General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Sukinahito ga Iru Koto (好きな人がいること)

Sukinahito ga Iru Koto (好きな人がいること, "There Is Someone I Like"), known internationally as A Girl & Three Sweethearts, is a 2016 Japanese romantic comedy television series broadcast on Fuji TV in the Getsu9 Monday 9 pm slot, starring Mirei Kiritani as a pastry chef who moves in with three brothers at a seaside restaurant in Shonan.¹^•² It ran for ten episodes from 11 July to 19 September 2016.²

Key fact	Detail
Broadcast	Fuji TV, Getsu9 slot, Mondays 9:00–9:54 pm, 11 July to 19 September 2016, 10 episodes³^•²
Main cast	Mirei Kiritani (Sakurai Misaki), Kento Yamazaki (Shibasaki Kanata), Shohei Miura (Shibasaki Chiaki), Shuhei Nomura (Shibasaki Touma)²
Writers and directors	Scripts by Sayaka Kuwamura and Haruka Ohkita; directed by Hiro Kanai, Ryo Tanaka, and Tomonobu Moriwaki; produced by Ryota Fujino⁴
Theme song	"Suki na hito ga iru koto" by JY, released as a single on 31 August 2016⁴^•⁵
Viewership	Average rating 8.92%; episode 1 at 10.1%, episode 2 at 10.4% (series high), episode 8 at 7.7% (series low)²^•⁶
Home video	DVD and Blu-ray box sets released 21 December 2016²
Spin-off	Suki na Hito ga Iru Koto ~SamaSama Kyun Kyun Daisakusen~, three episodes distributed on FOD⁷

Spoilers

Premise

The heroine, Sakurai Misaki (Kiritani Mirei), is a pastry chef who has devoted herself to work toward her dream of opening her own shop and has not dated in a long time. After being fired and failing at job hunting, she reunites with her first crush from high school, Chiaki Shibasaki (Miura Shohei), who invites her to work a live-in part-time job at the restaurant he runs on the coast in Shonan.⁴^•²

When she arrives, she finds that Chiaki's two younger brothers live in the same house. The middle brother, Kanata (Yamazaki Kento), is the restaurant's talented chef, who does not recognize Misaki as a pastry chef and treats her as a gofer. The youngest, Touma (Nomura Shuhei), is a frivolous playboy attending cooking school. The story follows which of the three brothers the love-shy Misaki opens her heart to over one summer.¹^•³ In the final episode, Misaki answers Kanata's confession by saying she likes him.⁸

Production and promotion

The series was produced by Fuji TV's Drama Production Center, with music by Hiroko Sebu.⁴ It was Kiritani Mirei's first leading role in a Getsu9 drama.⁹

Live-streamed announcement. On 1 May 2016, Fuji TV held the production press conference with Kiritani, Yamazaki, Miura, and Nomura and streamed it live on YouTube, LINE LIVE, and Twitcasting, a first for the network's terrestrial drama announcements; the network reported more than 600,000 cumulative viewers.⁹^•¹⁰ The press conference was held on 4 July at MAGIC BEACH in Koto Ward, Tokyo.¹¹ The drama's official nickname is "Sukikoto" (スキコト).²

Producer Ryota Fujino said the title image came from the phrase "Love Actually is all around" at the opening of Richard Curtis's film Love Actually, and that the production team, carried over from the drama Koinaka, aimed at heart-fluttering scenes.¹²

Theme song

The theme song, "Suki na hito ga iru koto", was performed by JY (Chieung, a Korean-born singer writing Japanese lyrics). Released ahead of the CD as a digital single, it won a total of 12 chart crowns on services including iTunes and Recochoku, which JY attributed to the drama's popularity.⁵

Reception and ratings

The first episode drew a 10.1% rating and the second 10.4%, the series high; ratings then settled between 7.7% and 9.5%, ending at 8.4% for the finale, for a weighted average of 8.92%.²^•⁶ Episode titles and ratings were: "Saikou no Saikai, Saitei no Deai" (10.1%), "Saikou no Gohoubi" (10.4%), "Suki desu" (8.7%), "Tsunaru Omoi" (9.5%), "Kokuhaku" (8.4%), "Kare no Shinjitsu" (8.3%), "Kimi no Soba ni Itai" (8.2%), "Unmei no Yoru" (7.7%), "KISS" (9.4%), and "Soredake." (8.4%).³

On the review site Filmarks, the drama holds a user score of 3.8 out of 5 from about 16,600 reviews, with 56% of ratings in the 3.1–4.0 band.¹³ On the international streaming site Viki, it holds a 9.1 rating from about 25,700 users.¹⁴

Availability

Home video box sets were released on 21 December 2016.² Streaming availability has varied by source and date: Filmarks lists the series as available flat-rate on Prime Video and FOD,¹⁵ while a May 2026 guide reports no flat-rate streaming on major Japanese services and recommends TSUTAYA DISCAS mail-order DVD rental.¹⁶ A Cinema Today survey found the series viewable through the FOD channel on Amazon Prime Video, with all ten episodes, and not available on Netflix or U-NEXT.¹⁷ A special extra episode featuring Nomura Shuhei's character Touma, "Suki na Hito ga Iru Koto in Taiwan", had no streaming schedule as of 2026.¹⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026