A Life marks the return of Pride couple Kimura Takuya and Takeuchi Yuko. Perhaps I held too high expectations for this because I did not enjoy this as much as I anticipated and was pretty disappointed with the last couple of episodes. It's an issue when you find the last episode boring, oops I just said that. Story: Medical dramas can be hard to do well and when you have a star studded cast, you best take advantage...and I did not think A Life did that. Character development was really lacking and I found myself frustrated many times. I'm sorry, but Takeuchi Yuko deserved a better character than what they did with Danjo Mifuyu. I also really wanted more for Hamura--he felt like a useless character to me. And boy did I think Masao was poorly done (though acting by Asano was superb). Okita was really the best balance as we got some backstory with him but even still, we could've seen more with him--I did not like the whole super surgeon vibe we got, but I understand that it was necessary. Despite all of this, the series was entertaining. Okita and Shibata together were great and I enjoyed Igawa as well. The drama focused too heavily on the politics and then dragged out the ending. To me, the story could have been executed way better. Acting/Cast: I give the acting high marks though I found the supporting surgeons annoying af even though I knew they were just there to provide exaggerated comedy relief. I actually think Asano was the best actor out of everybody here at times, but his character made me hate him still. We don't even need to talk about Kimutaku. He killed it as usual with the wordless expressive acting--I just wished they gave the other characters the same depth. Don't know if it was just me, but I felt like Mifuyu and Rina's scenes weren't as heartwarming and gushing as they could have been, but I do not want to be too critical about the child actress. I get why Nanao had to be the way she was as Sakakibara, but man she seemed forced. So there were some positives and negatives with the cast. Music: I did not notice it too much, so it gets a passing grade from me. Rewatch Value: I'm not sure about this, but I don't think I would instantly pick this up again to rewatch, so it's meh for me. There may be some episodes worth rewatching, but I wouldn't say the entire series. Overall, I thought this series had a lot of potential that was not lived up to, but it was still an enjoyable drama and honestly better than some of the others I've seen where I could not even get through the entire series.