I began this drama because of Nishikido Ryo, but completely fell in love with Takizawa Hideaki! The way he acts is amazing; not on par with Nishikido Ryo, but they don't over shadow or compete with each other... in some ways, a complete match and in other ways, completely different. I like their styles of acting very much and plan to follow them from now on; minus the "stalker-ish" way it sounded. I've followed Nishikido from Ryusei no Kizuna; the way he seems in this story, slightly (in a teeny tiny way) reminds me of his character from that story, if you watch this, you may know what I mean but you also may not and/or disagree with me. Also, my time is 4:15am, so I may be speaking nonsense. Anyway... The ending was a complete surprise, yet at some points I came close to guessing what was about to happen. I didn't recognize Haru at all, which was surprising, but she was wonderful in this series; as was Kumada Sea and Sasaki Kuranosuke was positively frightening. The cast in this was iffy to me in a few parts of the series (namely one or two persons specifically, I wont name names) but it's easy to get over if you focus on the story and not the people... which is sort of hard to do since you're watching the story that focuses on peoples lives. Well, either way, this drama was a wonderful story and I've never seen anything like it! Definitely a recommendation!