Quick Review #53: Black Pean Season 1 - Spring 2018

Title: Black Pean Season 1 / ブラックペアン

Rating: 3 /10 

Recommended for: 

Those who like stories about super doctors, are fine with overlooking the illogical parts in a medical drama or are fans of Ninomiya Kazunari

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Liked:

- For fans of Nino, you will probably like his performance as the "devil of the operating room" i.e. Tokai Seishiro where he has no qualms demanding money to fix the issues caused by his comparatively less-competent colleagues, is arrogant because of his skills and shows his disdain and distrust for his supervisor Saeki Seigo very openly. I wouldn't say this is one of his best performances to date but he did bring out the cockiness of Tokai. Just that the final showdown felt slightly anti-climatic because Tokai "deflated" too quickly at the end.

Disliked: 

- I am not a fan of "super doctor stories" like "Doctor X" where the doctor can cure anyone despite the tough or hopeless circumstances as if he/she is God. This type of genre may have been refreshing and interesting to watch a long time ago when it first burst onto the scene. However, with so many variations over the years and the doctors becoming increasingly "capable" until they don't feel like human beings anymore, the fatigue of seeing such incredulous stories is very real for me at least. This was one of the key reasons why I did not feel like watching Black Pean back then in 2018. If not for the fact that I could watch the later half of this drama at 1.5x speed and wanted to know the back story of what happened to Tokai's dad and Saeki, I think I would have dropped this by Ep 3 or 4.

- The biggest problem I had was with the story. Much as I understand that this is fiction after all and there should be dramatic developments to engage the viewers, the reason why Tokai had to take revenge that was also related to why Saeki came up with the black pean was simply too hard to stomach. And to think that the original novel was written by a real surgeon, not someone with no medical background. Leaving a metallic pean inside someone's body for years to save him and the patient doesn't seem to know what had happened? Using a carbon-based pean to replace that rusty one just to cover up the mistake, prevent further complications for the patient and avoid detection even at the point when the patient dies and his body is cremated? Tokai's father squandering his career, reputation and all that he had achieved for something which he truly believed to be right despite the controversial nature of it? And Saeki living with the realisation all along that he ruined someone's life and yet still tried to cover up his decision that he thought he was right about with yet another lie? Sorry but I think all these were hardly convincing, believable nor acceptable.

- The relationship between Tokai and Nekota was never explained properly. Why did they have such a strong bond and what happened to lead to that? Nothing at all on this so this was such a huge letdown.

- Takeuchi Ryoma and Kato Ayako really stood out for the wrong reasons for me. As the narrator and a key figure in the story, I was expecting him to do a much better job than this. His narration was so emotionless and there were parts when he was rattling off his lines so quickly that it was hard to hear what he was saying even though I had Japanese subs turned on. I even double-checked that I did not accidentally increase the playback speed. I can't help but wonder - this definitely isn't the same guy I thought well of when I first saw him in "Rikuou".

While I can cut Kato some slack because she didn't start out as an actress, I thought that she was also speaking too quickly at times and her pronunciation a bit too rigid and unnatural for day-to-day speech. Perhaps this was due to her training as a TV announcer where she always had to pronounce every word clearly but her occupation in this drama probably didn't call for such an extreme precision. While the character setting also suggested a feminine charm like a "koakuma / little devil" needed for Kinoshita, Kato couldn't really convey the same kind of vibe.