Jotei (2007)

[invitan]

Title: 女帝
Title (romaji): Jotei
Also known as: Empress
Format: Renzoku
Episodes: 10

Summary: Kato Rosa stars as Tachibana Ayaka, a young woman whose life has been ruined after she lost her boyfriend then her mother became gravely ill. Looking for revenge, she starts out as a hostess with the goal of rising to become the "empress" of the Osaka nightlife scene. Matsuda Shota plays a member of the underworld who becomes Ayaka's ally. -- Tokyograph

 

 

Comment:

Initially, I watched Jotei only because Matsuda Shota was the male lead, and did not really expect anything out of it. So I had a pleasant surprise when the series turned out to be quite decent.

The show started off a bit jerkily with an uneven background intro. The female lead wasn't exactly likable at first, plus I kept having this constant fear that she would become some cliche archetype "sassy girl" who lectures everyone she meets and "transforms" them with a few pretty words. Her motive to become a Jotei was not really believable at first, and her story was a bit over-dramatic. The romance was also overly fast-paced, as Ayaka & Naoto fell in love in the first episode, but what really bugged me was how Naoto switched side so quickly... I mean he was ready to rape her just a minute ago, and then he suddenly turned into a super nice guy "I won't have your body but I have your heart". Come on, that was one hell of an epic fail in script-writing.

However, other than that, the series was quite well-done, especially in portraying the night life of Tokyo, and what happened behind those glamour, in the world of people who make a living from entertaining others. It reminds me quite a bit of "Memoirs of a geisha", perhaps due to the similarities in the nature of the two professions. Conflicts easily arise in such a world, and desperation gives birth to desperate actions. I like how the producer attempts to tangle in the complexity of relations and politics as well. Somehow the series has an aura that is really close to real life, and I like that realistic atmosphere.

The characterisation really fluctuates in this show. I was annoyed with Ayaka at first, but she grew on me in the later episodes when she outgrew her naivety and started to master some subtlety, so I'm glad at least there is believable character development. Naoto, on the other hand, is a character I always like, but never really sympathise with (It's absolutely not Matsuda-san's fault; I'd rather blame the idiotic script-writer). His actions are sometimes a bit too ambivalent, and I cannot understand thoroughly his will to bear so much self-sacrifice for Ayaka when he himself used to intend to raped her. The main antagonist, Rina, is a one-dimensional character with a really shallow, really bizarre thinking process. I know she is supposed to make audience hate her, but seriously, it's not a good sign if I have to skipping whatever scene she is involved. The two other antagonists are plain gross, and utterly fail at subtlety, which makes me wonder how they managed to climb to the top in the world where relations have such great significance.

The finale is, nonetheless, a letdown for me. How I hate endings where they just conveniently add some cheap melodrama into a series that might have otherwise progressed and reached a far better conclusion. I must admit, though, that I did shed a few drops of tear during the last episode. The really sad thing is how a last episode of such a series could be just so painfully typical and cliche. Dang... and when I finally opened up to the lead, too...

Overall, however, I think this is a decent series that is worth watching, entertaining enough to keep me going straight to the end. The conceis not really original, yet not entirely unoriginal either. And Matsuda Shota is gorgeous in here - he looks even better than HYD! It's already worth watching for him alone, trust me.