Reply To: Live Actions & JDorama Review & discussion

Following is an older show so I don’t have any screenshots. It’s kind of rare these days.

Code Blue Season 1

Type: hospital

Genre: medical action, society

Year: 2008

Introduction:

See background section below.

Synopsis:

The [fictional] Shoyo University Hokubu Hospital Emergency Center introduced the Dortor-Heli(copter) program to Japan in 2001. It’s an emergency medical service (EMS) which gets physicians to the site of accidents. 2008, after years it’s still new and in adoption phase and in need of flight doctors.

There are four flight doctor trainees this year:

Fujikawa Kazuo, an overexcited, megane guy with baseless confidence, a lose tongue and no courage, who’s popular with young girls and kids because they view him as less than a dog (or worse), hence, they don’t feel embarrassed with him.

Aizawa Kosaku, a super cool looking ikemen and overly-talented guy. He aims to become famous based on his skill and experience, hence, wants to rack field (operation) mission.

Shiraishi Megumi, a heir to famous line of doctors, who’s smartest but has doubts in her skill. Her abundance of knowledge makes her hesitate in making quick decisions, she freezes up or loses calm & concentration and panics.

Hiyama Mihoko, a blunt and outspoken woman who’s anxious when it comes to her job.

These four come under the care of ace flight doctor, Kuroda Shuji, who hates the young (and incompetent). He failed all last year’s candidates. Hence, a bloody competition starts among the candidates for the flight doctor post.

As the trainees cause problems the Fellowship and the Doctor Heli programs faces termination…

Critique:

The show starts with ER experienced novice surgeons in the Fellowship program similar to the american Scrubs show without the comedy emphasis, though. There are lots of good actors among the cast and guest actors.

This is perhaps the second time Aragaki Yui and Toda Erika are teamed up in a show. Megumi (Yui) is the ideal japanese honor student while Mihoko her counterpart. Btw the image of the ideal japanese female gender has changed officially this year (2017). It’s a revolution in Japanese culture.

Unsurprisingly, the stories are similar to many medical show regarding young doctors confronted with the reality of the job and other people’s lives. Yet, many cases are disturbing or are exotic in detail, including a serious faker (Munchhausen syndrome) similar to one Scrubs episode. These might be the most uncomfortable part to watch for some people. It was on japanese family friendly channel so it won’t give you mental scars.

The show is short with a small cast so a lot of social & family trouble has been cramped and dumped onto the cast. Yet, they don’t seem to be out of the ordinary which kind of scares me.

Unlike many other japanese medical shows this show censors by brightening the operation area. Due to handbook instructions on when to call the service many cases are medically similar. There aren’t any novel treatment in this particular season. I couldn’t avoid noticing how tightly designed the hospital section was where all the show’s shooting took place. It looks like they can do 3 ops in a single 6×6 m room. The Japanese certainly know how to use space efficiently. The show is neat on everything.

Like most medical show shows the staff are depicted spending a lot of time with patients. Sadly, staffing (time & management) has always been calculated based on patient capacity and rooms; and with “automized” timing these days e.g. timing of for each work process there’s just not much time left for social activities. In this season the show is still romantic and heroic with some reality check wakeups.

All the show’s cases practically use CT, PET-CT, MRI, X-ray, etc. like there’s no tomorrow. It would be nice if the real world would always work out like that. And of course the cases end rather TV typical, too. However, the character development and up & downs of all the cast is pretty good and exceptional how all of it was done in 10of11 episodes. This part is definitely better than a lot of other shows considering the number of characters (7) receiving the care. I think the most other shows have is about 5 at most.

Just when I thought it would pipe down at the end of the show a third disaster takes place. They really saved for this uncalled showdown or maybe they used the opportunity of a real large scale exercise for the show.

Overall, I like this show more than your regular medical show or extreme live-action like Iryu-Team Medical Dragon, mostly due to the cast, better scripts, depictions and being a bit on the ideal side. Don’t misunderstand, the show has plenty of failures, deaths, misfortunes, traumatic experiences and other heart breaking story elements in the show. The only life part it’s missing to some degree is a rosy romance. I’m guessing season 3 will have that covered. ER technology is also more advanced…

Miscellaneous:

Emergency Medical Service royal blue atire’s motto: “stat and now”

Neurosurgery black atire’s motto: “Challenge to God”

Heart Surgery burgundy atire’s motto: “Grasp the Herz”

