Cora

OVERVIEW:

Romantics Anonymous is a heartfelt, layered story where chocolate becomes a metaphor for connection, healing, and love. Ha Na, a scopophobic prodigy, finds solace and growth under the guidance of her mentor Kenji, whose sudden death sets off a series of personal and professional challenges. The series shines in its portrayal of Ha Na and Sosuke’s slow-burning bond, built on mutual healing, trust, and emotional vulnerability.

The narrative balances romance, humor, and high-stakes chocolate drama, with twists like Ha Na’s mistaken crush on Hiro and her secret identity as the anonymous chocolatier keeping the story engaging. At its core, it’s about the transformative power of human connection: how one person, or even one piece of chocolate, can change a life.

Sweet, tender, and emotionally satisfying, Romantics Anonymous is a delightful exploration of love, loss, and self-discovery.


COMMENTARY:

I didn’t expect Romantics Anonymous to wreck me the way it did. I pressed play thinking I was getting another cozy culinary drama and instead I got a story that cracked me open like a cocoa pod and scraped out everything raw and sweet and painful inside me.

The moment Ha Na appeared, I felt it. That quiet, aching competence that comes from someone who’s brilliant but terrified of being seen. I know that feeling. I know what it’s like to pour your whole soul into something just so you can hide behind it. She doesn’t want to be looked at, but she wants to be known. There’s a difference, and the show knows it too.

Kenji sees her. Of course he does. He’s the kind of mentor you meet once in a lifetime, the man who sees through your fear, not around it. When he dies, while making her birthday cake, of all things... it’s brutal. He dies mid-love. Mid-care. It’s the kind of death that feels too real because it happens in the middle of something good. And Ha Na’s there, helpless, her world tilting sideways, and I swear, for a moment, I felt like I lost someone too.

Then there’s Sosuke. This corporate heir who looks like he’s never touched a warm thing in his life. Cold, clinical, neat. The kind of man who probably irons his soul every morning. And yet he’s the one who understands her. Not with words, but in that strange, quiet way people with damage recognize each other. He can’t handle touch; she can’t handle being seen. They’re two halves of the same wound, learning how to exist without flinching.

I’ll admit, when Ha Na started crushing on Hiro, the jazz-playing bartender-slash-kendo-boy-slash-gorgeous mess, I rolled my eyes a little. But then it made sense. Of course she’d fall for him. He’s safe from a distance, fantasy-level safe. She thinks he saved her once, but it turns out it was Sosuke all along. That revelation hit me like a sucker punch. Because isn’t that always how it goes? We fall for the wrong person because we can’t bear to look too closely at the one who actually saved us.

And then there’s Irene, the psychiatrist-slash-counsellor-slash-emotional grenade. I swear, she might be the most unprofessional professional I’ve ever seen on screen. She’s supposed to help people navigate their feelings, not tangle herself into their love triangles like a drunk cat in a string of fairy lights. She counsels Hana, Sosuke, and Hiro, but she’s also romantically involved with one of them, lying to another, and ducking accountability like it’s cardio. She breaks her own boundaries and mixes therapy with self-sabotage. Therapists shouldn’t blur lines this way.

The thing about Romantics Anonymous is that it doesn’t sugar-coat its sweetness. Every romantic moment is balanced by something sharp and uncomfortable. Ha Na shaking, forcing herself to show up at Le Sauveur for the interview she never wanted. Sosuke trying to run a company that feels like it runs on ghosts and melted sugar. The way they circle each other, terrified, curious, so careful... it’s maddening. I kept yelling at the screen, “Just look at each other! Just touch!” And when they finally do, it’s not even sexual. It’s sacred. It’s like they’re both saying, “Okay, maybe I won’t die if I’m real with you.”

And the chocolate. Every scene that features it feels like poetry. When they describe the texture, the scent, the balance of sweetness and bitterness, it’s not about food anymore. It’s about being alive. The show somehow manages to make a truffle taste like forgiveness.

The moment that gutted me the most wasn’t even the romantic climax, it was when Ha Na goes to the island, looking for Kenji’s legendary cocoa. She’s chasing his ghost, but really, she’s chasing courage. She doesn’t even realize she’s walking into danger, because she’s finally brave enough to walk at all. That kind of growth, that kind of quiet bravery? I ugly cried. I cried like I was the one trying to find my way back home.

And Sosuke following her there, saving her again, and realizing she was the miracle all along. The one person who didn’t repulse him, the one who cracked open his sterile world and filled it with mess and life. Watching him finally touch his father’s hand after everything? I just broke. Because trauma doesn’t end with some big cinematic closure, it ends with trembling fingers and a shaky breath and the choice to reach out anyway.

By the end, when Ha Na wins the competition, when she’s standing there under the lights without fear, I wanted to stand up and clap like a maniac. Not because she won, but because she finally let herself be seen. That’s the whole story: not chocolate, not love, not business. Just the sheer miracle of allowing someone to look at you and not crumbling under the weight of it.

And that final scene: Ha Na and Sosuke running away from their own wedding? I laughed and cried at the same time. Because it’s so them. Love doesn’t erase your anxiety or your trauma. It doesn’t turn you into someone else. It just gives you a place to rest while you deal with it.

So yeah, I’m sitting here thinking about how sometimes the people who scare us the most, the ones who make us confront ourselves, end up being the ones who save us. Ha Na and Sosuke didn’t fix each other; they reminded each other it was okay to be broken in public.