K-Drama 
5
1
This review may contain spoilers
Tokyo Tower (2024) — A Moral Double Standard Disguised as Romance
The 2024 television adaptation of Tokyo Tower presents itself as an elegant, contemplative drama about forbidden passion, but beneath its beautiful cinematography lies a deeply fractured script struggling to balance infidelity melodrama with an idealized notion of pure love.
Its main structural problem is the constant tonal dissonance between the actual conflict and the artificial gravity imposed upon it. The ending of episode seven, when a voice-over declares that “our hellish summer finally came to an end,” perfectly exposes this disconnect. The two male protagonists are single university students, with no families to support, marriages to destroy, or careers at stake. Presenting a period of reckless romantic adventure as some kind of existential ordeal reveals a badly calibrated sense of lyricism that mistakes the anxiety of getting caught for Greek tragedy.
This lack of dramatic rigor becomes even more obvious through the creation of a scapegoat designed to protect the romantic hero. In order to keep Toru and Shifumi’s relationship on an almost immaculate pedestal, the script dumps nearly all the toxicity, guilt, and destruction onto Koji’s storyline. The result is a glaring moral double standard: one young man is punished for ruining lives while the other remains a tragic, misunderstood soul. One affair is stained so the other can remain beautiful.
In the process, the story also strips its female characters of genuine agency. By eventually presenting Kimiko as a woman whose life was ruined by an irresponsible young man, the narrative refuses to let her fully own the decisions she made as a married adult. Instead, it concentrates the blame on Koji rather than exploring something far more interesting: an adult woman consciously choosing to escape the monotony of her life and then having to face the consequences of that choice.
The short format — episodes of roughly twenty-six minutes — only makes these weaknesses worse. Crises are accelerated without enough time to develop motivations organically, forcing the story to rely on dramatic shortcuts and contrived turns to reach its conclusion.
And this leads to perhaps its biggest mistake: trying to disguise consequence as liberation.
The final café encounter between the two older women is visually constructed as a gesture of female solidarity and emancipation, but dramatically it feels much closer to shared resignation. Neither woman truly chooses the destination where the story leaves her. Both are pushed out of their previous lives after their affairs collapse.
The scene does not show two independent women celebrating their newly discovered autonomy. It shows two shipwreck survivors sharing the wreckage after paying the highest price for a summer fantasy.
In its determination to sanctify some characters while condemning others, Tokyo Tower ultimately betrays the complexity of the adult drama it initially promised.
Beautiful packaging wrapped around a script too afraid to embrace the moral ambiguity of its own story.
Its main structural problem is the constant tonal dissonance between the actual conflict and the artificial gravity imposed upon it. The ending of episode seven, when a voice-over declares that “our hellish summer finally came to an end,” perfectly exposes this disconnect. The two male protagonists are single university students, with no families to support, marriages to destroy, or careers at stake. Presenting a period of reckless romantic adventure as some kind of existential ordeal reveals a badly calibrated sense of lyricism that mistakes the anxiety of getting caught for Greek tragedy.
This lack of dramatic rigor becomes even more obvious through the creation of a scapegoat designed to protect the romantic hero. In order to keep Toru and Shifumi’s relationship on an almost immaculate pedestal, the script dumps nearly all the toxicity, guilt, and destruction onto Koji’s storyline. The result is a glaring moral double standard: one young man is punished for ruining lives while the other remains a tragic, misunderstood soul. One affair is stained so the other can remain beautiful.
In the process, the story also strips its female characters of genuine agency. By eventually presenting Kimiko as a woman whose life was ruined by an irresponsible young man, the narrative refuses to let her fully own the decisions she made as a married adult. Instead, it concentrates the blame on Koji rather than exploring something far more interesting: an adult woman consciously choosing to escape the monotony of her life and then having to face the consequences of that choice.
The short format — episodes of roughly twenty-six minutes — only makes these weaknesses worse. Crises are accelerated without enough time to develop motivations organically, forcing the story to rely on dramatic shortcuts and contrived turns to reach its conclusion.
And this leads to perhaps its biggest mistake: trying to disguise consequence as liberation.
The final café encounter between the two older women is visually constructed as a gesture of female solidarity and emancipation, but dramatically it feels much closer to shared resignation. Neither woman truly chooses the destination where the story leaves her. Both are pushed out of their previous lives after their affairs collapse.
The scene does not show two independent women celebrating their newly discovered autonomy. It shows two shipwreck survivors sharing the wreckage after paying the highest price for a summer fantasy.
In its determination to sanctify some characters while condemning others, Tokyo Tower ultimately betrays the complexity of the adult drama it initially promised.
Beautiful packaging wrapped around a script too afraid to embrace the moral ambiguity of its own story.
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