Sunday, June 26, 2011

Mei-Chan no Shitsuji - Series Review


Continuing on my trend of reviewing J-Drama, this is my review of a series i just recently watched, Mei-Chan no Shitsuji. Translated as "Mei's Butler". This series stars both Mizushima Hiro and Takeru Sato, so as a fan of Tokusatsu, as soon as i learnt they were both starring in it, i could not help myself but watch it. So, without further adue, lets get started.

This series was very fun. As a Tokusatsu fan, one of the big appeals for me was the Toku actors in this series. Aside from Mizushima Hiro and Takeru Sato, it also had  Keisuke Kato (Nago/Kamen Rider IXA) and Yuki Kimisawa (Kirihiko/Nasca Dopant) and Chise Nakmura (Natsuki/BoukenYellow), which i thought was a pretty neat cast.

This series follows the story of three Protagonists,  Shinonome Mei, A young girl who lives out in the country, her parents recently died only for her to find out she's the granddaughter of Kintaro Hongo, current chairman of the Hongo company; a very famous and rich company. She is told by him to go to St. Lucia girls academy, a school where each girl has to have a :Super Handsome" Butler so that she can become a lady fit to be the heiress for the Hongo family, her classmates however don't approve of her, causing conflict between them. Her Butler, Shibita Rihito, portrayed by Mizushima Hiro is an "S-Rank" Butler, the highest rank a butler can gain. He is to watch over Mei at St. Lucia academy, in order to make sure she is able to become the heiress of the Hongo family. The third, Mei's childhood friend and younger brother to Shibita Rihito, Shibita Kento, whom is portrayed by Takeru Sato. After Mei's enrollment at St. Lucia, he decides to become an Apprentice Butler there. There is one main rule at St. Lucia academy, however. That is Love between a Lady and her Butler is forbidden. This rule however causes conflict between the three, and a Love triangle soon starts to blossom.

To complicate matters, the school's "Lucia", a title only given to true ladies is also revealed to be an Heiress to the Hongo family and Rihito used to be her Butler. She wishes to stop Mei and have her leave the academy and get Rihito back; No matter what methods she must use.

 With all that said, the plot itself is decent. It's kinda something you see a lot these days, however it's given the spin of a lot of cute girls and butlers. Which the two of them always make a good series together. (See Hayate the Combat Butler). I thought the series did well being only 10 episodes long, the series didn't feel too rushed, The series also had some nice Comedy moments, and also had it's Dramatic moments too. The Drama was not enough to outshadow the Comedy, though.

 Now, for the characters...This Drama had a large cast of Regulars. Meaning it would be difficult to be able to properly develop all of them, instead focusing on a key few. I Think this worked well, as not all of the characters seemed too interesting. And the characters that they did have development for i think worked really well. The characters in this series are overall well done and i enjoyed seeing most of them.

So, in the end, this series was a pretty good series. It's a series i could recommend to anyone who is a fan of Anime/Manga or Tokusatsu. The series had wonderful music that tugged on your hearts strings and overall really helped the series out. The only dowfall of this series is that it is only 10 episodes. In a way, the 10 episodes were just the right amount for this series to completely unravel it's plot but at the same time, i would have loved to see more. The actors all portray their roles well, which is surprising for me, as some of the character's seem like they would be slightly difficult to play well. Yet most were done perfectly.

 This series is definitely worth a watch. I'll be watching another JDrama soon, either Tokyo Dogs or Shinigami no Ballad. So i'll be sure to review one of them as well.

No comments:

Post a Comment