LOVE SHUFFLE

Winter 2009

Love Shuffle is a drama about four young people (Kei, Airu, Ojiro, and Kikuta) with different personalities and occupations who happen to live on the top floor of an exquisite apartment building. One day they coincidentally take the elevator at the same time during a storm and end up getting stuck due to a black out. With nothing else to do, they get acquainted and begin conversing about their love lives. With each of them questioning the purpose of love, they decide to "shuffle" their partners or acquaintances with each other as a test to find out if they can fall in love or affirm that their former relationships were indeed the best for them.

Kei Usami (Hiroshi Tamaki) works for a highly regarded corporation, but was offered the job mainly because his fiance, Mei Kagawa (Shihori Kanjiya) is the daughter of the chairman of said corporation. Airu Aizawa (Karina) is a multilingual translator who is contemplating the meaning of love and marriage. Yukichi Oishi (Daigo) likes Airu, but he tends to buy friendships and anything else he wants with money. Ojiro Sera (Shota Matsuda) is a talented model photographer and a womanizer. He brings along a model, Reiko Kamijyo (Hijiri Kojima) who tends to see men from a physical perspective. Masato Kikuta (Shosuke Tanihara) is a psychiatrist and the mastermind of the love shuffle. He brings along a suicidal patient named Kairi Hayakawa (Yuriko Yoshitaka) as a form of treatment, hoping that she stops attempting to kill herself if she finds a lover. Will the game of love work or will it cause more harm than good?

Recommendation: This drama had a good cast of characters but a sub-par cast of actors to play them. The story of switching partners every week to find love was interesting and the chemistry between the characters were fun to watch. The script was ok too and I found myself laughing quite hard during some silly scenes but some of the puns were hit or miss. I felt that this drama could have been better in terms of the selection of actors. Also, the story in my opinion fizzled in the end and I just didn't feel emotionally attached to the outcomes of each character. I blame the directing for this especially the last episode in which all the stories for each character needed to be resolved. So due to time constraints it felt like the outcomes were squeezed in to fit the length of the episode. Since Kei and Airu are basically the main characters I would have liked to see the other character's problems solved in episode 9 and have their issues worked out in episode 10. That would have created more drama in my opinion and probably a more "natural" ending. This drama wasn't bad, but it isn't a must watch. If you want something lighthearted with a lot of puns this drama is for you, but for me, the frequently used phrase, "say it ain't so Joe" sums it up for me.

Spoiler alert: I wasn't happy with the last two episodes. The final episode in particular seemed like it was edited without much thought. Problems were resolved in a cut and dry manner which sucked all of the emotions I had for the characters, especially when Mei and Yukichi got married. That was certainly a surprise, but it felt rushed and came out of nowhere. They didn't even seem good together. That said, episode 7 was the funniest for me especially when Kei and Airu find out Kikuta was gay.

Story: 1.0
Acting: 0.5
Directing: 0.5
Character Development: 0.5
Emotional Factor: 0.5

3.0 Out Of 5.0 Crowns