Overall solid show. Female leads carried the acting but even the supporting characters were pretty good!

The show definitely has some flaws and people who are looking for a fast-paced revenge story will be disappointed. This is a plot on the slower side of things with a lot of family drama and plot twists.

The highlight of the show is definitely Suzuki Kyoka’s Makiko. The character, whether you like her or not, is superb and an excellent example of a multi-dimensional antagonist. Even with her pretty ghastly personality, I was kinda rooting for her a little bit by the end. She is what I call a milfboss.

Shinji’s character is also one of the most interesting ones, even if at first he seems like a boring background character, the more we learn about him and his broken inner world, the more layered he becomes. This can be said about ~most~ of characters in the show. I don’t think any of them are either black-or-white, and you might like them at one point of the story and dislike them at another.

The romance is a bit weird to me, in the sense that it’s well-paced and there’s definitely chemistry between the actors, however, it didn’t strike me as particularly necessary. A platonic relationship between Anzu and Kiichi would’ve been perfectly good as well. I think at the end of the day, I perceived their relationship as meant to be healing rather than romantic. If you’re not a fan of romance just know that it’s not really a huge part of the plot, and it is not a forced relationship, it’s very natural. Heed of warning though: the main couple are technically step-siblings for most of the show (even though they’ve never really seen each other that way).

The plot twists were actually kind of fun, and whenever I thought I had it all figured out, there came another twist to mess me up. If you’re into happy endings… this might be for you.

Good show to binge watch!