A reflection on whether I’ve changed, or whether Japanese dramas have. Have I dried out as a person? Have I simply gotten older? In the early 2000s, there were so many Japanese dramas that completely pulled me in. Even then, many were adaptations of Japanese novels, but I remember being absorbed in the storytelling. When a Japanese man and a Korean woman meet on screen, I wonder what that dynamic is supposed to feel like. Attractive leads, familiar romantic setups. Yet when two people of different nationalities and genders come together, there should be something distinct in the texture of that interaction. Some uniquely Japanese male trait. Some uniquely Korean female sensibility. I don’t feel that. It might be because I have only watched the first episode. Maybe later the cultural gaps and differences will be explored in a meaningful way. But is that, by itself, enough to make it compelling? I do not know whether Japanese men hold any particular romantic fantasy about Korean women. I do know that many Korean men tend to have a favorable romantic fantasy about Japanese women. That asymmetry alone is interesting, yet it rarely seems to be examined. Instead, the story follows a familiar path: an ordinary man and an ordinary woman. Repeated coincidences. Gradual attraction. A predictable unfolding of affection. It is not that this structure is inherently flawed. It is simply that nothing within it feels specific, charged, or culturally irreplaceable.