The second season of Love Is Blind, Netflix’s reality show “experiment” where men and women get engaged before seeing each other in-person, kind of sucked. While the first season successfully captured the holy trinity of good reality TV—memorable characters you love (or love to hate), dramatic tension, and genuine surprises—the two years between seasons didn’t do the sophomore effort much good. The couples came across as frustratingly mismatched, their contrived engagements blatantly tenuous. With each couple seemingly fated to break up by the end, the stakes felt lower than ever; these relationships were just fleeting, monthlong endurance tests of self-worth. And if they somehow proved successful, as only two engagements did this season, it wasn’t because they’d resolved their tensions, but because they hadn’t yet come to their breaking point.
Dissatisfied with—and worse, bored by– the new season, I looked to meet my Love Is Blind needs with something else: more Love Is Blind. Not the American version we all first fell for in the pre-pandemic days of 2020, however, but its Japanese sister series. Love Is Blind: Japan premiered on Netflix earlier this month, just days before Season 2 of the primary show, and aired on a similar schedule: Two batches of episodes split over two weeks, followed by this week’s big wedding finale. Despite airing in tandem with OG LIB, Japan hasn’t gotten the same level of attention; Netflix wasn’t pushing me or anyone else I know toward watching Japan after blowing through the available Season 2 episodes, instead promoting its other, saucier spin-off, Love Is Blind: Brazil. But I found it, and I watched it, and I have now discovered not only my favorite iteration of LIB, but one of my favorite reality shows ever.
Love Is Blind: Japan is more of a slow burn than its…