 A 29-year old model (Asano Atsuko) meets a photographer during a photo shoot in Los Angeles and the two get hitched on the spur of the moment. While he continues to work on various assignments, Ranko returns to Japan where she meets her new husband s children from a previous marriage. Long neglected by their absent father, the teens are fiercely independent and don t welcome Ranko s friendly entreaties. The oldest, nineteen-year old Makoto (Oda Yuji), is a former academic whiz who choked twice on the entrance exam to Tokyo University. He spends much of the series brooding about his room or secretly masquerading as a Todai undergrad. The middle child (Matoba Koji) constantly gets into fights at school and is currently suspended. The youngest of the clan, a sixteen year old girl (Ishida Hikari) is a compulsive liar. The tv drama then proceeds to capture how the four evolve into an odd family of sorts, sans papa.