Synopsis: Mei-chan no Shitsuji

SYNOPSIS:

Mei-chan no Shitsuji is one of those dramas which shamelessly play up to what I am assuming (and hoping) is a largely-female audience. Mei-chan (played by Eikura Nana) is your average girl plucked out from Udon-Shop-Helper obscurity to become a student at the (premier school in Japan for daughters of the) elite St. Lucia Girls’ Academy. Because unbeknownst to even Mei, she is really secretly, heiress to the Hongo estate. The Hongo family, is of course, the number one wealthiest family in Japan! And so she is assigned S-ranked Butler, Shibata Rihito –  played by Mizushima Hiro, “the Unearthly Beauty”, according to some plainly fantatic thread on some plainly fanatic website. That might be abit of a hyperbole but as any good hyperbole is, it is grounded in more than a little truth! I mean…look! salivaaateee….

And in the show itself, in his classy,hot butler get-up:

Siiighhh…he is so heartbreakingly pretty!

So anyway, there you have the broadly appealling Cinderella element and in addition to that, extravagant trappings of royalty that’d appeal to anybody who’s ever dreamed of princessy things….Yes, that would be every female being. And you wonder why it was voted Best Drama in the 60th Television Drama Academy Awards.

(1) A school campus that trumps the already-excessive settings of Hana Yori Dango, Boys Before Flowers (Korean-HYD), Hana Kimi and  possibly even the Royal Palace in Goong. It is, listen, one-third the size of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area and furnished with a cinema, an amusement park and what looks to be mini-palaces for classrooms.

(2) And of course, the main mode of transportation is by helicopters.

(3) And I forgot to mention, the school rule is that every “Lady” student must be chaperoned by an Ikemen Butler to help with the most tedious and unworthy chores like…

Walking uphill. (Sorry for the horrible picture quality, couldn’t find a good screencap online.)

This is the outrageous premise of the drama, and to the producers’ credit, they do preface the serial by acknowledging the “preposterousness” of the school and its enviable school rule and my word, do they get away with it!ANYWAY, not that the plot matters very much to anybody now…Mei-Chan basically is sent to this entirely different world of luxury, forced to encounter loads and loads of challenges so that she is graduates a “lady” worthy of inheriting most of the Japanese eocnomy and well, obviously, she does so with the help of Virtue and Love and Friendship and yada yada yada.

(…Who cares. I repeat: Palatial School Grounds.  Princesses in the Making with Butler Chaperones.

Mizushima Hiro. Mizushima Hiro. Mizushima Hiro.)

Ha, okay, no. On a serious note – this is really one of those episodic shows where the storyline doesn’t matter as much as the little fantasy scenarios that are played out. So I will judge this based on the success with which each mini-plot entertains me. Already you know the broad setting and basic premise both intrigues and appeals to me very, very much so.