Sawamura Ikki & Takashima Masanobu to return in New Year's SP of "DOCTORS ~ Saikyou no Meii ~"

Sawamura Ikki and Takashima Masanobu will be returning in the New Year's SP of TV Asahi drama "DOCTORS ~ Saikyou no Meii ~" which will be shown at 9pm on 4 January 2018. This is the first installment in the series for the first time in three years. Although Nogiwa Yoko who played Dogami Tamaki, the director of Dogami General Hospital, had passed away in June, she will "remain" in the series as the story setting mentions that she has gone to Bhutan to open a new hospital. With regard to this, Sawamura said that for as long as this series continues, they will let her character stay alive which they hope that the viewers will feel the same way about this.

Sawamura plays the lead character Sagara Kousuke, a capable surgeon who is usually cheerful and gentle but changes completely when he chooses extreme ways to cure his patients in the best manner he deems fit. He clashes head on with Moriyama Suguru (Takashima Masanobu) who is a skilled surgeon as well but seems to be lacking in his humanity.

In the new SP, Tamaki's nephew i.e. Moriyama becomes the new director of the hospital but is taken lightly by the other hospital directors during the Kanto Hospital Directors' Conference. As such, Moriyama gets a management consultant to help him which causes a lot of chaos and unhappiness among the staff. Meanwhile, Sagara gets a case where a girl (Suzuki Rio) transfers from another hospital in the hope of getting a living person liver transplant done. However, Moriyama decides to reject the case following the advice of his management consultant which leads Sagara to do something drastic in order to proceed with the surgery. To date, the identity of Suguru's mother Moriyama Himiko had been concealed but in the SP, Matsuzaka Keiko will be appearing as Himiko and be sent to the hospital for an emergency surgery as she complains of pain in her stomach. Although Moriyama becomes her physician, he gets cold feet at having to operate on his mother and is faced with the dilemma of whether he can proceed with the surgery as planned.

Sawamura revealed that the new SP will still feature the rivalry between Sagara and Moriyama which is set to escalate further. As such, he called upon viewers to look forward to this especially with Himiko being thrown into the picture this time. Meanwhile, Takashima said that he will introduce new variations to Moriyama's signature phrase "hmmm" this time and hoped that the viewers would enjoy seeing this.

Sources: Oricon / Sanspo