General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Oh My Boss! Love is a Separate Volume (オー!マイ・ボス!恋は別冊で)

Oh My Boss! Love is a Separate Volume (オー!マイ・ボス!恋は別冊で, Ō! Mai Bosu! Koi wa Bessatsu de, also translated as Oh My Boss! Love Not Included or Oh! My Boss! Love is a Bonus Book) is a Japanese television romantic comedy that aired on TBS in the network's Tuesday drama slot from January 12 to March 16, 2021, in ten episodes.¹ It stars Mone Kamishiraishi as Nami Suzuki, a small-town job seeker assigned against her expectations to the editorial department of a newly launched fashion magazine, where she works under a demanding editor-in-chief while navigating an unexpected romance.²

Key fact	Detail
Broadcast	TBS Tuesday drama slot, January 12 – March 16, 2021, 10 episodes¹
Lead cast	Mone Kamishiraishi (Nami Suzuki), Nanao (Reiko Horai), Yuta Tamamori (Junnosuke Horai), Shotaro Mamiya (Ryota Nakazawa)³
Production	Script Shigenori Tanabe; music Hideaki Kimura; producer Akiko Matsumoto; directors Kenta Tanaka, Yasuharu Ishii, and Takeyoshi Yamamoto³
Theme song	"Luv Bias" by Kis-My-Ft2 (avex trax)³
Ratings	Episode 1 at 11.4%, double-digit ratings throughout, finale at 13.2% (Video Research, Kanto region)⁴
Audience scores	Filmarks 3.6/5 from 10,945 reviews; IMDb 6.9; Viki 9.1⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Premise

Nami Suzuki is an ordinary young woman from a rural town with no particular dreams or ambitions, who wants nothing more than a moderate amount of work and love and an ordinary, stable happiness. To follow her childhood friend and unrequited crush Kenya (Hioki Kenya, played by Kira Inukai), who lives in Tokyo, she applies for a job in the equipment management department of the major publisher Otowado Publishing. She is hired, but instead of the department she applied for she is assigned to the editorial department of a newly created fashion magazine.²

There she meets Reiko Horai (played by Nanao), the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine's history, a highly capable, sharp-tongued, and cold boss whom the show's publicity describes as a "demon supervisor." Nami is put to work as Reiko's errand girl, and the constant criticism of her poor work performance stresses her. She also meets the photographer Junnosuke Horai (Yuta Tamamori), Reiko's younger brother, a good-natured heir from a wealthy family who makes her a surprising proposal. As Nami watches Reiko's attitude toward her work at close range, her own idea of what working means begins to change, and she comes to find her values, her ambition, and a sense of purpose.⁷^•¹

The magazine at the center of the story is called MIYAVI, a fashion mode magazine that Reiko newly launches, and the editorial team around Nami includes the cool, capable editor Ryota Nakazawa (Shotaro Mamiya), Haruka Izumi (Sayu Kubota), Kazumi Wada (Yuzuki Akiyama), and Shiori Kaga (Yuuri Ota).²^•³

Cast and production

The drama was an original script by Shigenori Tanabe, a writer known for small-theater roots whose credits include Tokusatsu Gagaga (2019) and High School Girls' Wasted Time (2020).⁸ Music was by Hideaki Kimura, and the three directors were Kenta Tanaka (of An Incurable Case of Love), Yasuharu Ishii (of the Hana Yori Dango series), and Takeyoshi Yamamoto (of My Housekeeper Nagisa), with Akiko Matsumoto producing.³

Casting. Kamishiraishi headlined the show a year after her widely discussed turn as a rookie nurse in the January 2020 TBS Tuesday drama An Incurable Case of Love (Koi wa Tsuzuku yo Dokomade mo), and the production framed the series as her return to the same slot, working with Nanao, Tamamori, and Mamiya for the first time.⁷ Tamamori's casting followed attention for his performance in the October 2020 Sunday Theater drama Grand Maison Tokyo.⁷ Supporting cast included Takeshi Nadagi as Susumu Handa, the magazine's deputy editor-in-chief and the person who hired Nami, whose strong presence drew a wave of viewers declaring themselves "Handa fans" early in the run.⁹ Other roles went to Maryjun Takahashi (Asami Takahashi), Jun Hashizume, Suzu Yamanouchi, Hitomi Takahashi, Katsuhisa Namase as Katsunosuke Horai, Kana Kurashina as the violinist Rio Hasumi, and Yusuke Santamaria as Shinichi Ugajin, the publisher's vice president.³^•¹⁰

The production researched real fashion magazine workplaces and reflected many of those settings in the drama; the producer noted in an interview that the show deliberately explores what an editor-in-chief's job actually consists of, beyond the usual image of interviewing, photography, and writing, and that even the text of articles shown on screen, such as a female judoka's profile in episode 3, was written with the character's background in mind.¹¹

Reception

Television ratings. The first episode drew 11.4% in the Kanto region (Video Research), and the series kept double-digit ratings throughout its run, with episodes at 11.3%, 11.0%, 11.6%, 10.8%, 11.8%, 11.4%, 11.8%, and 12.0%, before the finale, extended by 15 minutes, closed at 13.2%.⁴ Episode 8's 11.8% tied the series' highest mark to that point.¹² A trade publication noted in February 2021 that the drama was holding double-digit ratings against strong competition from established series in the same season.¹³

Streaming and social media. During its broadcast the show frequently dominated the upper ranks of Twitter trend words, and in TVer's January–March 2021 playback ranking it took first place with 18.65 million plays, beating the record previously held by An Incurable Case of Love on the same service by a margin of about 3 million plays over second place.⁴

Critical and audience response. On the Japanese review aggregator Filmarks the drama holds 3.6 out of 5 from 10,945 user reviews, with 62% of reviewers giving it between 3.1 and 4.0; user comments praise Kamishiraishi's likable heroine and the well-executed classical misunderstandings and beautifully shot kiss scenes, while some criticize later plot developments as logically strained.⁵ On IMDb it scores 6.9, and on Rakuten Viki 9.1.¹⁴^•⁶

Comparisons and context

Japanese commentary repeatedly compared the setup to the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada: both stories place a heroine in a fashion magazine editorial department under a fearsome boss, and some viewers described the show as clearly inspired by the film while judging its Japanese adaptation successful.¹⁵^•⁵ A weekly magazine column raised the same question and criticized the romance portions as overselling the charm.¹⁶

The series belongs to TBS's Tuesday 10 p.m. drama slot, which the network had positioned around workplace-and-romance comedies; the production stated its aim as a show from which viewers draw energy and courage from characters who, carrying their own worries and traumas, work hard at their jobs, love, and dreams.⁷ A Blu-ray and DVD box was announced on the finale date of March 16, 2021, and released September 2, 2021, with a novelization also published during the run.¹⁷ Internationally, the series is licensed and streams with English subtitles on Rakuten Viki under the title Oh My Boss! Love not included.⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026