I named the so bad its good award after Imada Mio because I finished Trillion Game and Ichiban Sukina Hana because of her. I decided to see what other Imada Mio doramas and I came across Waru, a shoujo dorama workplace comedy with Imada Mio playing the super bubbly and positive Tanaka Maririn, a new employee of Omi which started out selling kimonos and now has its own online shopping platform.
The shoujo dorama part is that Tanaka Maririn went sky diving and feel in love with Kongming, I mean Mukai Osamu who happens to work at Omi as well. Armed with only his initials T.O., Tanaka Maririn will abuse her powers in the equipment section to stalk poor T.O. while fighting with the guy she will end up with every episode.
I got really excited because the first episode was about employees who came in during the corona pandemic and could not settle in because they were working remotely. Shida Mirai was a pandemic employee and her sempais don't remember her name because she was WFH all the time and she hasn't gained the required experience to do her job. I thought the corona employees being left behind was interesting although it was only explored skin deep.
Episode 2 was about women in the workplace and episode 3 is about the marketing research team on the verge on being outsourced. This is interesting stuff because it is relevant in today's world where lots of jobs are being outsourced yet I was not enjoying Waru. Was it because it never looked at the problems deeply and solved everything too easily and not to mention Tanaka Maririn gets 'promoted' to a new department every episode?
One of my favourite jdorama series of all time is Salaryman Kintaro. It was basically GTO in a workplace dorama and episode 1 was about Kintaro being so good at sharpening pencils. Salaryman Kintaro never went too deep into workplace problems either and every episode usually ended up with a fight scene. However, it was a goddamn fun dorama.
Waru was not fun, probably because it is a shoujo dorama so it is not aimed at me or something about Imada Mio's sickening bubbly personality just rubs me the wrong way. Also the show did not make me laugh and I found the female characters more interesting but Tanaka keeps hogging the spotlight. Normally as long as a show has some interesting issues I am happy to watch or have it in the background but I have absolute no desire for more Tanaka Maririn. Maybe I should download Japanese subs to watch instead?
Speaking of Japanese subs. I gave up on Last Man, another Imada Mio dorama after episode 1 long time ago. I decided to continue with Jp subs recently and I just stand watch Fukuyama Masaharu's plastic face. His face looks so CG or he looks like he is wearing a mask from Face Off. Its way too unnatural.
Meh and ultimately not for me. It did make me want to rewatch Kanno Miho's Hatarakiman and of course Takeuchi Yuko's Dandarin which I think might be the best workplace jdorama ever.
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