The premise of Zenkai Girl is an interesting one: A girl from a very poor childhood grows up driven to rise above her lot in life. She is sharp, smart and tough. Ever the outcast due to poverty, she studies her heart out, fighting and clawing her way up and out of her circumstance. (And let me say..If you don't love the girl who plays young Wakaba...you are all dead inside. She will tug at your heart.) She fixates on her goals and feels the only way towards success is to stick to these goals unwaveringly. And she succeeds. But her circumstance has given her no insight on how to love. So, when she meets a man who, while she finds her heart wavering for him, he is her polar opposite. He confounds her and she doesn't know how do deal with the love growing in her heart. She genuinely doesn't understand the personality of the man to whom she is so attracted. He doesn't mix with her plans. For about 9 episodes of this drama I was completely drawn into the puzzle of how Wakaba was going to change as well as being drawn to watching both her and Shota learn to find some middle ground and find some way to come together. The writing was good, the episodes plotted out fairly well until the last few. They spent so much time driving home the point that Wakaba was damaged and tough and Shota was meek, complacent and overly kind, by the time we got to the end of its run they rushed the couple's big moment. It should have felt more natural. I have only watched 3 Jdramas and so I understood they were shorter than Kdramas. The shorter length didn't seem to hurt them so I knew it could be done. Not so with Zenkai Girl. I ended up enjoying it but the pacing was off and that mistake cost this drama the ranking of being something more than 'just okay' in my eyes. It simply could have used another episode or two. But..I liked all the characters, even Wakaba and she was tough to take sometimes. Shota was a sweet loving character and the children were delightful. (if a little too adult in their wisdom and reasoning) This show is enjoyable and I liked the episodic conflicts that were solved pretty quickly and the lessons learned. Zenkai Girl is not hard to follow and can be a lot of fun. It is simply too short for the wrong reason. The viewer should feel a drama has ended too soon because they don't want to see it end. A drama shouldn't end with the viewer thinking "Wait...you haven't quite finished the story!"