First Impressions: Boku, Unmei No Hito Desu

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What if you are destined to meet? What if Destiny has been giving you the push all the while but you are too dense to realize it so God has to appear and teach you? All this because you both will make the future Einstein/Beethoven/insert genius name here???

That is the premise of the newest drama and also much anticipated reunion between Kamenashi Kazuya and Yamashita Tomohisa since Nobuto wo Produce. Kimura Fumino plays the leading lady while her bestie would be played by Nanao. Anyone who have watched Siren would realize the irony of this. [In Siren, Nanao played a serial killer who was obsessed at ruining Kimura Fumino due to some twisted jealousy. It was a good 9 episodes of thriller.]

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Plot: Masaki Makoto (Kamenashi) is a good looking guy with the crappiest luck when it comes to dating. He seems to meet with the weirdest women and twice met girls who cheated him for his money. A transfer brings him to his new workplace, not so coincidentally, next to leading lady Kogetsu Haruko’s office.

One fine day, Masaki sees on news that his latest beautiful girlfriend is apparently part of a con group and she was arrested in action while cheating on another man. Our mysterious man (Yamapi) appears in his home while relaying this information to him and claims himself to be God. (God was probably thinking: Why not appear as Yamapi’s face while I’m at it?)

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‘God’ proceeds to explain that the reason he has crappy luck with women was because he was ‘destined’ to be with Haruko. And all this wrong meetings was to lead him to a right one. Lol. Masaki continues to get information overload over the numerous fateful meetings he had with Haruko but just did not realize it. He is told that he needs to get married by end of the year and have a baby with Haruko by next year because their child………….would be the saviour of Earth. Cue laughs. More precisely to say, their child would be the Nobel Peace and Physics winner for diverting a meteor scheduled to hit Earth in 30 years time. Masaki of course goes ballistics with all this nonsense. “You’re just messing with me because I’m easy to fool!”. Partly the truth though.

Even though they are destined, God, out of concern has descended the mortal realm to give that push a shove. Although in disbelief, Masaki decides to check it out for himself. He makes his way next door to his office the next day and finds that Haruko sits right behind his seat (they are separated by the wall). After evidences of destiny is shoved in his face again and again, Masaki decides to do something, in the name of saving Earth.

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There’s a reason why this would take a whole drama to work out though. Haruko, through her conversations with bestie, Mitsue, reveals that she has a high threshold to selecting guys and date-less for a long time. Despite Mitsue pulling her to attend matchmaking parties, Haruko wishes to meet the man of her dreams through another way. At this point, Destiny probably head-desked because Destiny has worked so hard to hint the two together but they are just oblivious.

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Another fine day, Masaki decides to summon up some courage to approach Haruko. Except, he tells her from top to bottom what God has told him. And invites her to coffee right after, sounding like a pick-up line. ‘God head-desks’.  As any normal person would respond to this, Masaki is quickly held down by security.

Another time they meet is some remote train station, where Masaki yet again tries earnestly to convince her.

Masaki: Haruko-san, like me, you’ve had some tough love life haven’t you? You’ve always waited for your destined other half too. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m your destined man.

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Just when you think that declaration could tip Haruko over to believing Masaki, she once again flatly rejects him and tells him not to meet her again.

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Mitsue thinks it’s a wonderful story of destiny though. But Haruko insists, that’s not the destiny as we’d think it is. And she continues to wait for destiny to knock on her door. ‘Destiny bashes repeatedly on Haruko’s door’

Masaki is on his way to giving up when he remembers that one time in high school, he lost a baseball match and the girl who encouraged him after was Haruko. She turned away quite swiftly after that but Masaki finally connects the dots and realized that it was destiny again. That was enough to convince him to pick up his game again. However, God relays a bad news. “There’ll be another contender in this game, the same opponent who won over him in baseball and Haruko will regard this reunion as destiny instead”.

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After Totsuzen, I was a little disappointed how the drama kinda fell flat for me. Jdorama with romance genre mostly just kinda sizzle out through the end and honestly, they still need more work compared to Kdrama romance genres. Boku no Unmei has a wacky storyline, quite unbelievable but completely executable in Jdoramas. The execution is going to be important in maintaining audience interests and I hope the plot doesn’t veer away from being interesting (bring on the wacky!) even if they’re going to bring in a second contender.

Having a character to play God brings some element of supernatural into this and although God is almighty, it’s shown here that he’s helpless to human choice. Although there isn’t a character cosplaying as Destiny, I’d very much like to think that there’s someone controlling human destiny as well and that person is very much helpless if his players don’t go by plan either. This rom-com asks us to take destiny seriously but provides no end to comedic relief. With God AND destiny in tow behind Masaki, is he really going to fail to get the girl of his destiny? There must be a reason why God has appeared to support him and I have a feeling that Masaki needs all the help he can get.

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I’m not sure if I’m setting a high expectation yet for this drama but one thing to say, first episode has got me hooked.

Watch value: 4/5

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