GM: General Medicine ~Odore Doctor~ – First Impressions

A dancer and a resident meet on a plane by chance accident to find out that said dancer is actually a talented, gifted, doctor from America. Impressed with his skills, she tries to get him to acknowledge his gift but disappointingly he refuses and wants to pursue his lost dream in becoming a professional dancer. With a team of misfits for doctors’ reputation on the line, and Goto finding out his talent agency was nothing but a scam, Momoko tries her best to keep Hideo “Fire” Goto interested and on the team to save Soshin’s reputation and the only way to do that is with a little white lie….

How long can she keep up the charade?

What can I say about this drama….

…. It’s interesting.

I guess the phrase, " So smart they're stupid ", really is true.

This is my second time seeing Higashiyama in a role and its completely different than his character of Watanabe from Hissatsu Shigotonin. He’s playful, dumber, and well… more dancier. The show opens up with Shounentai performing Kamen Budoukai and breaks the fourth wall with a joke on himself. I thought it was corny but, hey, maybe his 45 year old fangirls enjoyed it?

Goto is an amusing character but its still taking me time to warm up too him because he can be so insanely obnoxious with his dancing and ’空気読めない’ (oblivious, for lack of a better word in English). Of course, the writers have him playing up to the ex-pat returning the the country stereotype, so they have Hideo blurt out random English. Surprisingly enough, Higashiyama’s Engrish doesn’t have such noticeable fail.

What had me more excited about this drama was the reuniting of Tabe Mikako and Ohkura Tadayoshi. Yasuko to Kenji is one of my favorite dramas, one that I personally worked on as a fansubber, and one that I generally can remember enjoying to watch from start to finish. Unfortunately, if you’re a fan of that show, that chemistry they had there does not reflect at all in this drama. Motoki, Ohkura’s character, is very unemotional and straight forward (so far) from what I’ve seen and Momoko, Mikako’s character, is like a Yasuko grown up and mature. I know its bad to draw comparisons to an actor’s previous work, but my inner fangirl can’t seperate the roles.

Sometimes in my mind I think this is like what Yasuko and Jun ended up becoming later in their lives 😛 I’m really wishing for these two to hook up even though they do not interact at all beyond work. They probably won’t hook up, so I really need to stop hooking them up in my mind’s eye!

The fansubs for this drama are really, really, obnoxious.

As for the rest of the acting, its subpar generic drama acting. There’s nothing spectacular about the rest of the cast that stands out. Everyone does enough acting to do the job but there’s no emotion or connection. The drama is so light hearted its like you’re watching a sitcom, except, Higashiyama is carrying all the weight for the comedic aspect — Everyone else is along for the ride.

The story itself is interesting but stupid. None of this would happen in the real world and its hard to swallow that pill without going ” Hey, why are they doing this when they should be doing that? ” or ” Is that even medically correct? “. But its a Japanese medical drama, which is really not a genre I like, and they tend to be very… unrealistic. I’m glad they don’t end every episode with a dramatic surgery like every other show. I think its a fresh of breath air in that retrospect.

So far I’m not disappointed with this drama but I’m afraid that I’ll grow tired of it really easily. I’m dependent on subs to really enjoy the drama because of all the medical term bombs and they’re absolutely terrible in terms of all the translation notes and that may actually make me stop watching. Luckily, I found the Japanese subs so if I run into some troubles I got the CC script to translate the medical terms.

Anyway, its not a must see but its a boredom killer so far.

And yay, Kanjani8 is doing the theme song.

FAIYAAAAAAAAA!