The flight attendant/cabin crew genre has been so done before in Hollywood -- mostly in forgettable B-rated flicks where big hair, big busts and bubble-brained blonds prevail. But that was in America -- this is Japan.
In Japan, the training of cabin/flight crew for JAL combines elements of pseudo-samurai/quasi-military indoctrination, with cram-school feverishness, with geisha-like attention to detail, wrapped in Japan Inc.'s unique brand of corporate "all for one, one for all" groupthink.
This Fuji-television produced series is enjoyable mostly because it sheds light on a method of training and mode of service that is mostly unfamiliar in the West, i.e., complete and unmitigated Zen-like devotion to an organization and one's job/duty.
Unlike most B-rated stewardess flicks, where the plot line predictably follows a bunch of likable American girl-next-door types who start out as friends, but succumb to the intrigue and strictures of flight attendant training and end up at each other's throats by graduation, for the ever cheerful and effervescent JAL trainees in "Attenshun Puriizu", it's quite the opposite.
In this series, it starts out with a few Japanese girls with little or no personality or identity in their civilian lives, who are drawn together after beating incredible odds to be chosen into one of the few elite professions open to college-educated young women in Asia: Flight Attendants/Cabin Crew.
Their training begins the day they are whisked off the streets away from their previously pointless and aimless lives, and drawn into a neo-fascist corporate environment of JAL where previous notions of themselves come under continuous assault. This is done military style --with a healthy dose of Samurai Bushido and Zen-like dedication thrown in for good measure -- through drill, routine, repetition and group brainwashing.
Memorable scenes in this series include one where the two starring characters -- both JAL flight attendant aspirants -- are caught in an elevator of a building on their first day of work, thus making them late for their first JAL orientation. No fear -- after a strict lecture by their Yoda-like training instructor -- a veteran flight attendant herself -- about the importance of punctuality and being aware of every possible emergency, the two distraught candidates are grudgingly allowed to re-enter the class and participate in orientation --but only after being properly shamed though in front of their peers about their behavior.
Other scenes worth mentioning are the endless rehearsals in the real JAL training facility cabin mock-ups and crew simulators, where we witness the trainees reciting over and over again -- like robots -- cabin evacuation procedures and other aircraft trivia and minutia in a wonderful montage sequence set to upbeat, martial music.
One of the most endearing scenes in the pilot episode though, is when the aspirants finally pass their initial phase training and are awarded their official JAL cabin crew uniforms -- replete with name tags, JAL-emblazoned silk scarves, and shrink wrapped in protective cellophane to boot -- thus allowing them to continue the rest of the cabin-crew flight training.
It's witnessing scenes like this when one realizes how much being a part of a recognized group means to the Japanese, and how negotiating such compulsions are oftentimes an "all-or-nothihg" affair for many in Japanese society.
