JIN - Review

Image from: Jdrama Weblog

I'm usually not into medical dramas, however this Japanese drama has a bit of science fiction genre where the main character enters a time slip to the past and time travels to the Edo period of Japan. After I finished watching this drama, I immensely enjoyed it. It's been such a long time since I have watched a really good drama that I was satisfied with.

The story begins with Minakata Jin (Osawa Takao) who is a brain surgeon in the modern time of Japan. Some years ago, he performed a brain surgery on his fiancee, Tomonaga Miki (Nakatani Miki), a doctor who had suffered from a brain tumor. However, that operation failed, leaving his girlfriend in a vegetative state. Which causes Jin to have some doubts about ever performing brain surgery again. One day, a unidentified man was brought into the hospital for emergency treatment. Jin does a operation on the injured man's head and removes an odd looking tumor. But the patient tries to escape from the hospital and Jin chases him down and both men tumbles down on a flight of stairs and loses consciousness. After Jin regains his consciousness, he finds himself in the middle of a forest, at night, and encounters two samurais fighting each other. That's when Jin realizes that he has gone back to the past.

There were some bloody moments when it comes to Jin doing operations or surgeries on the patients in the Edo period. For example, when Jin first enters the past, one of the samurais, Tachibana Kyotaro (Koide Keisuke), injures himself while trying to protect him. Jin does an operation on Kyotaro's injured head, however he does not have the right tools to do it. So, he improvised, by using tools that were laying around the house and he ends up cracking a hole into the man's head with a hammer and chisel. But the drama sways away from the surgeries to an epidemic spread of a disease known as cholera and syphilis. Jin tries to help these people who are infected and introduces them to a cure known as penicillin. But at the same, Jin is afraid that he might change the past and alter the future.

Just by watching this series, you get to learn a bit of Japanese History. For example, one of the most famous historical person named Sakamoto Ryoma (Uchino Masaaki) appears in this show. At first, I had know idea who he was, but after looking him up on the internet, he is actually a very important historical figure in Japan. There's also a NHK drama called Ryomaden, which depicts his life story during the final years of the Edo period. I'm not really following that series, but I heard it's a good show.

Anyway, I was disappointed with the final episode. There were still  some unanswered questions that didn't get to be resolved. Like, who is the unidentified man and what's up with this odd looking tumor that was found in his head? And also, why did Jin end up in the Edo era? However, they are going to make a sequel to this show and it's scheduled for spring 2011. Hopefully, season two will answer some of these questions and put a closure to the story.

Overall, this is the best J-drama I've seen for the 2009 fall season. I know that I did not mention anything about the main cast's performance, but I thought I could mention it here quickly, they all did great job portraying as their characters as well as the other supporting cast members. Also, to go along with great acting, this show has a great story with a mix of Sci-fi, medical and period drama themes to it.