A Japanese drama worth checking out: Extremely Inappropriate! (不適切にもほどがある！)
One of the bigger domestic hits out of Japan recently.
The setup is simple: Ogawa Ichirō, a PE teacher from 1986, gets thrown into present-day Tokyo — straight into modern office culture, social codes, careful language, and a world built on rules he neither understands nor respects.
That’s already funny.
What gives it some more bite is that it swings both ways.
Showa-era ugliness gets exposed — bullying, macho bravado, casual sexism, emotional neglect — but modern habits also get put under the lamp: corporate theater, stiff social rituals, and people speaking like every sentence might be entered into evidence later.
This drama has full musical interludes / song sequences woven into episodes and I’m not 100% sure how I feel about those — characters break into staged numbers that comment on the story, which can sometimes pull me out. I’m not much of a musicals person.
Ichiro is the kind of father who cares deeply and expresses it terribly. That is probably what makes him work.
He barks, scolds, gets angry too quickly, says things he should not say. He carries himself with the certainty of a man who has never once stopped to ask whether he might be the problem — I wonder if that is part of the era. That men back the were simply taught to think and act that way. At the same time, there is never much doubt that he loves Junko. He would throw himself in front of a train for her. But he’s a complainer, so he would then probably complain that she made him late.
That mix is funny because it is recognizable.
Junko is not there just to react to him. She has her own edge, her own temper, her own frustrations, and enough spirit to push back when he deserves it — which is often. Their scenes work because neither is written as the “correct” one. They clash, they misunderstand each other, they get on each other’s nerves, and underneath all that there is real affection. A funny duo.
What did Japan and the world think of it?
Japan clearly took to it.
Filmarks: ~4.1 / 5
Tokyo Drama Award 2024: Excellence Award, plus wins for writing and direction
Then
MyDramaList: ~8.3 / 10
TVer: 33M+ quarterly plays
One thing I kept seeing in Japanese reactions was how often people mentioned the emotional core beneath the comedy: family, grief, regret, loneliness. So not just laughs.
Also worth noting: the musical sections seem to split people and many people had strong feeling about them.
Have you seen this one?