Ashita, Watashi wa Dareka no Kanojo (2022)

Need to love and feel loved - A bitter reality

Honestly, I was not sure if I should watch this drama or not, as the provided summary doesn't appropriately describe the true plot of this series.

CHARACTERS

In the drama we are following the story of 5 woman that seem to be related in a way. Yuki (portrayed by Yoshikawa Ai) is a 19 year old university student who is working as a Rental Girlfriend in order to make ends meet. When she is working and meeting with clients, she seems like a sweet, cheerful, and kind girlfriend; however, we get to know that in reality she has been through a lot and she carries a secret from her childhood that holds her back. Rina (played by Yokota Mayuu), who is Yuki's university friend, is a colourful, smiley, and cheerful girl that everyone likes and wants to be with her. In addition to her cheerful outside looks, Rina is a rather lonely girl that seeks attention and confirmation from people around her.

Ayano (played by Ugaki Misato) is working with Yuki at the same agency as a Rental Girlfriend and is mainly focusing on the outside looks of the people around her. This obsession with looks came from her bitter past when the people around her made fun of her due to her outside looks. The fourth protagonist is Moe Maya (played by Yanai Yumena) who is classmate with Rina, with low self-esteem and self-confidence. People around her call her ugly and she can't seem to belong anywhere, even though she is trying. Lastly, Yua (played by Saito Nagisa) is a cute girl that is a regular in a host club and is only visiting a specific host. Later on, Yua takes Moe to the host club that she is regularly going.

PLOT

The main plot of this series is to show how every person needs to feel loved and appreciated, in any way, from their peers. However, for me, the plot focuses not only the need to feel loved by others and love other people, but how important it is to love themselves. It is a rather bitter series which shows how shallow our society is, what are the expectations for women, and how easily women can be manipulated into doing things they don't want in order to fulfil the needs of their partners.

For example, in order Yua to help her favourite host (Haruki) in the host club, she is working in the adult world and she is meeting with clients that she can't refuse. She does that in order to help her favourite to rise through the rank and keep his sales high. Moe follows a similar story. Moe was a full time university student who after she started talking with a host she decided to drop out from her university, and in order to request for the host (Kaede) during her visits, she decides to also enter the adult world and do things that she doesn't want to.

MY OPINION

Honestly, this is a drama that is worth watching. Just a heads up: this is not a typical Romance series. Don't expect to find cute and colourful moments among the couples. This is a close to reality type of series. Unfortunately, there are many people who belittle other people's feelings and take advantage of them, and there are other people that are trying to survive in this world with noone beside them. I don't understand why the rating is relatively low. The rating here is not representative of how good the drama is (in my opinion!).

As an individual, I related mostly with Moe, as she and I share some common things. Since the moment that she answered Kaede's phone call, I knew that this is not going to have a happy ending. I was really routing for Kaede's feelings to be true towards her, but as we show in the end Moe was just a client to him. Even though, seeing her being depressed over him was sad, I was clad that in the end she was able to overcome her obsession and she took her life back to her hands.

Anyway, this is a good drama to watch, SO WATCH IT! BYE!

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An interesting dive into adult entertainment in Japan

At first I was critical but I wanted to watch it because Itsuki is in it. After the first episode I was hooked because of the lead character. This drama gives a very complex insight into not only the adult entertainment in Japan and how women fall into it, but also an overall oversight of society's expectations of women along with rather complex takes on different emotions. Each woman is flawed in their own way in this show, at first you might not like them at all but as it goes on you are shown more and more why they act as they do. I don't love all the characters but I somewhat came to understand them.

To my understanding the acting is really great, everyone seems authentic and they manage to explore complex emotions of their character pretty well. Some character seem totally one dimensional at first but the actors manage to bring out the inner turbulence during each story. So far my only issue with the drama is that nothing seems to be really resolved. Issues you think have been taken care of are suddenly undone off screen and a character returns back to 0.

This drama had me really involved, I cursed and felt with them, I judged and then understood somewhat. It was a journey for sure and I am sad that it only has 12 episodes. It is deeply entertaining and I recommend it to anyone who is open to learn more about the topic of adult entertainment.

