Cinderella's Closet

Ok, so I'd been watching Ascendance of a Bookworm, where I'm up to episode 26. But I was getting a bit overloaded on it and I honestly do not love the High Priest character all that much as he just seems like he's scheming to get as much out of her as possible...and Main herself...she was a grown woman supposedly before but she feels more like a kid. It's, like, get a CLUE please. Also, you now know you have so much mana you're practically a mana battery and can do spells, basically, so why don't you do anything with that??

Anyway. All that to say I had to take a break. And I have just 4 episodes of Miss Night and Day left, but for some reason I didn't want to go back to that quite yet. So I thought I'd try a short episode JDrama called Cinderella's Closet. Maybe that was the deciding factor, actually -- the episodes are only about 20 minutes long. I've watched 5 of them now.

So...Haruka is a country girl gone to the big city for university (or maybe just to live? I thought it was for uni but looking back, I don't think I've seen a single scene where she's in class?). She was sporty before and thought moving there she'd have a chance to get more "girly" and experience all kinds of things -- like getting a boyfriend.

She has a crush on Kurotaki (sp? ...too lazy to look it up) who works with her at a cafe. He's kind of an "every dude" and handsome enough, though he's weirdly very connected for someone who also works at the same place she does when she's constantly complaining about how broke she is.

She winds up running into Hikaru, who is a cross dresser and equally beautiful either when dressed as a woman or a man. She doesn't actually realise at first that he is male. Through reasons, he winds up helping her with her makeup/confidence. And, at this point in the drama, she's dating Kurotaki but Hikaru has his own painful crush on her. Complicating matters is the reappearance of Kurotaki's old girlfriend, who is now a successful YouTube or whatever makeup artist personality. She obviously still has the hots for him. 

They've not particularly made Kurotaki out to be a bad guy; he was reluctant to date her when he thought she was putting him on a pedestal (she was). He was actually pretty self aware -- and he realises quickly that Hikaru's crush is Haruka. There's a brief plot bit where he runs into Hikaru as a guy and doesn't realise it's Hikaru--and Hikaru gives his name as Keisuke (or something like that), but they didn't prolong that deception for very long at all. I imagine that's because of the shortness of the episodes.

It's obvious that H&H will wind up together, though things will conspire against them for a while first. I am not entirely sure I'm going to finish it, but I might since it is so short (though it isn't all released yet). Matsumoto Leo as Hikaru is the biggest bright spot. He shines no matter what he wears and other than particularly loud and frequent exclamations of surprise, his acting is nice. Good expressive eyes. 

Ichika Osaki as Haruka is a bit more painful as it's that kind of flailing over-act-y style. When she has to show real emotion, she does good, but in a lot of the other moments, you kind of want to shake her. I guess, all around, the acting is a bit more unpolished? It'll be fine for a while and then there's bits where you just cringe. And she screams a lot. And when I say "a lot" I mean all the time.

That said, it's charming enough and I like the way they're handling Hikaru's character. Though he may be sharp tongued, he's a walking green flag.