This is more a tip for finding things on here because your specifications leave me with a mere thousand or so options…
Play with the search features, ESPECIALLY tags. Here is a search that includes all but less-well-documented Filipino and Singaporean (new to the DB) dramas with *slight romance* which is indeed a tag, one of the more useful on here! They are rated by highest rating though you can flip to most relevant etc. and narrow it down more and more from genres and tags alike (tags=details in a drama that aren’t the broad genre, both subgenres ie police procedural or anthology or themes like revenge, murder, serial killers, cohabitation, enemies to lovers, bromance/sismance, school setting, village setting, etc... tap a few letters and explore… I don’t know of a complete list (there may be one I just haven’t found/been told… would be nice since I edit a decent amount)…
https://kisskh.at/search?adv=titles&ty=68&fm=7&co=3,1,2,5,4,6&th=2005&so=rated
From there, though, we aren’t done. This gets a tiny bit tedious, but you’ll need to, in the tag box, type “male lead” then PICK a kind of male lead you want *and if you hate certain kinds of leads be them eccentric or you just don’t like rich lead stories but want regular people, etc… whatever you feel like diving into, pick a lead type… maybe eccentric leads are exactly what you want! Maybe you want calm male leads. Maybe you want nice ones. Maybe you want … possessive, aggressive, clingy, weak, strong, smart, or even ghost-seeing lol. It’s kind of a common subgroup, ghost seeing… oh, there are vampire male leads, ghost male lead, alien male lead, even nine-tailed fox (2/3 of which I’ve seen have been male for leads at least). Superficial? Superhero? Tap some letters out and explore. :)
Of those on the list, My Mister tends to appeal to both men and women though more men are prominent characters. It is quite different from others. Slight romance is present. More upbeat, Hospital Playlist (1&2 continue the story, Resident Playbook featuring the HP cast as guest stars here and there but focusing on the younger/newer docs/ residents; that one has more pronounced romance but still pretty slight). Black Out came to mind thought the story is quite dark in terms of theme.
How about looking here?
https://kisskh.at/discussions/general-asia-forum/122197-we-watch-challenge-2024
This year’s started late so a whole lot of people didn’t come back, but there were still great recs, just less frequent... I suggest it specifically because you can see what people ask for (even snoop their lists!) and what people recommend. Sometimes, there are great descriptions for why people recommend shows/what they tap into or who they appeal to!
https://kisskh.at/discussions/general-asia-forum/135188-we-watch-challenge-2025
On the Jdrama end, one that comes to mind with a crush but no outright romance as the focus is an adventure in 3 parts (the first is just 4 eps with the ML being a fairly young child-some supernatural, mystical things and really lovely folklore blended in as they journey and meet many others trying to protect the boy (the FL is a spearwoman, her friends healers and errand runners and merchants and rich people, too, she’s been a bodyguard for… the boy a prince in a fictional ancient Japan with fractured separate governments) and, let’s just say find the solution to their concerns, all I’ll say… lots of scheming by many other parties and just a vast land, their Tolkien sort of Storyscape. Anyway, the second and third part happen half a dozen or more years later when he is a young adult, be that 15 or 18 or who knows… there is some sweetness between the FL and her healer friend but it is, indeed, not the main focus. That is called Seirei no Moribito (parts 1, 2, and 3 are 4, 9, and 9 episodes long but one continuous story you need to start from the befinning… a friend accidentally went to part 3 somehow). Anyway, the Internet archive somehow has it. It was uploaded back when we had much lower online video quality, so… there is that one tiny negative that I still think it is well worth adjusting to If you like LOTR kinds of stories. That and the first season of Arthdal Chronicles are possibly two of the richest ancient *fictional* lore setups, Arthdal pretty smoothly integrating moral issues like enslavement, child labor, and racial and species superiority ideas… but I tend to like shows that are quite layered with different things to gain from them for different viewers. Arthdal, while the second season is many years later and switches to a war story of sorts, has a romance of two especially gifted people born under prophetic stars. Lots of lore in it, too.
The search feature is your best friend on here for exploring. Something to note: Cdramas have overall younger audiences and quite a lot more bots mods have to fight off, so the scores for those are pretty consistently a point higher than Kdramas that would, if ranking by % ie top 1 or 5 or 10%, 50th percentile, etc. be considered about the same % within their nation. Your prefs for one or the other matter most, and ratings aren‘t as good a way to find shows as tags and sorting by relevance simply because you may not have the same taste as the majority on here who love romance-heavy shows most of all, especially young romances! (Most on here=under 25&female… some shows that are hovering close to 9 on here are, even with really mediocre cinematography and significant audio issues that made me unable to watch at all… over 90% 17 and under! You list yourself as male, so you are already in quite the minority, a verrrrry welcome one! Just know the ratings are indeed mostly from females save certain kinds of thrillers (one of my faves, Mother, actually did incredibly well with male audiences despite the main men being one with warm feelings for the FL, one who was abusive and wretched but gave a powerful performance, and naturally a police officer struggling with what is the law vs what is right… it could turn you away because it does feature women (and a young child who happens to be female though at age 6 or so it doesn’t exactly matter what their gender is)… I watched the Korean version that from what I’ve seen has better cinematography, but fans of the Jdrama really deeply love it, too. I plan to watch that one, too.
Sorry to type so much. Look at genres but know we only do a max of 4 genres so there may be one missing (if you want some action but don’t care if it is an action centered drama, you need to consider searching with and without it checked! For anything to exclude, search it, click it, then tap the words, not the x, to turn it from green to red, include to omit).
Did that become more confusing? 🫢
autumn iris:
