This is becoming a bit of A Thing on the blog, but just in case you didn’t know, every so often, I like to cover a mini series as a bonus on Patreon, with the notes for the first 3 episodes made available to everyone, and here’s the announcement for the next bonus show I’ll be covering!
Previously, I covered Scripting Your Destiny and Mad For Each Other, so you can check out those bonus notes too, if you’d like.
For now, let me tell you a little bit about these latest bonus notes!
I do think this is a case of “your mileage may vary.”
I’ve had this show highly recommended to me (thanks Lynette!), and I’ve also seen lots of positive comments about this one, so Show is clearly quite well-loved. Which is why I went into this with pretty positive expectations.
However, I’m gonna hafta say that aside from Show’s first episode, which I loved, this one was.. just ok, for me, in the end. That said, just because I didn’t love this one, doesn’t mean you won’t (this show has lots of fans after all), so hopefully this review will help you figure out whether this one’s for you!
I might be at risk of giving the impression that I have A Serious Thing for contract marriage J-dramas here, what with my deep affection for 2016’s We Married As A Job, and general fondness for 2020’s Marry Me!, but when I heard about this short little J-drama and what it was about, I couldn’t resist checking it out.
I.. do have a soft spot for the contract marriage trope, can’t lie. But I rationalize that the premises for the contract marriages in all 3 shows are different and distinct from one another, and therefore I’m not essentially watching the same show done 3 different ways. 😅
At just seven 25-minute episodes, Show is easy and low-risk, and perfect for squeezing into little pockets of time – or marathoning in one sitting, if you prefer.
If you’d like a quick spot of drama that’s warm, fuzzy and doesn’t require a big investment of drama hours, but still provides that sense of continuity that dramas offer, this charming little J-drama might just do the trick.
At just 10 episodes of less than 25 minutes each, this show is perfect for squeezing in an episode or two, when you have only a small pocket of time to spare, but still want to indulge in some drama feels.
Quite perfect for the festive season, yes?
So I checked out this show because a number of you had mentioned this to me as a drama that you enjoyed, and, I’d also seen a fair number of positive remarks and a good amount of assorted squee about it as well. Since I’ve said that I’d like to include more Japanese dramas on my drama plate, I felt that it would be quite remiss of me to not check this out.
Now that I’ve emerged on the other side, I think it’s quite safe to say that overall, I didn’t manage to enjoy this one as much as everyone else did. But, for the record, this show did eventually grow on me towards the end, and I ended my watch enjoying the cozy-swoony feels that everyone else seemed to be talking about.
I think that this show would appeal to quite a niche sort of audience, which is why I’m here to help you figure out if you’ll like this one – before you invest the drama hours. I know; I’m so helpful that way, aren’t I? 😉
Do you guys remember when I dropped Graceful Family because I felt like it wasn’t quite hammy or makjang enough to be truly glorious to watch? I’d wanted it to achieve heightened pinnacles of blithe makjang-ness, trucking out trope after trope of juicy makjang nonsense, kinda like The Last Empress, and because it didn’t, that show kinda fell flat, for me.
Well, this is almost sorta the same thing, except what I’m wishing for, from this show, is more weirdness.
I know that sounds, well.. weird, but hear me out.
When you need a bit of a drama lift and somewhere to escape to, but don’t have the mental bandwidth to commit to a full-length drama, it’s short little dramas like this one, that tend to hit the spot best. At just 4 short half-hour episodes, A Sharply Graceful Girl provides just enough continuity to give you a sense of commitment, without feeling overwhelming, because of its bite-sized servings.
Also, Show is constructed mostly to be a pretty and informative travelogue of Kyoto, Japan, with a bit of a romance sown in, for good measure. Given the current global situation where almost everyone’s under lockdown and country borders are closed and you basically can’t travel anywhere, this show just might provide a bit of relief for any pent-up wanderlust.
It’s been a hot minute and a half, since I last watched a Japanese drama, not because I dislike them or anything, but because my drama plate’s been overflowing, just with Korean and Chinese dramas alone. When my dear friend Timescout mentioned this one to me, though, my interest was immediately piqued – enough to entice me to check it out quite quickly even, which is a Rather Big Deal, since my watch list is neverending, and my good intentions towards dramas often remain just that.
The topic of a mature woman restarting her life and finding her lost mojo is one that is near and dear to me, and I have a big ol’ soft spot for dramas that shine the spotlight on this particular female experience. I loved both C-drama The First Half Of My Life and kdrama Romance Is A Bonus Book, and I was immediately intrigued to acquaint myself with a Japanese take on a similar story.
In short, the J-treatment is unique in its own way, and.. I rather liked it.
I conclude that I might be one of maybe 3 people in the entire dramaverse who doesn’t love this drama to bits.
I really wanted to like this one, especially after long-time drama pal DDee told me that she loved this so much that she felt like going right back to the beginning of this show, once she got to the end. In my experience, that’s serious high praise for any drama, and not to be taken lightly. So I promptly moved Rich Man, Poor Woman to the top of my watch list and dived right in.
Sadly, I never felt the same kind of love for this show that just about everyone else seems to have. I do concede that Oguri Shun can be very sexy, though.
Thanks to my recent kdrama rut, I’ve been poking around more actively to explore new and different drama pastures, and I’m happy to report that my adventures have turned out some very positive viewing experiences.
I promise that I’ll be back soon with more kdrama reviews (I’m still watching ’em, just in fewer numbers), but in the meantime, here’s a quick little review on a quiet little charmer of a Jdrama that I probably would’ve never stumbled upon, if not for my kdrama rut.
(Silver linings to the rescue once again, heh.)