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明日私は誰かのカノジョ

This drama is about a bitter love story depicting the realities of love between a female college students who earn money as a stand-in girlfriend, and men attracted to them.
4 girls are university students and they want to make money so they join this company where you can rent a girlfriend to make money, they go on dates with men. Yuki is very cold hearted and all she wants is the money to fix the scar on her face, she meets a guy who really falls in love with her but she is not into it.
Moe follows her friend into a host club bar where she meets a boy she likes, but he is a player all he wants is for her to keeep coming to the club and spend money for him. She becomes beautiful dresses more girly and quits her university for him.
Each woman in this show is different and unique, I really liked this drama

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finally a drama that doesn’t normalize men’s toxic behaviors

Usually jdramas tend to downplay the toxic behaviors of the male characters and their questionable actions are perceived as a way to show that, in reality, they really care about the FL and… I am so glad that this drama didn’t follow this pattern !! It’s quite common to see the FL forgiving every disrespectful thing the ML does but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this drama doesn’t romanticize men.
I saw some people being upset at Yuki leaving Sota at the end but it was the right choice to make. Sota spent together with her barely 2 days yet he said he loved her and wanted her to leave her job. He knows nothing about her real personality and him saying he would love her regardless is dumb, he doesn’t really know her so how can he sincerely like her?
Also people don’t realize how bad is not being economically independent. If she accepted his offer she would have become dependent of him… and the entire point of her character is to be free and find her own path. Even Rina, the most submissive character, found her own dream in the end.
It was interesting to see how some female characters were at first introduced as “unlikeable” like Aya and Yua but as the episodes go by we find out their story and their valid perspectives. You can still dislike them but you can also understand their points. Personally Moe’s journey was the hardest to watch. It was pretty sad to see her character’s growth decline and sells her body for a man that clearly thought about her as a client.
The men in here are trash which is realistic. Both Sota and Yudai knew about the FLs jobs and realities yet they wanted to decide for them.
At first Yudai seemed cool about Rina’s situation and knew she never was a sugar baby just for money yet he excepted her to stop.
Sota is the typical loser that idolizes a woman and is obsessive over her but has no idea how she really feels. Also in the end we see Sota with another girl, his new girlfriend and… what if she was another rental girl. His obsession for Yuki might have just been related to her job.
Kaede might be a grey character for some people because you aren’t sure if he cared about Moe (as a client) or if he was just playing her since the start. I personally think he indeed manipulated and exploited her because he knew she didn’t have enough money yet he persuaded her to have a debt. Yua’s boyfriend is the worst man in the drama since he exploited and assaulted her.
My favorite relationship in the show is the friendship between Yuki and Aya, an unexpected pair that really worked out in the end for me. It was definitely sweet to see Aya understanding Yuki and making her feel at ease above all because this is a bit unexpected since Aya is, most of the time, portrayed as a blunt and cold (queen). Another friendship I liked was between Moe and the baristas. It was so sweet seeing them cheer and care for her.
All the stories were interesting and the female characters were amazing. I might watch the second season too and see what new topics and characters they introduced.

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Good Enough

Japanese Drama " Ashita, Watashi wa Dareka no Konojo " is a drama about relationships, friendship, and female struggles.

The drama presents the stories of five young women, each one very different from the rest, but all of them working as pretend girlfriends in exchange for money. The story does a great job binding all the stories smoothly together, while giving them all proper screentime to get a nice development and an appropriate ending.

The stories, moreover, were refreshing and original, but for those looking for romance, this drama doesn't offer much of a cute love story. Rather, it focuses on how women are viewed, forced to look cute and not show their true selves, or look beautiful by mainstream standards to prevent being isolated and pushed aside. There are even some toxic relationships that were handled with care by the plot.

As for the performances, everyone did great with their characters and the leading ladies truly shone.

So, overall, eight out of ten.

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Deceptively honest story about loneliness.

This drama took me by surprise, I had no real expectations going in outside of it just being a fairly light and fun romance drama. However, it turns into an incredibly relatable and deceptively complex story that does an incredible job tapping into emotions and feelings that I think most of us have experienced at one time or another.

