If you've never watched Iryu, just imagine if John Woo decided to make a medical series with the main character having the opposite powers of Kenshiro from Hokuto no Ken. Now stop reading this and go watch the first two seasons. For the Iryu fans, season 3 starts off with the gathering of the team, which is expected. Its a new season and they need to reintroduce the characters to the public. Meishin is in trouble again this time Kitou sensei, the former head of ER is given authority to run the hospital.
To spice things up a bit, they had to concoct this lame story about Arase feeling guilty about this kid who died, through no fault of Arase's just because he promised the kid he would come out of the operation alive.
Lame. They should have continued his anesthetic addiction and just say he had a relapse or better yet, bring back the bar chick from season 1. That was one of my favourite episodes of the series and Arase was more interesting when he was an alcoholic and drug abuser.
Still, the lame Arase guilt trip is sort of a necessary evil and every episode is entitled to one unexplainable premise which is necessary to tell the story. So we have the gathering of Team Dragon and something is wrong. Miki is somewhere in Germany??? Couldn't she have like quit her job. Did she finally get over Asada? Mizukawa Asami doesn't seem to be doing any shows this season so I really hope she joins the show quickly. Team Dragon doesn't feel the same without her.
In fact I would say, the three essential members are Asada, Miki and Arase. Everyone else is chopped liver. Ijyuuin was the audience's viewpoint in season 1 but anyone can take his place because he's character is stuck in the he's good enough to keep up with Asada but there's nothing else to do with him. Easily replaceable by any character with 'potential'. Katou sensei is just to play second fiddle to Asada but her story arc is over. Fujiyoshi is boring and useless character and he shouldn't be receiving an ovation with the team after an operation. Miki is the heart and soul of the team. She's the one character who connects the non speaking Asada with the other characters. Imagine if they brought Kirima and Miki back into Team Dragon. The tension in the operating room would be awesome.
I know this sounds bad but Miki's absence just makes it feel strange. Thank goodness for Sakuraba Nanami! She plays the first patient for Team Dragon and there's this relationship between her and Ijyuuin that would have been too sentimental and lame in another series but Iryu's awesome soundtrack just makes it heartwarming. Hhm, I guess Ijyuuin is still necessary as the idealistic and youngest member of the team.
Of course, Team Dragon encounters unforeseen difficulties during the surgery but succeeds and then we get to the really exciting part of the show which I won't spoil here. Suffice to say Noguchi comes back, one member of team Dragon gets in trouble and we sort of get a WTF very high tension sequence where I couldn't the writers were going with a certain outcome. I love it when characters have to make difficult decisions.
The certainty of this outcome is predicated on certain assumptions about Asada's surgical prowess but suffice to say, they found a way to push the envelope and make season 3 very, very interesting. The last 15 minutes of episode 1 is fucking awesome and shows why disregarding the slow mo walking in lab coats and superb music, Iryu is fun to watch because there is a story to tell. I like how they avoided getting into the same problem with episode 1 of season 2 of doing way too much and instead set up the storyline of series and got me really pumped for ep 2.
Tanimura Mitsuki plays Magara Fuyumi, an intern who doesn't care about her job. She's way too young to be playing a surgeon, I mean it takes years to specialise in surgery but we'll see where the story goes. Of course everyone's favourite villain, Noguchi is back with his fish. I dare say he's the greatest jdorama villain ever. I love to hate him and he's fun to watch. I'm sensing someone from the team will hop over the other side and my money is on Fujiyoshi. Maybe I'm just sick of him getting the spotlight after a difficult operation where he contributes absolutely nothing.
You can watch subbed Iryu 3 here but I hope they will release softsubs for the series. They haven't finished subbing ep 1 yet but it was so exciting I had to watch the rest of it raw. I think the series should be pretty watchable raw. You know the formula of the stories and there are always graphics explaining the surgery. At the very least, it gives you a reason to rewatch the episodes again.
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