Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective

Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective — Are we ready for a House M.D. derivative anime drama just yet? I sure hope so... In the realm of television dramas, I feel that there was a unique area that used to fascinate and blow people's minds ever to grace the small screen, and it's in the segments related to hospitals, medicals, and the like. Sure, you have the all-time favourites of shows the likes of Grey's Anatomy, House M.D., and the lesser-known Scrubs, which is what should be in the minds of anyone who watched the best of the best hospital dramas. Though I'd beg to differ that hospitaldramas outside of the US do have their popularity as well, namely one of Japan's most consistently highly-rated hospital/medical drama shows of the 2010s, that being Doctor-X: Surgeon Michiko Daimon (if you have not heard of this long-lasting TV drama, I highly suggest you go and watch it; it rivals that of American counterparts being similar and great.) The reason why I bring up Doctor-X: Surgeon Michiko Daimon, is on the basis of the one show where the hospital/medical drama has made somewhat of a resurgence: novelist Mikito Chinen's Ameku Takao no Suiri Karte a.k.a. Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective, which explores a rather unorthodox and unconventional doctor in the face of hospital politics and diagnoses, just like how Dr. Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurie) played his role to exact mimicry. Though I should give a bit of context as to who exactly Mikito Chinen is, given his rather rich background. Born in Nanjo City, Okinawa Prefecture, novelist Mikito Chinen is actually a certified physician, having graduated from Tokyo Jikei University School of Medicine and being a certified doctor of the Japan Society of Internal Medicine. That is his realistic profession, but deep down he wanted to become a novelist as a dream from his young days, and this started when he wrote a short detective novel in his high school days, leading to the famous novelist and literary critic Tetsuya Ayukawa (real name Toru Nakagawa) publishing his stories under the Honkakusuiri anthologies of detective novels published between 1993 and 2009. Sure, his interest is in the veins of Edogawa Ranpo's Shonen Detective Agency and the ever-so-popular Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series, and it's only until his graduation from the Tokyo Jikei University School of Medicine that he started to write novels earnestly, which saw many of his later works being published, some even nominated and winning awards. Interestingly, the accolades didn't include his most prized notary work, Ameku Takao no Suiri Karte, for which the novel is still in serialization since September 2014. But back to Ameku Takao, it's clear that Mikito Chinen was inspired by the likes of Doctor-X: Surgeon Michiko Daimon and (especially) the predominance of American hospital/medical dramas like House M.D. to create his own derivative of Dr. Gregory House and his small group of friends, as seen by the titular character of Takao Ameku and her host of contacts in the hospital environment they reside in, full of investigative wonders and medical cases that she can only solve when others cannot. The titular MC being the director of the Department of Investigative Pathology at Tenikai General Hospital, don't ever underestimate her chibi size for someone easy to be stepped on, because aside from her lucrative role, she is the vice-chairman of the hospital alongside her uncle Owashi, though both cousins always have the "agree to disagree" counterintuitive arguments that never seem to end, with Owashi thinking that she's wasting her time with a department that only specializes in medical scenarios where no case can be diagnosed by any other physician in the hospital. Naturally, the rift between cousins forces Takao to isolate herself, as seen by the weird brick house on the hospital's rooftop, which also serves as her residing office, visited by the people that are closest to her. The first of which is her closest assistant, Yu Takanashi, the man who's always being chided by Takao most of the time under her whims and is the main support of her investigative detective mystery-solving adventures enough for her to nickname him Kotori a.k.a. birdbrain, alongside ER nurse Mai Konoike and her own caring older sister Mazuru. On the police's end, you have the detectives Ryuuya Naruse and Kimiyasu Sakurai, who are always coming into contact with Takao should she need their help when it comes to the mysterious deaths and murders. And they all have to work together like a well-oiled machine because it's their careers on the line that they face judgment of if wrong assumptions are made that result in the outcome of the deaths of the people they're involved with. I've consistently seen that the one criticism of the series in general is how superlative it feels against the sightings of the cases that Takao got herself into. Be it the medical diagnoses or the detective mysteries, it just doesn't have that realism that's rooted in the "true" Sherlock Holmes style, or that the medical cases are not supervised stringently, considering the workload of the doctors and nurses in typical hospitals. But then again, you have to remember that this is fiction (with the notion of the disclaimers in the episode openings), and the medical drama that goes into it may seem juxtaposed and contrary to real-life operations, but that's the reality of most medical drama-centric series: you can "fake it till you make it", however, medical prescriptions, diseases, and the like still have to sound real enough to induce the drama that comes out from it. It's a thing just to bring out the drama; some will love it, others will hate it, plain and simple. Admittedly, any production under Aniplex will suffer in the long term, as is Project No. 9 here, with clearly flailing animation that gets worse as the series progresses with its fervent delays and such. It's not the best; it's serviceable at best, but you will certainly see the degradation in quality. To be fair, Loop 7-kaime a.k.a. 7th Time Loop director Kazuya Iwata tried his best, but the circumstances speak for themselves here. The OST is also decent, though I really didn't notice much of it composed by Fox Capture Plan. At least Aimer's OP song is solid, as is The Gospellers with their ED song alongside Anly. This is a reality that's harder to swallow, but if you're expecting House M.D. vibes from this, you've come to the wrong place. Against the "genius" that is Takao Ameku, it's clear that Mikito Chinen was hoping to marry both the medical and detective segments together and make it work; the only problem is that the arcs (at least within the anime) can feel like they were played with a fiddle, or just enough medical advice is instilled to the point where it "feels" believable (of course, not forgetting that this is still fiction after all). Whatever the case profile is, just go into Ameku Takao no Suiri Karte a.k.a. Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective, not thinking that you'll come out a whizz in medical proficiency but rather, savouring a show that is just alright and for the dramaticization purposes alone.