WELL! After acquiring all the episodes, I watched the entire thing in one afternoon, and the tale of the bumbling but good hearted Yowaki (Ogoe Yuki) falling for the bossy and commanding superior Takamine (Rika Izumi) and she him, was as FUN and WACKY as I remembered!
But as I watched it, I was surprised to find that what really began to take up my interest in the show was NOT the story of the two leads, but the SUPPORT character Ichigo Amai, played by the sassy Kanon...She went from a one-dimensional throwaway character to probably the most human and flawed person in the show, one that I found myself INVESTED in and ROOTING for!
Originally starting out as a snoopy comedic foil for the burgeoning romance between Takamine and Yowaki, Ichigo was primarily there for airheaded comedy relief- appearing as a girl who only pretended to like Yowaki because of vanity (and to be a troublemaker), and you were meant to have a laugh at her zany attempts to come between Yowaki and Takamine….
And when the outspoken girl discovers she REALLY likes Yowaki, all her clumsy attempts to catch Yowaki and make him fall in love with her are once again played for laughs (and, admittedly, fun it is!)…
But it was at around the halfway point of the show that they started showing Ichigo in a more serious light when she heartbreakingly realizes Yowaki has little interest in her even as she falls more and more in love with HIM…You really feel for her when she wants to be desired by him.
And when the lovesick girl sums up her courage to finally confess her feelings for Yowaki, she is given and gentle but firm rejection, a blow which really breaks her.
Ichigo stammers a confession
Later, a rejection via text.
Her depression leads her to retreat into alcohol, and slowly she becomes a bitter and uncaring person.I remember thinking “Wow, they’re really taking a lot of time to show Ichigo’s side of things- to show how HURT she is!”
Strangely, the thing that finally takes her out of her funk is seeing Yowaki working so hard to see his ideas come to fruition. Out of her alcoholic haze, she finds inspiration from him to take stock in herself, to actually find purpose and passion in what she is doing, and by the end, we have seen a wiser and smarter Ichigo Amai!
The romance between Takamine and Yowaki runs its course towards its expected happy end, and we see that the new and improved Amai has done well for herself too!
Satisfied, I leaned back and thought, “The Ichigo storyline could have been its own spin-off drama!" Ichigo Amai’s arc was far more heartfelt and nuanced than the main storyline of Takamine and Yowaki which was basically the same wacky set-up stretched over 12 episodes! Yes, you knew that Takamine and Yowaki loved each other and you knew they were ultimately going to end up together, but it was for Amai that I invested myself in those last 5 episodes, desperate NEEDING to see what would happen to this girl next. And I got a wonderful conclusion out of it!
