I've really enjoyed a lot of Japanese, Korean and Chinese romantic dramas via Netflix and other sites, most of the series are intelligent, funny, thoughtful and even moving. You develop a real fondness for the main characters and are always routing for them to have a happy ending. Sadly Good Morning Call is the exception.
The female lead, Yoshikawa Nao, is silly, childish, dizzy and frankly exhausting - to the point that I honestly think she is below average IQ or suffering from ADHD. She has a voice like mini mouse, and her behaviour veers from running around in circles screaming like a wind-up toy, bowing in apology or curling up in a ball with wobbling lips and eyes brimming with tears.
Apparently nearly every male character in this repetitive storyline ends up falling in love with her and each one she pushes away to pursue her love of Uehara Hisashi, a cold, arrogant, selfish, misogynist who treats her with contempt most of the time and whose idea of love is to grab her roughly by the arm and pull into a rib busting squeeze every third or fourth episode, whilst they both stand in this position for several minutes as stiffly and awkwardly as possible.
She cooks huge, elaborate meals for him in the evening, and makes food for his packed lunches at school. He stands her up for dates, shouts at her and calls her stupid both in private and in public, ignores her and pushes her away at every opportunity. Most of her school days are spent running to catch up with him. They never have a physical relationship, even once in college and they barely even touch lips (kissing would be a very optimistic and misleading term here) more than three or four times throughout both series. His behaviour is brought up as bad by their friends, and even though he even says "sorry" a couple of times in the second series, he carries on with his emotional abuse, well aware he is upsetting her, but doing it anyway. In fact, the worse he treats her, the more she crushes on him.
European and American audiences viewing an asian drama for the first time are going to believe that all women are passive to the point of masochism, whilst those men who are women-hating sadists are revered as ideal role models.
I really wanted to like this drama, but with each passing episode I get madder at the two main characters. In a strange way their twisted relationship suits them - both seem to be happiest when they are making the other one miserable. Honestly I think they should end the series with the two of them going their own separate ways, and put us all out of our misery.
The female lead, Yoshikawa Nao, is silly, childish, dizzy and frankly exhausting - to the point that I honestly think she is below average IQ or suffering from ADHD. She has a voice like mini mouse, and her behaviour veers from running around in circles screaming like a wind-up toy, bowing in apology or curling up in a ball with wobbling lips and eyes brimming with tears.
Apparently nearly every male character in this repetitive storyline ends up falling in love with her and each one she pushes away to pursue her love of Uehara Hisashi, a cold, arrogant, selfish, misogynist who treats her with contempt most of the time and whose idea of love is to grab her roughly by the arm and pull into a rib busting squeeze every third or fourth episode, whilst they both stand in this position for several minutes as stiffly and awkwardly as possible.
She cooks huge, elaborate meals for him in the evening, and makes food for his packed lunches at school. He stands her up for dates, shouts at her and calls her stupid both in private and in public, ignores her and pushes her away at every opportunity. Most of her school days are spent running to catch up with him. They never have a physical relationship, even once in college and they barely even touch lips (kissing would be a very optimistic and misleading term here) more than three or four times throughout both series. His behaviour is brought up as bad by their friends, and even though he even says "sorry" a couple of times in the second series, he carries on with his emotional abuse, well aware he is upsetting her, but doing it anyway. In fact, the worse he treats her, the more she crushes on him.
European and American audiences viewing an asian drama for the first time are going to believe that all women are passive to the point of masochism, whilst those men who are women-hating sadists are revered as ideal role models.
I really wanted to like this drama, but with each passing episode I get madder at the two main characters. In a strange way their twisted relationship suits them - both seem to be happiest when they are making the other one miserable. Honestly I think they should end the series with the two of them going their own separate ways, and put us all out of our misery.