A 2024 Japanese romcom about a woman who can hear people’s thoughts and the young Korean man whose thoughts she can’t understand.

You can watch the trailer here.

Country: Japan
Local Title: アイラブユー
Year Released: 2024
Number of Episodes: 10
Genre: Modern Fantasy Romcom

Main Actors:

Nikaido Fumi as Motomiya Yuri
Chae Jong Hyeop as Yoon Tae Oh

Pre-Recap Information:

I’m not the biggest fan of romcoms, but this show has everything else I love so I had to watch. As I start to recap this it’s just become available in the USA, but I’ve watched 7 episodes in Japanese.

So what does it have going for it?

• Chae Jong Hyeop as our male lead. I recently saw him in Castaway Diva and while I didn’t love that show, he was not the issue. He was pretty tsundere there, here he’s very different.
• The setup for the female lead. She’s so used to being able to read people, and here is someone who she can ‘hear’, but since she doesn’t speak Korean, she doesn’t know what he’s saying. It’s great to see a confident character suddenly out of their element.
• Cross-cultural romance. I love seeing two people from very different backgrounds fall in love. There are so many opportunities for sharing, learning, and growing together with this setup.
• An emphasis on communication. Pointless misunderstandings are the worst, well-motivated struggles for connection and understanding are the best. It’s hard enough when you speak the same language. Here we have two different languages which can lead to all different kinds of mistakes in nuance and worries about misunderstanding.
• Older woman/younger man (the characters not the actors), with the older woman being the harder-edged one and the younger man being the sweetest thing ever.

After watching the first 7 episodes (and mostly understanding them) I’m enjoying the sweet, light-hearted nature of the show. So, on to the recaps!

You can read my final general review of the series including the ending here.

Recaps and Thoughts: