TV
MBS "Emiri and Maria"
2026
Only Image
Playwright and director Shoko Nemoto makes her first original serial drama as a director!
Mariya Matsumoto and Maryjun Takahashi co-star as best friends who grew up together
This work is an original creation by Shoko Nemoto, a playwright and director who is at the cutting edge of the theater world. With this project, Nemoto also makes her debut as a director of an original serial drama. In their late 30s, many people suddenly find themselves wondering, “Is life just going to keep going like this?”—a vague, hard-to-put-into-words sense of unease. Love, marriage, career, youth—none of these are urgent problems right away, and yet the heart still stirs. This series presents those inexpressible feelings in an original four-episode drama built on realistic yet humorous dialogue.
Emily (Mariya Matsumoto), 35, single, and raised in a private girls’ school from kindergarten, runs an apparel brand. Maria (Maryjun Takahashi), who works as a drama producer at a TV station, has been her best friend since childhood. They still meet regularly, and over cake at their favorite café, they start catching up on life.
The conversation begins with “So, how was it?” and then shifts rapidly from matchmaking, beauty, Korea, Pilates, and social media. They take photos with their cake, edit them, and keep the pace brisk as time passes with remarks like, “Our skin really has gotten better, hasn’t it?”
Then Sakura, the younger nail artist at the salon they both go to, joins them. Their talk about trendy topics and the videos that appear on their phones never quite seems to click. As they feel the generation gap with someone younger, Sakura blurts out, “So what is it you two actually want to become?”
Emily and Maria are left speechless. “What is this sense of unease we’re feeling?” “Why is it that we end up longing for youth?” Carrying those thoughts with them, the two women set out in search of their own version of happiness—.
