Kentaro Sakaguchi Meets his Match with Noa Shiroyama in "Dr. Chocolate"
In Early Samurai dramas there would be a reoccurring tale of a traveling wanderer who was secretly connected to the Shogunate and would only reveal himself at the end when he needed to extract authority. Over the years as dramas came out like Mito Komon, Toyama no Kin-san and Choshichirro Edo Nikki, the connection to the Shogun got closer and closer til, in Abarenbo Shogun, the wanderer was the Shogun HIMSELF! You watched as every new drama got more and more outrageous and had to top the one before it, but, heck, you accepted it all in the name of good entertainment no matter how unbelievable it was!
I’ve been thinking about that as I watch the drama “Dr. Chocolate” which is the latest in the current trend of “Black Market Genius Surgeons On The Run From The Law", hot off the heels of the Satoshi Tsumabuki medical drama “Get Ready!!” as well as shows like “Dr. White” which are all so similar in premise!
Noa Shiroyama is Yui Terashima, a prodigy child of a Doctor father (Koji Yamamoto) and Researcher mother (Yumi Adachi) who know medical procedures like the back of her hand as it’s all she’s even been interested in, foregoing children's books and nursery rhymes to the bursting tomes of medical literature in their home.
When her parents are killed in a mysterious house fire, she is rescued by one of her father’s medical partners, Tetsuya Noda (Kentaro Sakaguchi), and when it is revealed that the fire may have been deliberately set to murder her parents, the two take to the underground in pursuit of the truth.
To fund their long road to justice, they begin performing illegal operations to those in desperate need, with the price of 100 Million Yen…and the finest chocolate you can buy!
Working only through the underground network, their reputation nonetheless grows, and as their clients become more high profile, so do those interested in this mysterious doctor humorously named Dr. Chocolate!
Among those who seek to identify and bring in the elusive medical rogues is an intrepid journalist named Nagisa Okuzumi (Nanase Nishino) who is hot on their trail. She was the original reporter who covered the Terashima’s house fire case and was the first to put forth the theory that it was premeditated, and thus is a formidable foe that they would prefer to have on their side.
The Police are also not far behind and the tales of the underground surgeon is a particular thorn in the sides of detectives Honoka Yabushita (Ren Ishikawa), Taichi Yoda (Yuki Hirako) and Narusawa (Ryo Aoki). “Unauthorized Medical operations are against the law!” they say, and are determined to catch them!
With all these pursuers on their trail, the Dr. Chocolate duo cannot do it alone, and thus, within the basement of an undisclosed location, recruit and form a highly intelligent secret-ops team of the most eccentric (but talented) oddballs ever assembled!
There is “Unagi” (Yuki Saito), Surgical Nurse
“Zandaka” (Yukiyoshi “Long Long Man” Ozawa), Anesthesiologist
“Gilbert” (Aoi Wakana), Clinical Engineer
”Owarai” (Oshiro Maeda) Radiographer
“Degawa” (Yuya Furukawa), Lab Technician
and finally, “Ashiyu” (the always loud and brash Sarina Suzuki!), Surgical Nurse!
These people have been specifically picked by Yui and Noda to create the finest surgical squad they can get, ones with the skills and the strangeness to accept all the secretive demands set.
I’ve been thinking about that as I watch the drama “Dr. Chocolate” which is the latest in the current trend of “Black Market Genius Surgeons On The Run From The Law", hot off the heels of the Satoshi Tsumabuki medical drama “Get Ready!!” as well as shows like “Dr. White” which are all so similar in premise!
THIS time, however, instead of Tsumabuki’s surgeon Hazama who fled to the underground when faced with the shady politics of the Hospital, or Minami Hamabe’s amnesiac genius Byakuya, we now have an Elementary wunderkind named Yui who, though only 10 years old, is a WHIZ at surgery and can perform operations that adults in her field can only DREAM OF! Whaaa! Hahaha! Reading the synopsis, my initial thought was, BOY, they are just getter more and more ludicrous with their set-ups and the line between realistic and fantastic is stretched to its limits!
Working only through the underground network, their reputation nonetheless grows, and as their clients become more high profile, so do those interested in this mysterious doctor humorously named Dr. Chocolate!
Together they work under the veil of night, performing the most incredible of operations to the highest bidders as they look for justice…and chocolate, of course!
This is a perfect example of a “Turn Your Brain Off” drama setup if I ever saw one! Watching the scene where they're all set up and ready to go...and then this little kid Yui enters the operating room in scrubs, pull up a suitcase to stand just so she can REACH the operating table, you just LAUGH at how absolutely OUTRAGEOUS this is, and then simply shrug, sit back, and enjoy the show!
You know, I’m betting this premise would have worked a lot better as a manga (though I’m not sure it was) but strangely it even works as a serious story if you set your mind to it! Somehow it’s a very, very good and rather heartfelt drama nonetheless!
Noa Shiroyama is excellent and believable as the precocious mastermind surgeon Yui, wonder how many actresses they went through before the set on her- this is one role that HAS to click with the audiences and I think she did a great job!
Remember the 1997 movie “As Good As It Gets” ~ Helen Hunt has a child who was always sick no matter what her clinic docs prescribed, and then one day Jack Nicholson sends her a REAL big time doctor (played wonderfully by Harold Ramis) who instantly recognizes the malady her child is having and quickly prescribes the correct medicine. Helen Hunt is in tears with gratitude as he tells her, “Your son is going to feel a great deal better, okay?” and I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be wonderful of for any sickness you had, there was that beacon of hope out there just waiting to soothe and heal you.
Yeah, that’s kind of like what these J-dramas are like!
