demoralising and dehumanising impact of abuse. If you think that's an awful lot to pack into six episodes, you'd be right. If I have any criticism of this show, it's that a lot of the emotional journey was told in shorthand due to the length. The final episode, in particular, was rushed and truncated and lost several opportunities to tell a larger story. I anticipate the inevitable Korean version, extended to 16 episodes and lingering painfully over every melodramatic moment.

Aside from the performances, some of which were truly exceptional, this show's strength lies in its ability to surprise and to continually undercut audience expectations, especially around the usual cliches and tropes of Japanese dramas. The female characters feel real and three-dimensional, -there's not a sign of kawaii culture anywhere except in the unfair expectations of a beauty-obsessed culture- and there isn't a tsundere man in sight.

The writers could have told this story in stale cliches - Ayumi as a bully, Zenko as evil - but regularly refuse to do so, insisting we see the entire picture even when it's tempting not to. Both female leads are completely the product of their lives until this point and they take that into their new bodies even if they don't want to.

In fact, if it wasn't for the mini-series format and the rushed final episode, this would be a 10/10 drama.