glacier

This dorama totally surprised me! I ended up liking it quite a bit. At first, the acting and dialogue seemed a bit uninspired, and the characters a bit flat, but Nakayama Yuma caught my attention so I kept watching. (Plus, any love story with an older woman and a younger man catches my interest.) I also liked the theme of looking at vampires from the point of view of a vampire who is unable/unwilling to be a vampire. In the end, what stuck with me was that it seemed to be a dorama about trust, acceptance, and making choices.

The acting is great, the plots are interesting and sometimes unexpected, and the characters are complex so that you care about them. Also, each episode is a self-contained case but the episodes have common threads that tie one to another. This is now in my Top 3 list, along with Long Vacation and Virgin Road.

I don't get it. This drama is so popular, but it hasn't clicked for me. There is no character that I really care about. Nodame is flaky and whiny, Chiaki is full of himself and always whipping her upside the head, and the gay guy with the afro is just irritating. And I typically like the gay guys in jdorama.

The best parts are when the orchestra plays, so I keep watching it, hoping it will get better.