Chester Payne

Honestly, 12 episodes would be more appropriate to most dramas; of the typical 16-20 episode dramas, typically the middle third of the series kind of sucks.

I'm actually glad the series got cut down in length. My biggest complaint about many K-Dramas is that they're too long for the story line. Often, the middle episodes end up either adding nothing meaningful to the over all story, stretching out the plot with repetitive events, or merely dragging on without any real entertainment value. Of course, there are exceptions that handle the 16-20 episode story arc well, having a true reason for each episodes existence over the length of the series, but even on these boards we see many complaints about even popular series that the middle episodes were a drag on the series as a whole.

I actually like the drama, but it does suffer from one common issue in Korean Dramas: it is too long. This particular drama should have been tied up in 12 episodes, at the most; stretching it out to 16 has watered down the plot too much. I actually skipped episodes 9, 10, and 11, going straight to 12, and I don't feel like I've missed out on any significantly necessary events in the story. From what happens in episode 12, I feel like the story could easily be drawn to a satisfactory close in episode 13, but there are four more to go.....

The dynamic between Kimura Takuya and Shibasaki Kou was awesome in this. The way they both tentatively became closer as the series goes on was great; both characters were awkward in the funniest ways. The relationship between their characters is my favorite part of this drama.

Often it's contractual issues or scheduling issues. Rarely, it is personal differences between individuals. For example, rumor has it that a bad break-up between Nakama Yukie and Matsumoto Jun is the reason that Sawada Shin's character didn't reappear in Gokusen 2. I haven't heard anything that a personal issue was the reason for Kou not appearing in Galileo 2.

I won't go into a full review, but this is my favorite JDrama of all time. I've watched it in its entirety at least 4 times. Haha...I've probably watched the last episode a dozen times. This is the part that made Shibasaki Kou my favorite actress of any genre in any country.