Review: Attention Please

Summary
Alternative Title: アテンションプリーズ
Genre: Comedy
Episodes: 11
Broadcast: Apr. – Jun. 2006
Starring:

• Ueto Aya as Misaki Yoko
• Nishikido Ryo as Nakahara Shouta
• Aibu Saki as Wakamura Yayoi
• Uehara Misa as Hirota Saori

As a child, Misaki Yoko always hung out with boys and stayed away from girls. When she becomes an adult, she starts a band with four of her male friends. One day, the band decides to break up because one of the members, Tsukasa, gets a job in Tokyo. Misaki has feelings for Tsukasa, but is afraid to tell him. When Misaki goes to the airport to see Tsukasa for the last time, Tsukasa tells Misaki that he wonders what she would look like as a flight attendant. After hearing that, Misaki decides to become a flight attendant.

Review
I wanted to watch Attention Please because Ueto Aya plays the main character and I’ve never seen a drama with Ueto Aya before. After seeing her in Azumi, I had high expectations for a drama with her, but after watching the series, I was disappointed by many things.

In the first three episodes, it was kind of interesting to see what kind of training flight attentions have to go through. However, the series absolutely overdid it with the training. Attention Please become more like a training video for flight attentions than a drama. After episode three, the training just becomes really boring. Every episode just features a class of trainees being trained by an iron-face teacher who is as boring as the training itself. Just to give you an example, the worst training scene was probably the one about how to bow and say “thank you” the proper way. There was about two episodes about this and you can imagine how boring it is watching dozens trainees bowing and saying “thank you”.

The overuse of training was definitely one of the problems with Attention Please, but I thought the most significant problem was the lack of focus on one specific genre. Instead, it attempts to have many genres, but none of them stand out. It tries really hard to be a romance drama, but all of the romance subplots were weak and some were unfinished. It also tries to be a comedy in many scenes, but those scenes just featured some over-the-top passengers and were completely “dry”.


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Pro

• Interesting to see how flight attendants are trained…

Cons

• …but they absolutely overdid it with the training
• Was more of a flight attendant training video than a drama
• Tries to mix a variety of genres but none truly stand out
• Romance subplots were weak and some gone unfinished
• Subplot about Misaki’s roommate = worst subplot EVER
• Ending was terrible, one of the worst I’ve seen

Recommendation
I recommend that everyone stay away from this one, but if you really want to watch this (I’m guessing many female fans will want to watch because of Nishikido Ryo from NEWS), just watch the first episode then watch episodes ten and eleven. You’ll miss some minor stuff here and there, but you’ll get the gist of the story.

Rating: 4/10

Stay Tuned! Believe it or not, they actually made two specials and I plan on reviewing both of them. Hopefully, the specials will finish off some the romance subplots and be more entertaining than the series.