Quick Review #42: 100 mankai ieba yokatta - Winter 2023

Title: 100 mankai ieba yokatta / 100万回言えばよかった

Rating: 4 /10 

Recommended for: 

Those who like love stories between human beings and ghosts which are destined for a tragic end.

You may refer here for my detailed review of Episode 1. 

Liked:

- If you look at this drama purely as a love story destined for a sad ending, I think it did achieve its purpose as there were so much tears and sadness across the board. While some stories could try to do a sharp twist just to please the viewers with a happy ending, I'm glad that this drama stayed its course and went all the way to the logical while not necessarily sad conclusion.

- The acting from the three leads was on par with their usual standards. Of course, my personal bias would be for Matsuyama Kenichi who managed to make the somewhat clumsy but very kind Yuzuru extremely endearing and someone to root for although everyone knew that he wouldn't have a chance with the female lead. I felt that Inoue Mao's spot-on portrayal of Yui who remained steadfast in her love for Naoki (Sato Takeru) and her juggling of the variety of emotions Yui had throughout the course of the story made this one of her memorable performances to date. Not to mention that she looked good with both male leads (the living and dead ones). As for Sato, I thought that the parts when Naoki's family story and the circumstances leading to Naoki's death stood out a bit more for me compared to the romance aspect.

Disliked: 

- One of the concerns I raised in my Ep 1 review was the story hinting at a possibility that Naoki might not be dead after all. I thought that it took too long for his "status" to be confirmed so it was getting a tad draggy at that point. I would have preferred that they took no more than 2 episodes to certify his death and then move on to the rest of the story. Time is precious.

- I also didn't like the reason why Naoki died. Of course, the dark truth was not a trivial thing nor something to be seen as unimportant but at least for me, I felt that he had died in vain somehow and wasted the potentially happy rest of his life with the woman he loved. And to make it worse, it was so easy to guess who the culprit was because dramaland logic always tells you that the least suspicious-looking one or the supposedly kindest or most unlikely one would be the one. As such, I think things could have been wrapped up with lesser episodes or that more airtime could have been devoted to the stories of the three leads rather than have the case investigation meander through the season in such a slow pace.