Review: MR. BRAIN

MR. BRAIN

THE PLOT

Mr. Brain, as described by TBS, is supposed to revolve around this “quirky, yet brilliant” neuroscientist who solves crimes with his very advanced intelligence (and obvsly, expertise in neuroscience) but who is hindered by his lack of social skills. Very much in the vein of the recent slew of dramas featuring “brilliant mystery-solving eccentrics” then (see  House , Bones and Lie to Me). Except, very not like these dramas because all I really got from neuroscientist Tsukumo Ryusuke (Takuya Kimura) was an adorable penchant for behaving unexpectedly. Perhaps just “quirky” then, hardly “aggravating” – I doubt this will matter much to most people…but then I thought I’d just refute some of that fraudulent spin just in case you were expecting some fascinating backstory of some twisted, tormented soul.

So not much psychological sophistry with regards to the protagonist – the first episode started off rather intriguinfly with Tsukumu as a Host, touting for customers but that storyline was pretty much dropped entirely. (Unless! It sets up a Mr. Brain II!!! OMG. Pleasepleaseplease let that be the case!!!) And if you absolutely hate police procedurals/ Japanese mystery dramas…the strength of Tsukumu’s personal eccentricities is very unlikely to sate your needs.

As far as crime-busting and mystery-solving go however…OMG. You will lap it up and beg for more – very, very intelligent drama. In fact, if I had to pick nits and bones, I’d say: “Oh, waaay too clever for these criminals who are supposed to be very ordinary people.” (As ordinary as murderous criminals get anyway, haaa.) Yes, Side Criminals tend to dabble in Very (perhaps unbelievably) Convoluted Schemes. BUT what does this mean for the entertainment value of this drama, really? Sure – you don’t get 100% realism, but you get episodes which actually pose intellectual challenges to said Crime Busting Neuroscientist and deliver startling twist after startling twist. Fun stuff – VERY…I’d say satisfying, but I think I mean appetising since I. WANT. MORE!!!

Some people complain about the procedural aspects being way too advanced – I certainly don’t know what goes on in a real-life crime lab BUT I’ll happily profess to recognising all of Mr. Brain’s technology in well-established shows of the genre like…the entire CSI Franchise and Bones. So let’s just say it won’t get anymore fantastical then the average procedural drama. OH YES and there are little informational tidbits every episode about how our brain functions which are all very highly fascinating…though I guess they must be taken with that little pinch of salt.

THE ACTION

Really fun ensemble cast – quirky personalities all round, in fact. Perhaps that contributes to why I thought this drama didn’t really make it in the league of Successful Personality-Based Dramas like House and Bones. Unfortunately, this drama makes a second bad showing for Mizushima Hiro, who overacted the same way he did in Mei-Chan no Shitsuji. Very disappointing stuff – since he is soooo hot (when he doesn’t act, aww.)

….OH and as many others have already pointed out – great guest stars (Gackt, Kamenashi Kazuya, Aibu Saki, Nakama Yukie) and fab props/set. 

Overall tone was a really nice balance of silliness/hilarity and tense, compelling action also. Reminded me why I love the JDrama. I’d totally recommend this film to anybody (except maybe, the finale was a tad duller than the rest of the series).

P.S. Very CSI opening theme! Didn’t anybody else think that!

CONCLUSION

…If I had to pick nits and bones, I’d say: “Oh, waaay too clever for these criminals who are supposed to be very ordinary people.” (As ordinary as murderous criminals get anyway, haaa.) BUT what does this mean for the entertainment value of this drama, really? Sure – you don’t get 100% realism, but you get episodes which actually pose intellectual challenges to said Crime Busting Neuroscientist and deliver startling twist after startling twist. Fun stuff – VERY…I’d say satisfying, but I think I mean appetising since I. WANT. MORE!!!

*OH and some might, after a gajillion comparisons to CSI (which are not lost on the CSI-buff that I am), say this is nothing too special. But I say, why fix something that ain’t broke! Plus, there is a definite Japanese slant (viz., the peculiar sense of humour and silliness) so…GO WATCH IT!!!

Quality: 9/10

Loveability: 9/10

Review: Attention Please

ATTENTION PLEASE

THE PLOT

Uhm, what plot?

Attention Please is a comedy chronicling the progress of Misaki Yoko (Ueto Aya) from lead-singer of a punk rock band to Cabin Attendant of Japanese Airlines. Of course, she’s not just a punk-rock singer, she also gets a whole backstory that is hardly ever never referred to in the drama except in the first episode – she lost her mother at a young age, was raised amongst three brothers and this explains her being “a slightly boyish girl who is bullheaded”. This is so that the comedy serial can be as outrageous and (hopefully) as humorous as possible.

…It is certainly outrageous. Among the inevitable mistakes she makes as a Cabin Attendant in training, are her stealing (and dismembering) of one of those robot things on which people practice CPR* and her stealing of a uniform. (Yes, she’s supposed to be in her twenties and no, this isn’t primary school.)

*Ah, okay. They say “doll” but uhhh…you be the judge.

