Like a lot of people I came to this drama after watching the two MLs in Cherry Magic. But I ended up falling in love with Mamoru, one of the most unique and interesting drama leads I've ever seen (played to perfection by Eguchi Noriko).

The drama opens with her on top of the world as an orphaned heiress who has built a growing e-publishing business. Mamoru is smart, she's funny, she's brave and she's passionately devoted to her business partner and employees who she treats as her surrogate family. But when her partner betrays her and embezzles all of the company's assets Mamoru is dead broke for the first time in her life and forced to restart her business from scratch with only a small, ragtag group of loyal employees and inexperienced interns.

Mamoru is so charismatic that not only does she find herself in a love triangle with two younger men (played by Cherry Magic leads Akaso Eiji and Machida Keita), there's also a female employee in love with her. Even the employees who aren't in love with her practically worship her and it's not surprising. What I love about Mamoru is she always leads with her heart. She's piercingly intelligent and willing to take risks but she's also endearingly quirky and awkward and unexpectedly shy. It's a joy to see a drama female lead who's allowed to be a badass leader but also imperfect. She makes a lot of mistakes, mostly trusting the wrong people, but her unerring moral compass and devotion to her team makes up for it. Eguchi does a fantastic job with the portrayal and her unconventional beauty really fits with the character.

The side characters are also delightful and well acted. Special shoutout to Miyamura Sora (played by Machida Keita), a younger man whose life was literally saved by Mamoru and has sworn lifelong loyalty to her, and editorial director Ikari Kenji (played by Furuta Arata) the company's oldest employee who enjoys a strong drink, mentoring young comic artists and snooping into his boss's business.

Even though I loved this drama, there are two big flaws that I think are why this drama has very low ratings on MDL. Number 1 is the plot, which is all over the place. Big events take place that are never really dealt with and have no influence on the rest of the story. For example, a major character is stabbed and hospitalized but the entire incident is wrapped up in one episode and never referred to again. The plot also gets repetitive as certain incidents get recycled with different characters and similar outcomes. There's also a lot of time skips and after a while I gave up trying to guess how much time had passed in the story. The ending isn't terrible but it isn't terribly exciting either.

The second big problem is the tepid romance between Mamoru and the ten-years younger Yu (played by an admittedly very handsome Akaso Eiji). I'm normally all for a May-December relationship but these two don't have any sexual chemistry. I did enjoy their domestic scenes cooking and talking together but it felt more like a comfortable friendship than two lovers.

I think the best way to approach this drama is not to expect a tightly written and coherent plot or a burning hot romance and instead view it as an office based slice of life with an incredibly interesting and compelling female lead.