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This post was originally published October 2018 and has been updated with new Terrace House members.
In fact, its one of the least eventful shows on television.
Its likeThe Great British Baking Showif the contestants sometimes kissed.
And if aTalking Dead-style after-show broke in occasionally to roast the contestants.
There have been four iterations ofTerrace House,three of which are on Netflix.
House members share some common characteristics.
Most are some sort of model, at least part-time.
Almost everyone is polite to a fault.
They would collaborate and cooperate with their housemates.
They would be upfront about their feelings.
They would always ask before kissing someone.
Basically, they would be the opposite of every American reality star.
Heres how every house member from the Netflix series ranks as a cooperative and good-good boy or girl.
Wez (Aloha State)
Wez is at the bottom because he was simultaneously boring and a shitty person.
He led girls on, he gossiped, he was a mediocre rapper.
Wez was an inert presence when he wasnt slut-shaming, and he wrote a song about Instagram.
It was an underwhelming series, partially because so many members were so American in their reality TV behavior.
She brings drama, makes grand pronouncements about cutting people out of her life, and sleeps around.
These are all excellent TV character qualities.
However,Terrace Houseis the TV equivalent of chicken soup: intentionally bland, yet healing.
Were looking for hard workers and earnest talkers.
Yuudai (Opening New Doors)
What a perfect little shit.
Keep that lazy fame-hungry behavior onThe Bachelorette,where it belongs.
Hikaru (Boys and Girls in the City)
Hikaru was mostly unobjectionable on the show.
A little too smug about being hot, but thats to be expected.
He ranks low on this list, however, becausehe follows literally no one on Instagram.
I dont care how funny your occupation chyron is, you gotta follow some people!
A college baseball player, Makocchan was in the original six inB&GITC.
All three female house members ranked him as their cutest and most datable.
Or so he said!
it’s possible for you to be lazy or a fuckboy onTH; you cant be both.
Mila (AlohaState)
Some people leave no impression.
Theyre low on this list not for abhorrent behavior, but for making no impact at all.
Mila designed wetsuits, I think?
Ryo (Aloha State)
Like, who even was this?
Ryo came for maybe the last week ofAloha State.
He was there more as a fact-finding mission for his employers back in Japan than to find love/self-actualization.
He visited coffee stores.
The coffee stores seemed nice.
Mariko (Aloha State)
In my notes, I refer to her as the crying banker.
She was a banker.
She cried when confronted.
Soto (Opening New Doors)
Does Soto think hes funny?
Or is he just tone deaf in all interactions?
That would probably be easier to do watching the show, rather than being on it.
Soto was a teen idol, who left the biz to get married and have a kid.
Then he left the wife and kid to make apps?
An unjustifiably cocky man.
Naomi Frank (Aloha State)
Naomi just couldnt get anything going.
No romance, and a boring hostess job.
Naomi mainly hung out by the pool inAloha State, and honestly who can blame her?
All of ones time should be pool- or ocean-adjacent.
Still made for boring TV.
Aio (Opening New Doors)
I have no time for this shady personal trainer.
The end ofOpening New Doorswas a wild ride, revealing secret behind-the-scenes dealings and clandestine couplings.
Aio secretly planned his storyline with Risako, then secretly started banging virginal Yui.
And he folded on both of them so fast.
Aio was both a schemer and a narc.
Both roles are important inTerrace Houselore, but combining them just makes you look like a snake.
Plus, he ate his boogers.
Just an underwhelming bro.
Yusuke, aka Eden Kai (AlohaState)
A virgin who cant drive or see when someones not interested.
Plus hes a ukulele player, so hes got those creepy classical guitar fingernails.
Its not all Yusukes fault.
When courting Lauren, Yusuke got lots of bad advice from Eric.
But we didnt need a Nice Guy onTerrace House.
Hayato (Boys and Girls in the City)
Hayato is [spoiler alert] a huge creep.
He and Rikopin pretended to have a chaste will-they-or-wont-they relationship, but were secretly banging on the DL.
Risako (Opening New Doors)
Risako tried to work her storyline onTH,an unforgivable sin.
But then Aio got bonered for Yui (why??)
and left Risako hanging and looking like a fake bitch.
Risako then had a cute-ish storyline with Masao, ultimately deciding not to date him either.
Anna (AlohaState)
Anna is one of those girls whose whole identity is traveler.
Shes more Instagram feed than person.
What does she do for a living?
Whats her favorite food?
Whatevers local to wheres shes traveling.
Whats her favorite foul in basketball?
Maya (Opening New Doors)
Maya is…fine.
Shes new on the show, so theres still time to distinguish herself.
But at the moment Im left lukewarm.
Maya said once, offhand, that shemightbe bisexual.
Its never been addressed again.
If you want to rank, you gotta lean into your bisexual storyline!
Ami (Opening New Doors)
Is Ami a boring opportunist, as the panelists seem to think?
Or is she the victim of a very bad edit?
Ami was the romantic object of Yuudai, Taka, and Shohei none of whom interested her.
The endless parade of awkward dates she went on were TV poison.
She was also the BFF of perfect hockey queen Tsubasa.
Apparently their friendship was one for the ages, yet we never saw it.
Instead, we got scene after scene of her feeling uncomfortable as men threw themselves at her.
Ami could toss out one-liners pretty well, but clammed up when dudes hit on her.
If the show cared about friendship as much as dating, maybe shed rank way higher.
Mayu (Opening New Doors)
Poor Mayu.
Nobody, not even the panelists, can see past her breasts.
Erotic model Mayu came to the show to find love.
But her cutesy behavior keeps turning dudes off.
It must suck to have internalized gender norms so much that you are actively annoying to be around.
Yui (Opening New Doors)
At first I couldnt stand Yui.
The panel kept fawning over her in a way that seriously yucked me.
Words used to describe Yui include pure, innocent, untarnished, aka a virgin.
They were extremely hyped on her virginity and sheltered life.
But then she started acting really fucking weird, and I got on board.
She interrogated people in a way I can only describe as Sam Waterston-esque.
When she was the fakest of all!
It got me heated, but she generated a lot of plot.
Yui is a riddle we may never be able to solve.
His music is ridiculous, but more listenable than Wez, and he falls in love hilariously easily.
And he is pretty down for a woman having agency over own appearance.
His boyfriend-girlfriend proposal was cringe comedy of the highest order.
But he put Seina in a headlock to kiss her.
And he forced his housemates to listen to a goodbye concert when he left.
In short, Shohei does a lot of stuff without getting others consent.
A messy bitch that loved drama, Natsumi feuded with almost every woman she roomed with.
She beefed with Minori about the true nature of love.
She beefed with Misaki about her own drinking.
That fight was so bad, they couldnt even air it.
And she tried to steal Han-san from his off-camera girlfriend.
Natsumi is too much trouble for my sweet, placid show.
She was compelling television, but I am here to see people exchange niceties over bowls of soba.
Get that mercenary energy out of my show!
But Arisa was involved in too many good storylines to rank any lower.
Nothing kills a boner like a Costco run, and I wouldnt know that without our little hat-monger.
Shun, however, would try and take baths with the dudes he had crushes on.
Thats not necessarily the representation we need!
Shuns quasi-date with Soto made Soto seem fun, a task almost herculean in its difficulty.
But then theres the less-than-consensual baths.
And for a makeup artist, we only got one scene of him practicing on a housemate.
You couldntstopUchi from doing peoples hair on his season!
Too aggressive in his bathing, not aggressive enough in his makeovers.
What makesTerrace Housefascinating is the way its willing to acknowledge its constructed reality.
The panel will call out anyone they suspect of faking it for the camera.
Taka (Opening New Doors)
Part of being onTerrace Houseis knowing when to leave.
Taka stayed for so long, with very little in the way of goals.
As a pro-snowboarder, he should have left with the winter.
Or when he shaved his mustache to look younger and it backfired horrendously.
Taka unsuccessfully wooed one girl, then half-heartedly dated two more.
We have American reality shows for fake storylines!
The most that can be said of him is that he cleaned the whole house before he left.
But really he wanted to ride horses in Hawaii and get a girlfriend.
These are okay aspirations to have!
What made Yuya great was his genuinely sweet personality.
He was a great gift-giver!
Noah (Opening New Doors)
Model/aspiring pilot Noah had a brief but eventful stay on the show.
Almost every girl pursued him.
He tactfully turned down Mayu and less tactfully did the same with Yui.
But the chemistry was off the chain with Seina.
The two are still together, so a certain amount of secret kisses can be forgiven.
Were Noah and Seina hooking up secretly, ala Hayato and Riko?
Allegedly their first kiss happened while both were blackout drunk and right after Noah had puked on the lawn.
Noah said I heard we kissed, but he was the one who informed all his other housemates.
So who told Noah?
We want oddly chased declarations of love!
Kaito and Maya had a very normal thing going, and it made for kind of bad TV.
Lauren Tsai (Aloha State)
Lauren has had quite an interesting post-THcareer.
Both her modeling and illustrating have taken off, including a collaboration withMarc Jacobs.
And now shes going to be onLegion,I guess?
Lauren was the only house member to not be even half-Japanese.
She taught herself Japanese after traveling there in high school.
What I appreciated about Lauren was how she refused to become someone different for other people.
Shes something of an introvert, and she doesnt want to fuck Eden Kai.
These are core principles for her that she stuck too, and I salute that.
Cheers to containing multitudes.
Aya (Opening New Doors)
Aya was a catalyst for a lot of stuff.
She set off multiple chain reactions.
Her crush on Taka got him to finally skedaddle, and her friendship with Yui softened her TV persona.
We wouldnt think Yui was cute if Aya hadnt been there saying so.
