Love is an unpredictable journey that leaves a lot up to chance and complicated individual human emotions. We don’t choose who we fall in love with. Sometimes that leads to heartbreak. Other times, it leads to joy and healing.

Adapted from the manga Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka by Chiba Ryoko, the new Japanese BL Although I Love You, and You? tells the story of two men who find healing and new beginnings inside a love that takes them both by surprise. It follows Matsumoto Sakae (Kan Hideyoshi), a straightforward restaurant owner in Osaka, and Soga Hisashi (Nishiyama Jun), a shy, reserved office worker who instantly connect at Sakae’s restaurant before falling into a friendship that blooms into love.

It doesn’t take long for Although I Love You, and You? to fall into a predictable pattern. Two men, an Osaka native and a city boy, try to figure out how to be in love while also being polar opposites. That’s it. For ten episodes, there is a lot of back-and-forth, misunderstandings, and a slow build toward something more as each of them faces past relationships and their individual professional pursuits.

While what they go through is typical of any relationship where two people have different personalities and lifestyles as they try to find a way to make those differences work together, I admit that I found it hard to remain invested in Sakae and Soga as a couple—at least for the majority of the series.

Much of that has to do with how Sakae’s past relationship with his ex-boyfriend, Nakatsu Mizuki (Okuno So), was presented. The chemistry and comfortable rapport between Sakae and Mizuki often felt much more natural than Sakae’s connection with Soga. Despite what transpired between Sakae and Mizuki, or maybe because of it, the angsty tension and past regrets between them also lent a fiery dynamic to an already burning magnetism every time they were on screen together.

Which brings me back to Sakae and Soga.

For much of the series, the script tried too hard to pull them apart rather than find ways to make them work. It is only in the last few episodes of the series that their relationship begins to make sense and even somehow grows into something much stronger than the other relationships on screen. In the end, they do make sense. In the end, it felt good seeing them as a couple. The end felt like their beginning and I suddenly felt like I needed more of them. The problem is that I needed more of them right when it ended. Once everything fell into place and felt right, the series was over.

Although I Love You, and You? is a good story about finding balance in a relationship between two very different people who have both come from previous broken relationships. I could relate to this because my current relationship is similar. We are both very different people with complicated pasts and very different dreams.

The only thing I needed more of was the tension, desire, and need for each other that develops at the end of the series to be more prominent in the rest of the series as they desperately try to hold onto their growing feelings while navigating the past, present, and future.

I needed more fire and chemistry. The love scenes between Sakae and Soga would have felt much more nuanced and raw if there had been more focus on them and their jealousy rather than the fire that drew Sakae and his ex-boyfriend together and apart.

Still, I did find myself rooting hard for Sakae and Soga in the end, and that speaks volumes.

For a series that brings two men from different walks of life with complicated romantic histories together, check out Although I Love You, and You? now on Gagaoolala.

Rating- 3 out of 5