Itazura Na Kiss [Mischievious Kiss] Love In Tokyo 1 and 2 (Japanese Drama)

Genre: Romance, Comedy, Friendship

Episodes Total: Season 1 => 16

                             Season 2 => 16

Main Cast:

Yahagi Honoka as Aihara Kotoko

Furukawa Yuki as Irie Naoki

Yamada Yuki as Ikezawa Kinnosuke

Nakai Noemie as Christine Robbins

Synopsis:

Season 1:

At a high school entrance ceremony, high school student Aihara Kotoko, who isn’t that smart, notices pretty boy Irie Naoki. She falls in love with him immediately. Kotoko initially doesn’t express her feelings to him, but finally has a chance to tell him how she feels. Unfortunately, Naoki turns Kotoko down, saying “I don’t like dumb women.”

One day, Kotoko’s house is severely damaged by a meteorite. Until they find a new place to live, Aihara and her father decide to live with her father’s friend. When Kotoko moves to her new temporary house, she is surprised to learn that Irie Naoki lives there as well.

Season 2:

In this second season, we follow our couple, Kotoko and Naoki after their wedding, as they try to enjoy their honeymoon and then their marriage life. Aihara Kotoko finally becomes Irie Kotoko. Everything seems perfect except there's always trouble everywhere. Even more so, when she decides to change major and pursue nursing to strive to support her husband someday. Pursuing nursing will be challenging, how will she persevere and how will she face the trials that shall come? Surely with love!

My Thoughts:

This is an awesome remake. The 1996 version was not able to gain enough popularity but this one totally rocks. The new cast and wonderful plot line is just hard to resist. The casting was well done. They manage to capture the story perfectly in a modern setting. Interpretation of the scenes from the anime and manga was well done. Made me nostalgic to the time I watched the anime. And I read reviews of the story compared to its other counterparts like the Korean version and Taiwanese version, and the reviews proved even more that this is the best production of the story. The story felt more real and lovingly cute. 

Update, I was debating whether to make a new post because adding here would be weird as it's an old post and the system of writing i used most recently has not been spread to it yet. But I think it is more efficient for searching like this if I make it centralized so yeah. 

I just recently got into finishing the second season after putting it off for quite a long while, just to tie up some loose ends. And I absolutely loved marathoning the drama all the way to the end. As I mentioned before, it feels so nostalgic and at the same time surreal to see the same story being adapted into live action. From 2D to real life, where you can really see the emotions and identify body language which just makes the experience so much better. 

Last season, Naoki was pretty cold as he was supposed to be but this season I loved seeing him showing more emotions and really loving Kotoko as best as he can though sometimes Kotoko feels insecure and gets frustrated at Naoki for not being expressive enough but we can really see that he tries to reciprocate and is learning how to handle all these new emotions that he never felt before. 

This season as in the anime is where we get introduce to new characters as Kotoko starts a new chapter in her life, the new characters are just amusing to say the least and really adds on to the comedy. We also got to see development in the story of characters like Naoki's little brother, Yuuki whose story development I totally adore and love hahaha... due to how cute and innocent it was. And also the entrance of the odd and funny Christine Robbins, I am glad for one thing that the way she enters the story is revamped which made it much natural for me compared to the anime.

The second season to me, is a much better season compared to the first season as there was more emotions being exchanged between our couples, the story developed better characterization, there's less conflict and the struggles faced are not excessively weird and are natural which makes the story more understandable. The overall tone of the season was amazingly good after experiencing the tough, and sometimes heartbreaking first season which is a relief. If they were to follow the anime to the dot, the story would have been so different. So, yeah, season 2 is a honeymoon, you enjoy, you have fun, you laugh and you feel the romance growing at every corner! Go on and watch it if you haven't already.