Thoughts about "Sorette pakuri janai desuka?" Ep 1 (spoiler alert!)

Dramas about law as a whole, especially criminal or corporate law or those in the legal profession are aplenty. What distinguishes this from the rest is its singular focus on intellectual property laws which may not be so well-known or many people and companies do not pay attention to. As such, given its laser focus on one area, you will no doubt be able to learn more about the issues involved and how being the "creator" doesn't mean that you will automatically own the rights to whatever you create. The downside though is, for those who may not be familiar with legal jargon, the lines can get quite mind-boggling at first because there's a lot to explain especially the groundwork of what IP laws are in the first place. Perhaps as time goes by, there will be lesser explanations on the theory and more focus on how these laws are applicable in real life so it depends on whether you can deal with this part and wait a while for the story to dish out less theories and bring up questions and solutions on how things are done in practice.

The first episode went to great lengths to explain the importance of doing copyright and trademark registration in the right and timely manner as illustrated by the supposed leak of confidential information by the designer Fujisaki Aki (Yoshine Kyoko) to a friend working in a rival company during a social gathering. Despite everyone's insistence that she should just admit her wrongdoing for the "accidental leak", she refuses to do so since she is very certain that she hasn't done anything that others are accusing her of. Of course, her innocence is proven by the end of the episode but that's not without a lot of stress and self-blame which made her wonder repeatedly if she should take the fall so that the whole issue can be resolved. It takes a lot of courage and self-belief to stand against the tide so despite her meek and scaredy-cat character, Aki looks like someone who can become a strong figure to fight for what's right as she knows more about IP issues in her new department.

On the other hand, fans of Shigeoka Daiki will probably be quite happy to see him talk a lot as the patent attorney Kitawaki Masami who gets sent from the parent company to the beverage company where Aki works. Since he has to explain the IP issues to the clueless staff at the beverage company, he naturally gets a fair bit of screentime. I haven't read the original manga but I am guessing that Kitawaki and Aki will probably just become great buddies although I wouldn't mind a bit of romantic involvement between them.

It looks likely that the drama will spend a number of episodes to touch on the IP issues facing the beverage company before delving into the pasts of the key characters or some major back story that is about to be revealed. For example, it looks like Kitawaki and Aki's boss Takanashi (Tokiwa Takako) knew each other from before and she seems a bit hostile towards him. Kitawaki's boss Matasaka (Tomosaka Rie) also hinted at a past event about him which had resulted in becoming so cold and harsh towards others. At the same time, Takanashi also seems to have something going on with rival company's director Tadokoro Joseph (Tanabe Seiichi) - maybe a past feud? I am anticipating that these questions won't be answered that early so you probably need some patience to sit through the first few episodes.

In short, this was a decent debut episode which provides a fair bit of information while dropping some hooks for the viewers to continue watching so as to find out what's going on with the characters. What I'm concerned about is, will the individual cases be enough to hold everyone's attention till the main plot takes centrestage? Or will the viewers lose interest very soon if the next few episodes turn out to be very predictable?