Unexpectedly Naughty Fukami (Japanese Series)

What I liked most about this series is how tightly it stays on track. No filler, no over the top drama, no random side characters cluttering things up. Ten clean episodes at just 13 minutes each make for a pretty charming, easy watch. That said, the show definitely has its fair share of issues too. For a series built entirely around a physical relationship between two guys, the sex scenes come across as awkwardly shot and pretty cheap looking. The two leads also don't have much chemistry together, so you barely feel any real heat between them. More on that in a bit.

Kaji's a top performing salesman at his company, and basically everyone's drawn to him, women want him and men adore him. He's hiding the fact that he's gay and only goes for the most attractive, elite guys for hookups, mostly because he's incredibly full of himself and thinks extremely highly of his own standards. One day work sends him out of town with Fukami, a nerdy guy from the IT department. Kaji immediately writes him off as plain, unattractive, and clueless about fashion, someone he could never imagine sleeping with. His verdict on him is basically a flat zero, sorry Fukami, them's the rules apparently. That night, Kaji spots Fukami on a hookup app, and they both end up admitting to each other that they're gay. Fukami then steps out of the bathroom without his glasses and out of those dorky clothes, and suddenly Kaji starts thinking maybe he's not so bad after all, and the two of them end up sleeping together, which Kaji genuinely enjoys. They agree to keep hooking up casually since the chemistry's clearly there, with Fukami setting one condition, that Kaji can never actually fall for him, something our arrogant lead is sure could never happen anyway. Shocker, the more time the two of them spend together, the harder Kaji starts falling, even as Fukami keeps things strictly physical and maintains his distance otherwise. Everything shifts when Kaji gets offered a promotion that requires relocating to a different city, and that's the moment both of them realize they can't just walk away from what they've built. What started purely as physical chemistry has turned into something much more emotional by this point.

Honestly, it's a pretty familiar setup, a casual hookup that turns into coworkers with benefits and eventually blossoms into an actual relationship. That's really the whole thing in a nutshell. Mostly it plays out as a quick string of funny moments, clumsy romantic beats, awkward intimate scenes, and two characters who make it pretty obvious early on why they both struggle with commitment, before eventually choosing to commit anyway. There are a handful of moments that go a bit deeper emotionally, but they're brief and scattered here and there throughout. And honestly, I'm okay with that trade off. I'd take this over a lot of other shows that pad themselves out with pointless filler for no good reason. That said, the downside is you never really get the chance to connect with these characters, and everything ends up feeling rushed. The fact that the two leads have basically zero chemistry doesn't help either. Their intimate scenes are shot so awkwardly, it's honestly hard to put into words, I felt uncomfortable just watching them. The director clearly doesn't know how to build any kind of sensual atmosphere here. These two are supposedly hooking up constantly throughout the show, but as a viewer you never once feel any actual passion between them, which is a real problem for a series built around exactly that. They do land on a happy ending eventually, and their overall arc is decent enough. There's no real side character material worth mentioning here. Not a particularly memorable watch, but it's a light, easy one to get through. (5/10)