The prevelant theme of this season is loneliness, manifesting itself in a variety of different ways across the main cast of characters, who find themselves experiencing and dealing with their loneliness in their own way. Some doing it more destructively than others.

Very strong performances from all the female leads (Yoshikawa Ai as Yuki is billed as MC, but scarcely has story for at least half of the shows episodes). I especially enjoyed the slightly unhinged performance by Saito Nagisa as Takahashi Yua, and Yanai Yumena as Maya Moe; who for me was the star of the show.

Very excited to being Season 2!

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At what cost are you willing to harm yourself, to be loved?

This review will have a lot of spoilers and personal reflections.

Yuki is a college student with a very sad past. Coming from a broken home, where no one has loved and protected her (in that sense and in many others I see myself very much reflected in her). So she has had to learn to take care of herself and protect herself. Her past has left her traumatized, so she has closed her heart so that no one will hurt her and also because she believes that she cannot live a normal life like other girls. However, despite working as a rental girlfriend, she is very intelligent, knowledgeable, cunning and wise. Her tough personality may make it seem like she is a bad person but that is not the case, she takes great care of her friend Rina, advises her and protects her. She is also realistic and sincere and she knows how to read other people very well.

Rina is a very kind and good girl but she lacks self-love, no matter how beautiful she is, she does not see herself that way, and her loneliness and emotional attachment to men makes her have relationships with older men to satisfy her emotional emptiness. It is incredible to see her evolve, to see her take another path, modeling, I left that world and her analyzed herself and realized that depending on other emotional people has not gotten her anywhere. That she has to find her own happiness for herself.

Here we get into the most fucked up part. Personally, I have never liked hosts, I consider them bad people, who take advantage of girls who are not mentally well so that they spend all their money, sometimes on lies like "you are the only one" and "the most special to me."Clearly this is a lie, and it is clearly demonstrated in this drama, but it is a reality that happens a lot. Clearly a person who is mentally well would not believe it but the girls who go to this place are not, so they believe it. When they run out of money, they start prostitution and it's a never-ending cycle. So the hosts don't give a shit about what happens to you, how you feel or what you do to get the money. They only see you as an ATM to indulge in their own luxuries.

With that said, let's move on to Moe. At first Moe does not believe in love and she has many self-esteem problems, because she does not consider herself beautiful like the others, but rather a disposable woman. So when she meets Yua (damn the time she met this girl) she reluctantly goes to a host. At first she doesn't feel comfortable until she meets Kaede (I mean he's not that bad even he cares that Moe doesn't do weird things to make money) and starts to fall in love. Obviously Kaede is becoming more popular and the money she has to invest to be with him is becoming higher, she can't afford the money with her job, so she invests money from her scholarship but it is still not enough. So she abandons university, her old job and starts prostitution to earn money, after all it's the quickest way (unfortunately). The clients they have are disgusting and Moe begins to feel dirty and begins to wear out even more mentally. But when she calls Kaede and he answers, she continues doing that job no matter how disgusting it is. Yua runs into her and listens to Moe's conversation with her pimp (because there's no other way to call her boss). So Yua thinks it's a great idea for her to be a prostitute just like her ??‍♀️ and invites her to see the boys and continue spending money. Kaede's birthday arrives and she already has the money to celebrate Kaede's birthday at the host club, so she is happy until she sees that he is having a great time with his other clients. Moe's heart breaks and she leaves, just at that moment she receives a very understanding message from her mother and also the invitation from her friends, that they miss her (because even she distances herself from her real friends) and she realizes all the mistakes, that she has fallen very low and the absurdity of it all. There she decides to never see Kaede or set foot in a host club again. Moe also has a big change, and she resumes her friendship with her friends, who really loved her, and begins to study hairdressing, but she still wanted to continue having her "friendship" with Yua even though she no longer goes to host clubs or works as a prostitution. Yua's response is really shit, Yua tells her that they both belong to different worlds and that it was a waste of time to talk to her (it's normal that Yua doesn't have friends, with friends like her, it's preferable to have enemies)

