Wednesday, January 15, 2014

MISS PILOT













Fall 2013

Miss Pilot is a drama about an aimless young woman named Haru Tezuka (Maki Horikita) hunting for a job. She is a bit unfocused and not really sure what she wants to do for a career. Without much thought, she takes an exam to train as a pilot. Suddenly Haru finds herself in a competitive field full of smart and determined students. After "flying" for the first time in the flight simulator, she finds the inspiration that she was always looking for and vows to become a pilot. But will her sheer determination and strong will be enough to reach her goal?

Recommendation: The first time I watched Maki Horikita in a drama was from her small part in "Densha Otoko". I had a feeling she would receive bigger roles and in no time I saw her in "Nobuta Wo Produce" and "Innocent Love". I really liked her in the movie "Always San-chome No Yuhi" as well. I think she is a good actor, but unfortunately this drama did not take advantage of her skills. I thought the plot would be a strong one and it was an interesting plot because there probably aren't a lot of female pilots in the world, but this drama came out a little on the flat side for me.
The story of someone drifting through life and finding something passionate to reach for is nothing new. From the first episode this drama felt like a marketing tool for ANA. Now, I understand that ANA was a huge part of this show, but I didn't think they needed to spend the first three episodes having the P-kuns (pilot trainees) taking tests and experiencing how the grounds crew and mechanics do there jobs (boooring). I did like the ring tone from the drama, "Good Luck" that went off during the ANA orientation from a student's cell phone and it was nice that they added Koichi Iwaki who was also in "Good Luck". Still, I think there was too much time spent on the ins and outs of the aviation industry instead of focusing on character development. I didn't care much for any of these characters probably until the fourth episode. By that time I was hardly into this drama. The actors in general really had no chemistry, or maybe they just didn't include necessary scenes to form that chemistry. This was not a good thing because the characters were supposed to be bonding as a team. I mean, other than Haru and Chisato, I cared less about whether the rest of the cadets passed; they were so underdeveloped. The actors seemed to act out their lines word for word like they were reading directly from a script. But what can the actors do if this is what they're told to do? There was not a lot of creativity in the directing. I like to call this cookie cutter directing. It was so by the book and quite easy to read. It wasn't exciting at all. To top it all off, it was quite cheesy and overly sappy. Good dramas can move you to tears, but the bad ones try to force you to tears and that never works. Not everything was bad about this drama (episode 4 was probably the best) as there were some moving scenes and harsh obstacles that needed to be overcome by the characters, but it wasn't enough and it was difficult for me to root for them. I would have loved a really tense love triangle develop between Haru, Chisato Oda (Saki Aibu) and Konosuke Kunikida (Takumi Saito) but that didn't happen.
All in all, I don't think you will miss out if you don't watch this drama, even Saki Aibu who I  like wasn't great in this drama. Unfortunately, "Miss Pilot" had a lot of potential, but it never really takes off.

Story: 0.5
Acting: 0.5
Directing: 0.5
Character Development: 0.5
Emotional Factor: 0.5

2.5 Out Of 5.0 Crowns

3 comments:

  1. Woo, 2.5 is pretty bad. I have not watched this. Somehow i get the feeling that it would be relevant to someone who wants to become a pilot :/ I think this category of drama is very similar to Bambino, attention please...
    But sometimes the whole situation portrayed is kindda unbelievable since the protagonist has 'i will work hard... i will make it through' kindda attitude, which is not bad, but it is not realistic. At the end there are no bad guys.
    BTW happy New year! will be looking forward to more review from you. i am still watching onmyouya which is still stuck at episode 5 :(

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    1. Nice to hear from you again and Happy New Year to you too! Yes, 2.5 is not really good, but that's only my opinion. I'm sure some people liked it. Bambino I have to say was way better than this drama and although I haven't seen Attention Please, I heard Ueto Aya was good in it.
      Don't you hate when dramas get stuck? Sorry that you can't watch more episodes of Onmyouya, hope they update it soon!

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  2. i would giv it 4.5/5... this was full of inspiration and really showed the ways were most people fall... i learned more from oda than haru.. that made this drama really special for me.

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