Title: Shiawase na kekkon / しあわせな結婚
Rating: 5 / 10
Recommended for:
Those who are fans of the lead actors and don't mind a lacklustre attempt at blending a quirky romance with an overly simplistic suspense plot
* Potential spoilers ahead!
Liked:
- The combination of Abe Sadao and Matsu Takako was what pulled me in at first and true enough, they were a pretty intriguing pair to watch. If not for their acting and chemistry, I think I might have dropped this after the first few episodes.
- The first episode which showcased the love story of the main couple i.e. from how they met till how they got married and just before the murder suspense subplot was probably the best part of the storyline.
Disliked:
- Appearances are deceiving. If you thought that this was going to be a love story about the leads just like how I did initially, you might feel cheated to a certain extent. It turned out that the suspense simply overshadowed the marriage of the lead couple, both in terms of airtime and importance in the entire drama. If it had been that the suspense storyline was decent enough to warrant the shift in focus and be of a certain standard to satisfy my expectations, I wouldn't have minded this change in direction so much. However, if the suspense was this predictable (the identity of the murderer was such a dead giveaway because the female lead could never have been the culprit given how such stories usually pan out) and the significance/relation of the case to the marriage was kind of lost on me, I couldn't help but think that this was a total letdown.
- Perhaps due to the shift in direction (or maybe the scriptwriter had intended it to be as such right from the beginning), this was also what made the character development seem to be messed up with lack of logic. In particular, I thought that Sugino Yosuke's character was rather bewildering. On one hand, he seemed like this persistent police officer with a strong conviction for justice who was out to find out the truth but halfway through, he became a lovelorn guy hopelessly besotted with the suspect. In the end, I was still none the wiser about where and how he had a heart change or rather what triggered him to develop feelings for the female lead. And even if he did struggle with the conflicting feelings, it just wasn't shown properly and everything felt so superficial to the extent that he didn't come across as really pining for the woman. It was quite a pity though because I thought the characters in this story could have intriguing background stories but the plot just didn't flesh them out so they appeared to be so flat and their actions incomprehensible.
- I don't know if the Netflix version differs from the OA version by TV Asahi but I don't think I've ever heard the theme song by Oasis played during the drama or in the ending credits section. That made me wonder, how did this song fit into this drama and was it even necessary to choose this as the theme song when viewers hardly got to hear it? I'm sure the TV station would have paid a lot to get the rights for a foreign song to be used as the theme so why did this happen? Totally defeats the purpose!