Now let's talk about Yua, I honestly don't know what kind of mental illness she has but she is clearly not a normal person. She is addicted to host clubs and prostitution, although she says she is disgusting.
But her reality is quite sad, since her host boyfriend (what a shitty man, if I can call him a man,he is). He forces her to prostitute herself more and more so she invests even more money for him. He doesn't care that she is so tired mentally and physically, he wants me to work three times as hard. He even tells her that he will get her a new boss because he didn't make her earn or work as much as he wanted. He treats her very badly and when he treats her well, which is only once, he tells her that he would always treat her like that if she didn't always make a fuss, he is really sick shit.
After all, Yua gets tired, she even cuts her wrist and he goes to see her because an intimate photo with another client had been leaked. Yua is tired and wants to break up with him, she tells him that she really didn't care that he slept with other clients but that he was very careless in his work, there he begins to choke her while telling her pure meaningless shit to justify himself, but then he stops and He apologizes to Yua, but she is no longer interested in anything about him. So she breaks up with him, warning him that she will expose him and report him for physical assault. One at that moment thinks that Yua has come to her senses but no, a year later she is still addicted to the host and continues to spend money on they. Unfortunately, but it is a reality.

And finally we have Aya, a fairly irrelevant character but who shows us the obsession with being beautiful. Although she has had many surgeries, she does not stop. And the ending for her is the same as Yua's, nothing changed.

There is also a somewhat relevant character like Tsubasa, a boy who likes "women's" things and who becomes confused by his sexuality. Although he has dated both men and women, he has not been comfortable with either gender. And in the end he repeats to Moe the words he had told him before becoming obsessed with Kaede, is love really that important? The important thing is to do the things you like and love yourself.

Here I want to explain something about the hosts, which I didn't know but through a YouTube video I found out, that rule that you can't get involved sexually with a client is a lie. Yes they can, as long as the club doesn't find out. He tends to flirt a lot on Tinder and they are a walking flag network, so if you go to Japan NEVER think about messing with a Host. In reality, never go to a Host club, it is usually more addictive than going to a casino and you really become a gambling addict.

As you can see, it is a drama complicated by the complexity of the characters. And it also keeps you waiting for how each of the girls will end up. There are cases where things have ended well and other cases where things remain the same. But in the cases that have not ended well, it is not because they have not had development as a character, but rather their obsession with host clubs or achieving a perfection that does not exist are trapped in that world.

There is a phrase by Yuki that stuck in my head from "I will never give my body or my heart for money" and it is a harsh but realistic phrase.

Clearly the director gives you the possible reasons why each girl makes those decisions so that you can understand the girls. The issue of Yuki, Aya and Yue could be solved if they went to therapy. But we all know that the topic of going to a psychologist or psychiatrist is a taboo topic and that there is zero knowledge that going to therapy does not make you a crazy person.

That's why there is a high suicide rate or more people who decide to stay out of society. Because Japan is such a rigid country that if you have a mental problem, it is your fault because you did not know how to adapt to society, that is Japanese thinking. Clearly the government has a great debt with mental health for years and that they have not wanted to solve. It's not that they can't, it's that they don't want to.

Is it a drama that I recommend? Yes, for me it is a must see because it will make you think a lot and open your eyes about Japan. Because the director of this drama does not hesitate to explain this. She doesn't romanticize anything, she just shows you reality.

Everyone's acting is great, so much so that you really come to hate some of the characters and want to get on the screen and give them a good kick in the ass.

The soundtrack is incredible as is the cinematography, allowing you to see how each character feels, especially Yuki.

Honestly there is nothing I don't like. There are 11 chapters and it is rare for a Japanese drama to go beyond 9 chapters and have a long duration, but for me it was very good because it doesn't leave any loose ends.

You feel very sad for Yuki, Yua and Aya, yes but it is a reality. That this could be solved by each one going to therapy, is true. But the director is realistic in this case, since the topic of mental health is a taboo topic and not very well regarded, you could not expect another premise. So it was quite realistic, in all aspects.

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