3 reviews
Total mess of a story
While the show has entertaining moments here and there, most of it falls flat; the main conflict in the show between Saeki and Tokai could have been sorted out easily with a conversation.
There are characters who barely have any development or backstory despite them being important to the plot, Nekota and Nishizaki are prime examples of this: Nekota clearly has some sort of friendship with Tokai and behaves very similarly to him, but none of that's ever explored, making her feel like a pointless background character, and Nishizaki also plays a huge role as he's competing with Saeki for impact factor, but again, his backstory and deeper motivations are never explored.
And finally as someone who works in the medical field, the way doctors and medicine are portrayed in this show is just ridiculous. They're portrayed to be either godlike such as Saeki and Tokai, or just plain incompetent such as every other doctor in the show. Most of these people would be barred from working as doctors due to their sheer incompetence, and Saeki would be in prison as leaving forceps inside a patient counts as serious malpractice, and the wound that the patient had could have been treated normally by a real world doctor, and is not something that's impossible to treat without malpractice.
It's painfully clear that the writers of this show put in no effort in the story, the character development, and the portrayal of doctors and the medicine system was just straight up awful.
There are characters who barely have any development or backstory despite them being important to the plot, Nekota and Nishizaki are prime examples of this: Nekota clearly has some sort of friendship with Tokai and behaves very similarly to him, but none of that's ever explored, making her feel like a pointless background character, and Nishizaki also plays a huge role as he's competing with Saeki for impact factor, but again, his backstory and deeper motivations are never explored.
And finally as someone who works in the medical field, the way doctors and medicine are portrayed in this show is just ridiculous. They're portrayed to be either godlike such as Saeki and Tokai, or just plain incompetent such as every other doctor in the show. Most of these people would be barred from working as doctors due to their sheer incompetence, and Saeki would be in prison as leaving forceps inside a patient counts as serious malpractice, and the wound that the patient had could have been treated normally by a real world doctor, and is not something that's impossible to treat without malpractice.
It's painfully clear that the writers of this show put in no effort in the story, the character development, and the portrayal of doctors and the medicine system was just straight up awful.
- divyanshpal-44432
- Sep 4, 2024
- Permalink
Black Forceps: Competence Vs. Genius
The big themes here are healthy competition vs. Back-stabbing opportunism, medical truth vs. Medical hype, and the mind-blowing chasm between competence and genius. I'm just now watching this 2018 series in 2024 because it recently hit Netflix as "Black Forceps". Although the medical surgery themed tales are mostly as seen through the eyes of a young intern, his assigned mentor "Tokai" is the shadow star of the entire series. Like American TV's iconic Dr. Greg House, he's a brilliant misanthrope who is surly and checked out until there's some insane surgical challenge thrown at him. And then he takes control like he's some legendary GOAT surgeon. I recognized the actor who plays Tokai as the scene-stealing young soldier in Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima". Like in that film, he's a mesmerizing force; you can't take your eyes off his eyes. And then suddenly when he's thrown into a surgery scene, his surgeon's hands become equally hypnotic. (Some amazing camera work in the numerous surgery scenes.) It's clear from his colleague's expressions that everyone wonders if his astonishing gifts are the hand of god or of the devil. It's the question that kept me watching. But meanwhile behind these intense surgery scenes, the series is rather passion-free, so not going to be everyone's cup of Kombucha tea. Episode one had a very tender scene between the intern and an elderly patient that could have been expanded upon but got dead ended; Not too deep in the human relationship department. Instead the director prefers to add drama by filming people running up and down stairs searching for MIA emergency surgeons. (yawn.) All in all, I'd call this series a bit above average but flawed. Still I gave it 9 stars based on Kazunari Ninomiya's performance as the inscrutable genius Tokai .
- kgenereux-75-533576
- Jul 2, 2024
- Permalink
Drama "too dramatic"