Verdict: 8.7

Cast 9

Cast performance 8

Script/Directing: 9

ED

[BBvideo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftHMuY36E68[/BBvideo]

final ED

[BBvideo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Hp8CxPmzI[/BBvideo]

serious shocking case

[BBvideo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMx8-pWctV8[/BBvideo]

Background:

This show has 3 seasons (2007, 2009, 2017) so far. “Code Blue” is a reference to the medical code given for ER cases while “white car” is for car ambulance. Code Red is when someone suffers cardiac arrest or worse. I suppose the show was made to promote “Doctor Heli” in Japan. Air Ambulance service existed before but for transport only, but since 2001, physician go along for necessary on site treatment, hence, the program’s name. I suppose due to overcrowding and infrastructure there had been no need for the service before. But due to recent population decline and like elsewhere in the world as doctors became more rare in the country side it just became necessary to save more lives. Since they can’t land just anywhere ambulances serve as intermediate transport vehicle. Japan employs the paramedic system, hence, there is no (auto)mobile emergency doctor service like in the franco-germanic systems. And the ambulances are “minimally” equipped, too. In addition, hospitals do turn patients away due to severity.

As far as helicopters go Japan has gathered the most reliable types in its arsenal. I guess the varied collection is due to their “trial” of the well known types in service around the world. Despite being late and having access to the “latest” (20 year old) like the MD 902 Explorer (tailless) they also have some older designs like the MBB/Kawasaki BK 117 C-2.

Important to note is most of these helicopters are air ambulances. This definition and distinction is [/B]important[/B] as it means the helicopter does serve to transport at least one patient and not just as a taxi for the doctor only. Air ambulances also have the smallest, lightest and most modern medical equipment developed in the last 30 years. Expansive stuff and sadly they did only appear in the last 5 years. In part thanks to modern computer aided design. It’s only a matter of time before artificial computer aided software comes into play.

The helicopter used in the show is a MD902, JA6790, apparently, a second hand ship bought from the US (900-00024 from july 1996) in 2007 and upgraded for the service. They used the newest addition to the fleet for the show.

It appears the japanese helicopters are stationed at certain hospitals and have fixed day time service. Night time service requires Night Vision Goggles (NVGs) which the japanese don’t have upgraded to yet. The show had several cases where the helicopter was forced to go back and forth (reinforcement, numerous patients) which dangerously left it low on fuel, hence, time on site. Multi-fuel gas turbines like the Klimov TV2-117 (TV2-117F certified for Japan) existed for decades but alas they won’t be on rescue helicopters anytime soon (read on).

They have a 3 minute takeoff mandate (upon receiving the call). Note this is shorter than the shortest Ready-5/Alert-5 level of the military. In practice, the germans have had pushed it down to 1 min on record by taking-off right away. Automation also improved other processes of aircraft handling. They also seem to have a high sortie and low incident record. German ADAC 2016: 54444 sorties 55 ships=1000 per ship, 1 service man fatally hit by rotor; Air Methodes 100000 annual sorties 400 of 450 ships=250 per ship, 19 fatal crashes in 2006; University of Miyazaki 1 sortie per day, in the show 1-2 sorties per day = 525-700 per ship, 1 fatal mountain crash 6 Mar 2017) Helicopters have a high maintenance to operation ratio; usually 30++ man hours per flight hour. The MD 902 requires relatively low maintenance. So 1-2 sorties per day is pretty good for civilians. Therefore, engine reliability is paramount for EMS helicopters. The PW207E engines used in the MD 902 has a 10 million flight hours life rating. Rotors have 11000 hours, and latest bearing 1000 hours.

Interestingly, the show depicts the flight doctors using personnel walkie-talkies: Alinco DJ-C7, a dual-band VHF & UHF transceiver, common bands for aircraft. Judging from the antenna size it seems to be adjusted for UHF only, though. The show likely intentionally doesn’t show the display. The real issue is possible interference by people since these are sold to the general public and not restricted to public services.

Also it seems the flight department has emergency operation rooms similar to german model than just regular ER like the american model. But the room’s tightness makes it unclear and the show doesn’t show the rest of the emergency department either. On a side note new american built hospital emergency departments have recently adopted this dedicated operation section for improved safety, efficiency & throughput.

On another note before this show there was M.A.S.H. And yeah the german “Die Rettungsflieger” (1997-2007), a show praised for its accuracy due to involvement of actual military crew & SAR helicopters and field doctors.

My interest for the show was purely curiosity, and past involvement in design, specifications, etc. of “vehicles”, (mobile) “hospitals” and management (in inaccessible regions of the world)…