Mischievous Kiss: the Review

Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo
Romaji name: Itazura na Kiss ~ Love in TOKYO
air date: 3.29.2013 through 7.19.2013
number of episodes: 16
I watched it: three mini-marathons while it aired

In a nutshell: An absolutely delightful drama that manages to take a plot so standard you’ll know how it ends as soon as it begins, but tell it with such a light and careful touch it feels like a restrained coming of age tale. (Well — relatively restrained. There’s enough comedy to tie the drama firmly to its shoujo-manga roots.) It’s filled with characters drawn so broadly they verge on caricature, but given emotional beats so honest they feel real and relatable. It’s an easy watch, a fun watch and, most importantly, a satisfying watch. Based off of a hugely popular manga, several drama-versions have already been made. But, even if you’ve seen every other version out there, do not miss this one.

Mischievous Kiss: Reaction Post

I pause my dark and gritty Heartless City viewing to bring you my long (long!) overdue reaction post to the bright and adorable Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo…

That was such an enjoyable drama! On more levels than you’d expect. It was light and refreshing but also quiet and warm. It wasn’t quite slice-of-life in that both Kotoko and Naoki are larger than life characters — almost (but not quite) caricatures. And they experience unrealistic, plot-twisty adventures. (How many teenagers wind up living with their high school crush? How many college students wind up running a large company?)

Spoilers for everything below…

Weekly Drama Check-in Post

This last week was a doozy… but I did watch me some dramas. And they were all good dramas, which brings its own reward.

Mischievous Kiss: The adorable continues!

Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo‘s tenth episode came out on Dramafever yesterday. And, since that’s the episode number I vowed to wait for before watching more episodes… I’ve successfully mini-marathoned all the way through from where I left off at episode 5! Drama-watching powers, activated!

It was totally worth the wait. The episodes are a lot shorter than the average k-drama, clocking in at around 40 minutes with a good chunk knocked off by virtue of being the opening and closing credits (neither of which seem to really exist with k-dramas — or at least, they’re tons shorter). And the story itself is so light and airy I find it more satisfying to fully immerse myself into its world for a generous block of time.

Spoilers through episode 10 below…

Comparing kisses…

Existential crisis solved (for now…) — I’m going in!

I watched Playful Kiss (the k-drama version; and one of the first five K-dramas I ever watched ever) a long time ago.