Disappointingly mid
I was so hopeful for this one, but it was all surface and no substance. I don't know how some people are calling it stereotype braking and whatnot when it is, in essence, the most traditional romance you can get with almost no depth.
Both Hikaru and Haruka had a lot of potential as characters but were handled really badly, with repetitive conflicts that didn't push them further than the mere superficial and kept them going in circles.
I was so disappointed that Hikaru's gender fluidity wasn't more developed and was treated merely as an accessory to Haruka's "feminine awakening", his queerness is described as "magic", which is very yikes. He doesn't talk about what it means to him, other than superficial "we shouldn't tell people that I'm a guy" or "my parents don't accept me" but without any depth as to why or what that truly means to him or how he found his expression through it. He wasn't portrayed as a drag queen, he was portrayed as gender fluid, which is refreshing, but it was treated as if the writers didn't really care about what that is other than for aesthetic purposes.
Haruka was incredibly bland. She was portrayed as this young naive girl finding her way through life, which is fair given her age, but she never got absolutely anywhere. All her changes were superficial and in aesthetic, not deep enough to have the pretty words really mean something. She doesn't find anything to be passionate about, something that belongs solely to her, she goes back and forth between what the people around her do (Mio's job, Hikaru's job, Keisuke's social circle) and her self-deprecating behavior is swapped for a dependent behavior in which her aim is to be deserving of someone else.
There's so much talk in this drama about what being truly yourself means and how to reflect that outside but, in the end, when your characters don't get meaningful developments and the things that could make them interesting are only superficial tools in yet another by-the-numbers het romance (love triangles, misunderstandings, sharing the same room, getting drunk and being carried home, you name it), it's just the same bland thing pretending to be more.
Both Hikaru and Haruka had a lot of potential as characters but were handled really badly, with repetitive conflicts that didn't push them further than the mere superficial and kept them going in circles.
I was so disappointed that Hikaru's gender fluidity wasn't more developed and was treated merely as an accessory to Haruka's "feminine awakening", his queerness is described as "magic", which is very yikes. He doesn't talk about what it means to him, other than superficial "we shouldn't tell people that I'm a guy" or "my parents don't accept me" but without any depth as to why or what that truly means to him or how he found his expression through it. He wasn't portrayed as a drag queen, he was portrayed as gender fluid, which is refreshing, but it was treated as if the writers didn't really care about what that is other than for aesthetic purposes.
Haruka was incredibly bland. She was portrayed as this young naive girl finding her way through life, which is fair given her age, but she never got absolutely anywhere. All her changes were superficial and in aesthetic, not deep enough to have the pretty words really mean something. She doesn't find anything to be passionate about, something that belongs solely to her, she goes back and forth between what the people around her do (Mio's job, Hikaru's job, Keisuke's social circle) and her self-deprecating behavior is swapped for a dependent behavior in which her aim is to be deserving of someone else.
There's so much talk in this drama about what being truly yourself means and how to reflect that outside but, in the end, when your characters don't get meaningful developments and the things that could make them interesting are only superficial tools in yet another by-the-numbers het romance (love triangles, misunderstandings, sharing the same room, getting drunk and being carried home, you name it), it's just the same bland thing pretending to be more.
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