Love Shuffle eps 3-8

The heart and soul of RabuSha.

Thank the jdorama gods for RabuSha! Nojima Shinji proves that there is at least one jdorama writer in Japan who knows pacing, characterisation and good dialogue. This is the perfect show to cure my depression from watching another horribly written episode of Triangle. When I was reviewing the first 2 episodes of RabuSha, I expressed my concern that the show needed to do two episodes for every round of love shuffling in order to pace itself.


I did not consider the possibility of having two seasons of love shuffling. The first season two introduce the characters and the second to peel back the layers and and get to the heart of the characters. I love how it switches gears halfway through the show and becomes more a mystery dorama. Nojima Shinji knows how to keep the viewers in suspense but give enough information to keep things interesting. The producers of Triangle should have fired that hack of a writer and gotten him to save the show.


Yoshitaka Yuriko is absolutely perfect as Kairi, the spaced out suicidal. I knew it was a matter of time before she had to do more than just act disinterested. She has the ability to do more with less. I still don't like Mei's acting. There's something about her that seems.... wooden but as long as she's a supporting character, I don't care. She's there to support the main characters anyway.

A smile that can light up anyone's world.

Ai Ai and Usa-tan are the main reason to watch this show. However, I really hate the appearance of Kame. Its the typical sudden introduction of a nice guy foil for Usa-tan to compete against. A necessary evil and staple of so many doramas but I feel it is completely unnecessary in case of Love Shuffle. This series has already has so many storylines, twists and turns and interesting characters.

A hard day's work for our photographer.

For every episode I watch I just wonder where Nojima Shinji gets his cool ideas from and marvel at how he manages to fit all those storylines and character together. Maybe he will do something different with Kame but it just feels like Kame's existence is just for the purpose of adding one more episode to the series.


Definitely the must watch series of the season. Girls will like one giant revelation at the end of ep7. For guys, Karina + Yoshitaka Yuriko = heaven. And I caught a glimpse of one of my fav supporting actresses Umemiya Masako in ep 7 so hopefully she'll have a role later.