Review of Learning to Love / 愛の、がっこう

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I’ve always been a bit of an Asian drama junkie since I was in middle school and taking Chinese classes in order to prove that I was smart (long story short: I signed up for Chinese instead of French because I heard a kid say the smart kids learn Chinese, and I had an ego to stroke. That ended up changing my life completely for the better), but I never really got into Japanese drama until the past year.

I’m typing this in October 2025, even though I know this blog post is going to come out later because of my content calendar, but 2025 has been my year in watching new kinds of shows, movies, and picking up books from all around the world. I’ve been really having fun with it the past few months.

I live in the United States and the combination of Viki and Netflix has really been helping my goals on the Asian drama front. I can even watch Turkish dramas nowadays on Netflix, which is incredible to me because I remember the days when you had to find them on some sketchy website or through Turkish avenues.

Netflix has really been stepping up their Japanese drama game specifically, and I think I’ve been in the mood for them because they’re fairly short compared to their Korean and Japanese counterparts. The plot goes by at a speed that might leave you with whiplash at times, but there isn’t much extra fluff to mull over while you’re watching.

Learning to Love is one of those shows I was watching almost all the way through to the end, but then I simply got really busy and fell out of weekly rotation of watching my Learning to Love episodes. It was a catch up game for sure, especially when I was working full time and finding I had little to no time keeping up with everything I wanted to.

Let’s get into the review!

A teacher befriends a male host worker, leading to some tender moments that change their lives forever.

Our female lead in this drama is Ogawa Manami, who is shy and meek, living with her parents and refusing to go out of the boundaries that have been set for her in her lifetime. She’s actively being pressured by family to marry someone her father introduced her to, but she doesn’t actually to marry this guy.

There’s also problems happening at work in terms of the school, as there are other issues involving students, their behavior, and overall enrollment going on. Things are about to completely change in her life though when she gets a call saying one of her students is in a host club and has been deceived.

Manami goes ready to fight for her student and bring her back, even if it means lecturing her to the other side of the world and back, but then she meets our male lead: Kaoru. He works at a host club because it’s all it seems he can do with his life. Manami looks down on him at first because of his profession, and even has him sign a note saying he would never interact or contact that student again in the future.

That seems to be the end—until Manami notices that Kaoru is unable to read and write properly. As a teacher she’s unable to let this fact go, especially considering Kaoru’s age. He should be able to read and write, but he’s on his own, working at a host club, and was not given the same opportunities in life.

No one else knows about his secret, and Manami decides it’s up to her to try and help him. Kaoru has his own motives for seeing her for their private lessons, but as we see more throughout the drama, there’s a lot more to both of them than what meets the eye at first.

Suddenly some things we thought and assumed about them both aren’t true, and as they grow closer we can see how they’re healing each other in different ways. I thought this aspect of the drama was refreshing as we typically don’t see these kinds of perspectives, but something great about 2025 is that dramas around the world are willing to dive into new territory and have representation.

Overall Thoughts

I was not expecting to like this drama as much as I did, but when it was over I was blinking and surprised that it flew by after all of those weeks of waiting for another episode. I fell in love with these characters and their plights, and the way this story is told through a visual medium just works really well and quite beautifully at times.

Anyways, I mentioned before the representation aspect, and I could honestly see some of myself in these characters. Maybe that’s why it resonates so much in the end for me, but I think we see how complex people are and that we can’t make assumptions from the start. Then you become the loser in the end.

I say watch this drama if you want something compelling and thought provoking. Some may stereotype Japanese and broader Asian dramas as thoughtless, but Learning to Love is something that challenges those notions and dismantles them fairly quickly.

All of this is to say: I liked this one a lot and if you’re interested in seeing it, then definitely give it a chance when you have the time!

Follow me below on Instagram, Letterboxd, and Goodreads for more.