Also, the reason why she even makes the transformation from:

Punk-rocker Misaki

to: Cabin Attendant Misaki

Is because some Tsukasa guy Misaki used to have a crush on “tells Yoko he wonders what she’d look like dressed in uniform” and that is motivaiton enough for her to succumb herself to what is imaginably arduous training (Square Peg! Round Hole!) for one of the most dramatic transitions in JDrama History. Because she has such backbone – if that isn’t terribly needy and pathetic of our iron-willed, bull-headed heroine, I don’t know what is. I’m sorry, but that is such a feeble premise for such a drastic transformation – uh, hence, outrageous.

Indeed, you definitely aren’t going to find any clever scripting or plotting in this drama. It is patently mediocre, clumsily serves up slapstick gag after slapstick gag and relies too much on the bumbling, boisterous Misaki Yoko who verges on plain hateful in her childlish antics. I say “verges” but on the forums, I read of people dropping the serial after the first few episodes altogether because she’s such a piercing pain in the butt.

An example of how the treatment of this drama clearly lacks finesse would be:

The Second-Last Episode; typically, the climax of the show as a whole and featuring some Exciting Event. Against all film-making wisdom (and in an “exception that proves the rule”-kind of way), Attention Please’s Great Crisis/Exciting Event is…a flight delay because of some malfunctioning door. I don’t know, I guess I was expecting a little less passivity than just some…dragged out wait? I mean, obviously Good Luck! (the other Notable Drama about the commercial airline industry) was unrealistic in its portrayal of some mid-air crisis every other day but this is supposed to be a drama not some inane real-life documentary about Stewardesses-in-Training right? A little artistic license couldn’t have hurt – plus, its not like the producers were gunning for realism from the get-go anyway. Seems to me, more like some serious failure in plotting anything worth watching.

The Height of the Crisis: What is that couple going to do?! Carry on with their little hissy fit?! Pen a hissy letter of complaint?! KYAAA!!! The tension will kill you.

Oh and for that matter, a business meeting?! In “Good Luck!”, when the plane was similarly delayed, the customers were panicking because of scheduled life-saving operations and company-saving business meetings. The good people of “Attention Please”clearly couldn’t come up wiht anything better.

Ah, to their credit, they try and insert some vaguely effective tension-building music but I think they squandered all its tension-building value away earlier when they basically, shoved unnecessarily dramatic music all over the place Gokusen-style in the earlier, less eventful episodes. It’s like…okay, so is this a real crisis? Or another one of those mildly troubling obstacles happening?

In fact, from start to finish, a whole variety of disappointing anti-climaxes and deus-ex-machinas abound. Misaki and her two other Cabin-Attendant Musketeer(esses) spot their fellow Cabin-Attendant in training entering some shady building late at night. They tail her. They find out she’s actually training at some gym in the building. They find out that the horror stories about the kind of sordid activity going about the building actually involve the next-door building. It is such a convenient coincidence. Way to resolve a conflict.

The plot, on the whole, is unbelievable and uncompelling. You’d think that if they were prepared to stretch reality abit, it’d at least be to accommodate some vaguely exciting plot and yet…

THE ACTION

I think I’ve said it before, the Japanese can generally be relied upon to deliver strong, convincing performances. This is the case here – some people accuse Ueto Aya of overracting but I rather think she makes quite a believable (if not tolerable) character. It is easy to see why people hate the actress – it is easy to transfer some hatred of some unimaginably horrid character with a genuine EQ deficiency to the actress who plays it. It’s like some “shoot the messenger” complex alot of people, understandably, have. Misaki Yoko is shameless, stubbon and self-centred in the utmost extreme. She is frustratingly childish and alot of the times, you just want to strangle her.

(By a bunch of random male hotel guests in the lobby. Behind her are her two awesome kick-ass bitchy Senpais who overhear her and promptly quash her over-confidence. They help make her a bearable nuisance.)

(HAHAH, okaaaay…)

But what redeems her, are her moments of quiet wisdom (usually, after she learns the Lesson-of-the-Episode from (usually) Instructor Mikami –  it’s all very formulaic, as usual.) And I think Ueto Aya is so awesome because she plays both parts with convincing sincerity and versatility. There is a genuine liveliness and infectious energy you cannot fake about Ueto Aya’s Misaki Yoko…and it helps that Ueto Aya’s also very pretty. 😀

But, (I have to agree with the many commentators on forums who think so), it is the supporting cast which really made this technically awful show imminently entertaining – loveable, even.

Aibu Saki as Wakamura Yayoi ! She is super cute in the show with her winning smile and earnest bumbling about. I love her!

And the formidable Maya Miki as the formidable Instructor Mikami! I love her too!

IN CONCLUSION

It’s a deeply mediocre drama but then, in general, dramas can be counted on to entertain. And it does. Just don’t expect anything intensely hilarious, or exciting, or anything worth jumping about for. It does shed some light on an industry steeped in mystery (in Singapore’s context, anyway) so its fascinating that way and worth watching if you’re curious about Cabin Attendants/Stewardesses and all that. You won’t fall asleep but neither will it keep you up at night, riveted to the drama. Try and get past Misaki Yoko’s first few episodes – she gets (marginally) better towards the end what with her many Lessons Learnt. Watch this if you are really curious about the profession/ have got spare time to kill.

Quality: 5/10

Loveability: 6/10

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.