Quick Review #70: Mountain Doctor - Summer 2024

Title: Mountain Doctor / マウンテンドクター

Rating: 6 / 10

Recommended for: 

Those who are interested in watching a medical drama set against the backdrop of breathtaking scenery on mountains

Liked:

- The most eye-catching element of this drama has got to be the magnificent aerial shots of beautiful scenery on the Northern Alps (stretching across multiple prefectures) mainly in the Nagano Prefecture area. At the same time, since the key characters actually climbed the mountains for the filming, this helped to make the shots look more realistic and more engaging to watch as a viewer rather than just using stock images or CG to pass off for the real thing.

- The first episode started in a slightly unexpected way - most if not all the time, the lead character usually goes somewhere for further studies or to pursue his dream at the end of the story. However, in this drama, this kind of standard development happened right at the beginning when Miyamoto (Sugino Yosuke) headed off for training to become a mountain doctor at the end of Ep 1. To add on to the surprise factor, Emori (Oomori Nao) was left out of MMT on purpose because of a lawsuit and medical dispute with a patient's family. Under normal circumstances, the mentor would have been around in the newly set-up MMT to put the lead character through some tough training but to have the mentor absent and the newbie to be the "leader" from the start made me look forward to seeing more surprises from the story.

- Sugino Yosuke was able to show the "transition" of his character convincingly over the course of the story. From being someone who was made to join MMT begrudgingly at first to taking the initiative to go overseas for training, he really appeared as a "matured" version by the time he returned to his hospital after getting the necessary certification. However, being armed with knowledge didn't mean that he would be able to handle any situation that came his way or apply what he learned accordingly. As such, I quite liked the few episodes after Ep 1 where he slowly lost his confidence and was humbled into the realisation that he was still far from a full-fledged mountain doctor.

Disliked: 

- While the story appeared pretty promising at first with some unconventional settings e.g. the mystery over Emori's deep disdain and "hatred" for mountains despite being a qualified mountain doctor, things started to get pretty predictable from the mid-point onwards. For example, the appearance of adversaries trying to get MMT dissolved or the idea of having doctors go into the mountains to provide on-site medical care being seen as something that's unrealistic and dangerous were developments which I had expected to pop up at some time. It would have been better if the adversaries had a stronger justification to block the MMT's work (the reason just seemed awfully petty and ridiculous at one point) or that the dilemma over ensuring the medical staff's safety while saving others didn't get so drawn out and draggy.

I also didn't like the part where someone of a certain status in society could get away with no repercussions for posting untruths on her social media account especially the part about offering condolences to Emori when he hadn't even passed away. I thought it would have been good to address this inappropriate action but I wonder if the scriptwriter forgot about this for some reason or perhaps a related scene was edited out?

- While the other cast members did reasonably well in their characters, I couldn't help but feel that some of them were under-utilised and didn't have much room to shine. I would have loved to see more of Oomori and him interacting more with Sugino. As for Mukai Koji, I was assuming that he would be more involved with the mountains e.g. as a rescue team member who interacts with MMT but turns out that he was pretty much confined to his yakitori restaurant for the entire drama.
Since the drama kept talking about mountain hiking in winter being more dangerous in summer, perhaps this is a hint that the drama may return for a sequel or at least a SP so there is a likelihood that these characters can be fleshed out more in time to come.