Promise Cinderella

This bratty main character was awfully cute. A lot of shows have these cocky heroes who constantly rag on the heroine, but their hearts are in the right place. This is basically that, too, but I thought it was better. Why? It had its limits. He's not downright evil, he's just a high school kid with an inferiority complex, so he cures it by barking without biting. Yet in fact, he's a loyal puppy. And the heroine knows that. So she'll let her whims get the better of her, but knows how to say: "Enough already!" Of course, she has her weaknesses too, and it's actually with him that she learns to recognize them. Their relationship was portrayed very beautifully, as a place in which trust and mutual respect grows. Of course, they remained themselves, in the sense that while they got wiser as the series progressed, their personalities didn't change and they stayed nicely consistent. Their verbal combat was pretty great too. There was the interesting ryokan setting and especially the Tea Man Koya portrayed by Kaneko Nobuaki, another great character the film wouldn't have worked without. On the other hand, the older brother of the rich kid, played by Iwata Takanori, didn't quite work for me. Which didn't matter so much, because he didn't get much screen time, but I found his effort to make serious expressions to be pointless. I just didn't like it. Then when he had slightly different positions, he was better and even more viable, but I didn't like him as a character. Nor did I care for Kikuno, the character was lame, like she crawled out of the 90s; I'm sure it would have worked without her. Otherwise, it was a fine series that I looked forward to every week. A classic romantic comedy with enjoyable and well-acted central characters in an unrealistic story. So it's a romantic comedy that doesn't even pretend to be real. A weaker 4 stars. (24.09.2021)