And unlike Ami and Tsubasa, we actually got to watch this friendship develop.
Finally, Aya discussed getting paid to promote things on Instagram.
Finally, FINALLY, a reality show is acknowledging the after-careers of its contestants.
As a medical student, she spent a lot of her time studying and probably cutting up dead bodies.
Which I, for one, would have liked to see!
Good thing we arent cynical!
A triggering, middle of the pack entry!
Also, how weird was it that she went on a reality show during her spring break from college?
That is using your time efficiently.
Yuudai needed chewing out, though, so shes pretty high on the list.
I also applaud her bravery/horniness.
Mizuki Shida (Boys and Girls in the City)
Always a barista, never a bride.
Mizuki went on dates with three of her male roommates, but nothing ever kicked off.
The one guy she didnt date was Tap, who made her cry about having vague dreams.
It was his best birthday ever.
Take that, Tap!
Martha also seems like a cool lady, a good communicator.
Avian (Aloha State)
Avian was no-nonsense on an excessively nonsensical season.
Whenever someone needed a come-to-Jesus moment, Avian was there to provide.
She gave good advice to Lauren, Naomi, and even her own future boyfriend, Yuya.
But how cool was it to have a ballerina in the house?
And one who achieved her dreams in trueCenter Stagefashion?
The scope of human experiences on this show are amazing.
Whoever cast a ballerina should get a yacht.
After her rejection by Hikaru, she found a super adorable love with Byrnes.
He came to the show to find a love worth dying for, as he often repeated.
But then he would sometimes cry because he didnt even know what that meant.
The Guilty Samurais greatest contribution to culture was how mercilessly he was dunked on by the panel.
You need someone with unswerving conviction in himself to weather such ridicule, and Taishi had that in spades.
Ucchi and her had been dancing back and forth about being a real couple.
Her plan to push him into commitment: make him omu-rice and write coward on it in ketchup.
This is a wild form of communication, and frankly didnt bode well for the rest of their relationship.
I would watch a Kurumi spin-off in a heartbeat.
No one took the career development aspect ofTerrace Housemore seriously than professional tap dancer Yuki Adachi, aka Tap.
Lucky in dance but unlucky in love, Tap was turned down by both Yuriko and Arisa.
He honestly seemed like kind of a jerk.
Uchi (Boys and Girls in the City)
Uchi is iconic, if only for the Meat Incident.
After his roommates ate his special steaks without him, Uchi fell into a days-long depressive spell.
He was only snapped out of it when his girlfriends sister gave him a talking-to.
A tantrum for the ages.
Who does these things?
Only a legend, thats who.
Shion (Opening New Doors)
I must admit, I was distrustful of Shion.
He came on the show hoping to be swooned over.
But I guess love is real, because theyre still together even after leaving the show.
Shion was thoughtful, funny, and apparently not faking being a nice person.
Byrnes (Boys and Girls in the City)
Yuuki Byrnes, professional krumper and part-time model.
Apparently its still a going concern in Japan.
Secondly, Byrnes is who broke the Hayato/Riko story.
If he hadnt have confronted them, wed have never known about their clandestine dalliances.
Finally, he and Misaki were very cute together.
Byrnes krumped his way onto the show and into our hearts.
Guy (Aloha State)
Theres no greater pleasure in this life than watching Guy water a succulent.
Guy was so chill, it was like he was a different species.
Arman (Boys and Girls in the City)
Arman truly broke the mold.
Everything you shouldnt do as a house member, he did, and yet we were all charmed.
He stayed in the house for so long.
He barely had a career (WTF is an Aspiring Firefighter?).
He tried to datewaaaytoo many people.
But when he and Martha finally hooked up, it was magical.
Arman is like a real-life Fry fromFuturama,and it was adorable when he found his Leela.
Tsubasa (Opening New Doors)
The one thing missing fromTerrace Housebefore Tsuchan was uplifting sports drama.
Her story had everything: competition, death, noodles, love, and more noodles.
Tsubasa was the star hockey player on her team, and even dreamt of representing Japan in the Olympics.
But she also needed love and friendship in her life!
Her mom died at hockey practice, which made the whole sport more fraught!
Her dad has a cool grey streak and gives good advice!
Tsubasa and Shions quiet romance was perhaps the best inTerrace Househistory.
I dont care that she and Shion have since broken up.
Id still watch 10 episodes at least.
Nobody gave better advice, or was more willing to help out a bud.
His hat-stands for Arisas store were so cute!
And no one could calm Natsumi down like him.
Seina is the GOAT ofTerrace House, everything that makes these shows great.
Uchi and Minori would have never gotten together without her prodding.
And although she was there to smash, Seina rarely threw her female housemates under the bus.
And she might have broken girl code a little to get with Noah, but cmon.
Look at them together.
Their coupling was so electric, it got even noted prude Torichan extremely horny.
As shell tell you herself, Seina is a legend.
