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It's been a quite some time since I watch the cute over the top drama and finally no Johnny's boys!!! *I think*. To me Switch Girl is a hybrid of Love Complex minus Osaka-ben and highschool version of Hotaru no Hikari. Over the years we have rounds and rounds of high school theme drama, which most of them are tend to be in rom-com territory and most likely are taken from manga, eg. HanaKimi (the famous one), Delicious Gakuen, and Yamada Taro no Monogatari. These types of drama have 1 similarity which is at least 1 character, either the herroinne or hero, must have over the top attitude and imagination, and that makes the drama funny and noisy. So, what makes Switch Girl different then?

Switch Girl is based from a manga by Aida Natsumi under the same title. It's about a girl named Tamiya Nika, a popular girl in her high school and area. She was often featured in teen magazines as the trendy girl (those section where they shot the it high school fashion, yeah such thing exists in Japan). That's her ON mode. Her OFF mode? Well, you only can find that in her house or around the area. She'd tie her hair into 3 buns, wore glasses, wore sweats if going out, or worn panties if lazying around at home, playing video games, reading mangas, etc. She would never let the world know her OFF mode off course, but then she met Kamiyama Arata, the new transfer student. Arata was the opposite of Nika. His ON mode was the dorky boy wearing thick round glasses, but when you took his glasses OFF, he's an ikemen. Arata happened to encounter the OFF mode Nika and recognized her, and to make things worse, they're neighbors, so were bound to meet each other, often. How's Nika's highschool's life after this encounter?

As the standard procedure of high school theme drama, off course we'll have the girl falls in love with the guy, but was in denial, while the other side also does the same thing. With both in denial, chains of events lead to one of them end up confessing to the guy, then they'll be lovey dovey for awhile, or even before they reach that stage, we have x and y try to break them apart, usually it's more angsty if both of the girl and guy are still in denial stage. And, to make it more spicy, as the year progress, we have some ecchi stuffs thrown in too (it's unthinkable to have H stuff in your shoujo manga donkey years ago), in hillarious way off course, it's still PG-13. The manga will have each plot in greater details, but the drama so far has done a good job in compressing each main plot for Nika and Arata into a 30 minute episode each. So, as you can tell, it's a fast tempo drama, definitely no brain needed. And the drama takes the effort to try to make the character more mangalike, even Arata's withdrawal, if you're an ikemen, they'll call it kakkoii (usually in dramaland, there are cases when wooden acting = kakkoii, but I'll just assume it's kakkoii act, not the earlier), attitude looks like what's in manga to me. Off course having Nika's acting over the top over every single commotion plus her wild imagination is a bonus for a live action. I wonder what else from the manga that they'll pour into the drama. The art teacher case will be nice, and I think it'll be in.

Although I have said you don't need to wrack your brain, but Switch Girl will leave you to ponder. Does appearance matter? Nika is desperately beyond belief to hide her OFF mode, and she's in constant agitation that her OFF mode will be revealed. Arata is also covering himself and it takes a major event for him to take off his glasses in front of people (read the manga if you're too itchy aka curious). You also see how Nika's classmates treats those ohtaku face boys and the bishoujou or ikemen, what an extreme difference. But along the way, you'll see that Arata got attracted to Nika not because of her ON mode look, heck he knows her OFF mode, disgusting habits and crazy antiques from the beginning and he's fine with it. And true that although Nika has her ON and OFF mode, she's a very good hearted girl and that touches Arata's heart. Out from drama land and to reality, yes, we see in our society also that appearance matters. Look on how many books to guide you on fashions etc, and we can't blame people that they often perceive what they see first. But do take a moment to step back once in awhile and look deeper than the cover. You may find something different in deed.

Conclusion, the bottom line, is it worth your time? To me, I love the manga, and I like what I see so far, so yes. And for those of you who like Love Complex or Hotaru no Hikari, I think you'll like this drama as well.

Totally not related note... I just realize, no Johnny's but there's a Kamen Rider alumni... so conclusion, dramaland has its ikemen supply from either Johnny's or Kamen Rider franchise? I don't remember lots of ikemen in drama that don't belong to either these 2 categories (Mukai is an example)... Interesting...