I had heard that there were dodgy gender dynamics in Japanese dramas (I’m pretty new to them) and if you want a taste, then this is totally for you. I watched it to the end to make sure that I had a handle on the full intention of the author and was unsurprised to find that it was a male writer indulging in male dominance and submission fantasies. Where women are submissive, obedient supplicants who like to be all but raped. Where they are totally gullible, have no power over their own emotions, need to be told what’s good for them and go along with everything the man decides because they can’t help themselves. Oh dear, how inadequately sad. An insult to both men and women.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not put off by mildly explicit sex scenes, nor do I frown on consensual power playing in the bedroom. But there was a scene at the start that was not along those lines. It was abuse masquerading as masterful and fed into the myth that women secretly like to be raped. And later we learn it’s not the first time that the ML forced sex on a woman and even that on this occasion it was deliberate. However much you might like power play in your sex, engaging in it with an almost stranger, without prior consultation or a safe word, or even consent to being tied at the wrists, is not consensual sex, it’s abuse. It is the submissive that should hold the power, but here that was not clear at all and the viewer was left with the distinct impression that it was the dominant who held all the cards. However much, afterwards they tried to smooth it away and pretend he is a nice guy really.

My problem is not that this behaviour was included in a drama. My problem is that I am being asked to think that it is acceptable behaviour in a romantic drama between leads that I am supposed to identify with. And that shitty, abusive behaviour is acceptable as a basis for both starting and continuing a relationship. The ML character is a nasty piece of work and had red warning flags all over him; anyone (man or woman) capable of doing that once is capable of doing it again.

So, please explain to me how a woman could ultimately feel safe, respected and an equal partner with a man who has behaved despicably towards them. Because believe me, that’s what they need to feel to give themselves freely.

Hmmm. Do I want to watch a romance drama where I really don’t have any respect for the leading couple or what they stand for? It was very hard to engage with the story without any sympathetic characters to latch onto.

Ok, having said all that, what was it like as a drama? Not that good to be honest. The writing was very mediocre and played into stereotypes by the bucketload. There was a whole load of repetition that became tedious as it did not move the story forward at all except to explain motives that were totally obvious anyway. A little of it here and there would have been acceptable but wholesale chunks of it, like all of episodes 6 and 7, were not. A better writer would have been able to reveal the subtly changing emotions sufficiently so as not to have to explain them in exceedingly clunky thought speech and would have structured the story differently to avoid going over the same ground. The whole thing was not improved by the quality of the acting and directing, which was very ordinary.

The best thing about it was the cinematography. There was a beautiful sharpness and clarity to the images and nice camera angles and a good choice of locations lent itself to some impressive scenery.

What my rating means: 1 - 3+ Totally unbearable, but often compulsively watchable as you really can’t believe that it can be this bad.