Review of Business Marriage / ビジネス婚―好きになったら離婚します―

For the longest time, I had no interest in watching Japanese dramas. They were something I knew always existed out in the world, but ever since my anime phase ended in middle school, I never really fell back into anything Japanese. I even avoided watching Japanese movies for a while, but have gotten back into that habit.

I don’t know how I managed to get back into the Japanese drama world. It started rather recently when I hardcore fell back into Korean dramas, then Chinese ones.

I always used to never really watch Chinese television either, and I think when that domino fell, it opened up the opportunity for me to go back into Japanese content. This is a part of my mission to be more open minded and diversify the kind of content I am consuming.

It was as I was entering my groove with Japanese dramas that I decided to watch Business Marriage. I wanted something short and sweet, and I know that these kinds of dramas are extremely focused! So I pressed play and managed to finish the show within two days. That’s definitely what I needed.

Also apologies: I always include a video at the top of my drama blog posts, but none of the ones on YouTube were able to be linked to a Squarespace website. So unfortunately this blog post will not be able to have a trailer or any video content.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much.

A man and a woman enter a business contract to be married, leading to some complications.

If you’re not familiar with Japanese dramas like this, here’s the gist of it. There never really is any sort of B plot going on in the background, and we just move from one dramatic action to the next. Because of this the series is only nine short episodes, and we shuffle through the material relatively quickly.

Our female lead is who we get to meet at first. Her name is Miyabi, and she’s a salesperson working at a real estate company. Despite doing pretty well in her career, she decides to focus even more on it after her boyfriend of six years decides to break up with her.

It's her hard work and dedication that catches the attention of the president of a different company: Donose Tsukasa. As we see throughout the show, he’s the definition of calm and composed. He doesn’t seem to have a wide range of emotion, or that might just be the actor playing more stiff than expected.

But when he spots Miyabi passionately doing her job, he decides she’s the one. He proposes a business marriage contract to her, as he believes that a marriage is something that shouldn’t have any emotion to it. She accepts because oft he monetary prospects of it, and they begin their engagement.

This is a bit more high profile of an engagement because of his status, which can be overwhelming for Miyabi, but things get a bit more awkward when they have to move in together. However, one of the biggest parts of their contract is they cannot fall in love with each other.

If they do, they have to get divorced quickly. We can kind of guess where this is going, especially as they start falling for each other. This is a Japanese romance drama after all, although this one is rather innocent.

There are some more rise and fall moments in the later episodes of the series, which is where a bulk of the drama happens. As I said before, you can kind of guess where this is going, and it’ll unfold exactly how you think it is going to.

Overall Thoughts

I feel like this is a drama I came into with little expectations about, which is why I was fine with it at the end of the day. It was indeed focused, short, and sweet, and I got what I wanted: a little bit of entertainment for a short while.

That said, I don’t think this is the greatest show. It’s cute, and the leads are cute together as well. However, they don’t have the best conversations with each other, which might be because of the male lead’s stiffness, and even when they say what they like about each other it lacks any kind of depth.

Don’t go into this one expecting a ton from it. It’s a typical drama. If you want to watch it, go ahead! It’s available on Viki—if that’s an option financially and within your region.

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