Into The World of Lingerie with Mirei Kiritani in Netflix’s Original J-Drama Series UNDERWEAR

Mirei Kiritani in Atelier/Underwear

My friend and his girlfriend have been big supporters of the NETFLIX original series from the beginning with shows like HOUSE OF CARDS down through to the recent Marvel superhero shows like DAREDEVIL and JESSICA JONES. This weekend we’re catching up on movies we’ve seen, and then, remembering that I watch J-dramas, he says, “By the way, I forgot to tell you…Netflix is running an original JAPANESE series!”  I’m like, “You mean an American series with Japan actors?” , to which he says, “No man, real Japanese, Japan actors speaking Japanese language with subtitles and all!”
Well! This was SOME news indeed! He continued, “The show they’re airing is called Atelier, and it’s this story of a plain girl who goes to work for older woman who runs this fancy lingerie business. The young girl is cute, but wow, the older lady is fine…kind of reminds me of the mother -in-law in 'Double Kitchen', but, you know, pretty.” (LOL)

 Upon hearing this synopsis, I went, “Hey, this sounds JUST like a drama I read about a couple of months ago- in this show, a small town girl goes to work for big-time lingerie company, too… but THIS drama was called Underwear”! He then stopped and took his smartphone out and began looking up Atelier. He laughed and said, “look what I found here!”  He showed me a page on his phone which said “Netflix Japan is teaming up with Fuji TV to create an original 13 part series: The show on Netflix is called Atelier, while in Japan it is called “Underwear”. WOW! So this WAS the same show!

Reading up on it online later, I was thrilled to see who the cast was. That “cute young girl” starring in the show as the naïve newbie? Adorable Mirei Kiritani! And that sexy older woman? None other than stoic beauty Mao Daichi! I knew what my friend meant about her being sexy- I’d JUST seen her in the in the latest Ayumi Ito/Kento Hayashi drama “Sono Otoko, Ishiki Takai-Kei” earlier this year, and she was turning me on in every episode!

Mao Daichi

Mirei Kiritani

President and Assistant at Work

My friend said he and his girlfriend had watched about 4 episodes of Atelier already and really liked it, so I hurried online to check it out myself and so far, it’s as described: Mirei Kiritani as cute as heck and Mao Daichi as gorgeously intimidating as ever! Reading up, people have been comparing Underwear to the Anne Hathaway/Merle Streep movie “Devil Wears Prada”, what with the demanding woman boss taking on an innocent  young protégé and all, but after watching just the first episode, it is a lot more sweet than that. In fact, Underwear reminded me more of the Karina/Hitomi Kuroki drama “Real Clothes”, where the bumpkin girl is NURTURED by her new boss and job rather than being BULLIED into it! A show with a lot of heart!

Another thing, as with any drama dealing with a specific profession, each episode takes part of its time to teach the viewer a bit of the trade, how lingerie is created, constructed and marketed! 

And of course, this being a show about underwear, we DO also get a fair share of beautiful models parading around in nothing but bras and panties and if THAT ain’t the deal-sealer, I don’t KNOW what is! LOL

 Well, this takes up MY next few weeks! Should be a fun ride, and HEY! If this continues, we may be getting even more and more j-dramas on Netflix! Wouldn’t that be COOL!?

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com