Review of Romantics Anonymous / 匿名の恋人たち

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.

East Asia has always been a focus of mine, whether it’s professional, academic, or personal. I started taking Mandarin Chinese when I was in middle school, then received a prestigious scholarship to study in Korea when I was seventeen, went back to Korea on another scholarship at 23, and did my master’s thesis on colonial Korean women’s literature.

So when I say I’m in deep, I mean it. Nowadays I mainly study migration into the region with migrant workers, but as I run this blog there’s an emphasis on East Asia cinema, television, and books. And while I tend to read and watch a lot of Japanese books and movies respectively, there’s always been a bit of a hole when it comes to Japanese shows.

I similarly struggled with Chinese shows for a while, sticking to mainly Korean ones out of comfort, but recently, in the past year, I’ve been forcing myself to watch more Japanese and Chinese shows in general. Japanese shows have come to surprise me with their brevity, but also how efficient they are in their storytelling. The brevity and storytelling skills go hand in hand at the end of the day!

I tend to go to Viki for the shorter dramas, but lately Netflix has been really upping their Japanese drama game. I keep track with the Japanese drama subreddit when new things are added, and when my schedule frees up I try to watch them. I’ve been really interested in Japanese-Korean collaborations coming out lately, which is how I watched Romantics Anonymous.

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

After the death of her beloved mentor, a gift chocolatier slowly falls for the man who takes over the chocolate shop.

The female lead in this drama is Ha-na, a Korean living in Japan who has severe anxiety and can’t look people in the eye. One of the people she bonds with is the owner of the chocolate shop Le Saveur, and he serves as her mentor on how to make chocolate in a way that brings people’s taste buds alive.

However, when he unexpectedly passes away, Le Saveur is taken over by a confectionary conglomerate in Japan. Ha-na hides her identity and gets a job selling chocolates on the floor at the shop, but her social anxiety prevents her from actually making any progress in making sales. People begin to notice and talk about her because of this, catching the attention of the new representative of the store: Fujiwara Sosuke.

He’s the son of the confectionary conglomerate’s owner, and taking over Le Saveur has some specific motives, including getting the recipes of the late owner and utilizing them for ways he would have disagreed with. Sosuke also has his own tendencies: he’s an extreme germaphobe and is unable to handle even shaking people’s hands sometimes, which leads to problems.

So when he interacts with Ha-na, these two make quite the pair. She ends up working behind the scenes as a chocolatier after failing to work up front, as she’s one of the only people who knew her late mentor’s recipes. No one working there knows about her connection to the shop prior to her employment, and she’d like to keep it that way.

Both Ha-na and Sosuke share the same psychologist, which is a side plot, but the more time they end up being forced together, the more we see how they’re pretty compatible in a romantic sense. This series is short, clocking in at eight episodes, but I feel like it develops the romance between these two in a way that works really well without being too rushed. Some Japanese dramas really just jump right into it; this show takes its time.

There’s also a bit of a love triangle, but it’s honestly pretty minor in the grand scheme of things and gets resolved fairly quickly because of the episode length. A lot of the focus is on Ha-na and Sosuke’s growth with their anxieties and fears, as well as their relationship with each other.

There is plenty of drama to pass around at certain moments, which is much needed to keep the storyline going. While the vibes are cute and I could watch these characters do nothing but interact with each other, I think the problems that pop up are much needed for this series.

Overall Thoughts

I liked this series a lot! I came into it with very few expectations, as all I had seen about it were people discussing it on Reddit as the episodes were airing. I tried to avoid reading any takes, reviews, or opinions, as I figured I was going to watch it down the line. I dislike having other people’s judgement cloud my own reviews, which is why I try to avoid reading comprehensive reviews before watching something.

I also really liked that this drama had characters dealing with their own anxieties, fears, and neurodivergence. The chocolate shop setting was a sweet addition, but the fact these characters realistically had their own unique quirks made them really memorable for me, and it didn’t feel like a stereotype or trope. They felt like real people living out real scenarios—that’s sometimes rare in shows like these.

There were some classic corny moments here and there, but this is a Japanese drama. It wouldn’t be a drama without some kind romantic or business tropes at the end of the day!

Watch this one if you haven’t already! I highly recommend it if it interests you. A lot of the Japanese and Korean entertainment collaborations lately have been interesting and fairly solid, and I hope they continue to make more of them.

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