The Devil Wears Prada Japanese Style
8 / 10michaelfromny · 2010
Everything you ever wanted to know about high fashion or more exactly - this is about selling high fashion which is really the selling of dreams.
Karina does a superb job as Kinue, a girl who was doing quite well selling bedding, and then one day she finds she's been transferred to the Women's Clothing Department. So the stage is set for a Devil Wears Prada remake Japanese style.
Kinue is clumsy, klutzy, and without any fashion sense what so ever. Like Andy Sachs in TDWP. Her new boss is Chief Manager Miki Jinbo who is played by Hitomi Kuroki, and this role is styled as the Streep role in TDWP.
But this is series, not a two hour story for a single movie. So they had to open it up, hence the department store wars. Think Nieman-Marcus vs Bloomingdales vs Bergdoff-Goodman.
Plenty of nice threads to see, and these are worn by some of Japan's most beautiful actresses. So even if high fashion isn't your cup of cha, watching beautiful women is what you get in this series.
As the series progresses, it seems to veer away sharply from TDWP model. Kinue grows personally, professionally, and of course stylishly.
I think if you decide to watch this, just don't expect TDWP. Even with the similarities and the fact that it starts as if it would be the same it simply wasn't the same.
As a guy, Im not interested in fashion as a topic, but I did see TDWP and liked it so I thought I'd give this a chance.
To borrow Miki Jinbo's trademark - Kekko! (Fine!)
I thought this was a fine series which seemed to hit a lot of different areas - broken hearts, broken dreams and so forth. Straightmen and women and a few gays tossed in. A few bad guys too.
It played well as a drama, as a comedy, and as a life-affirming story. The only department that it failed in, and intentionally, was the romance department.
It's not as if it tried and failed, the romance had to be jettisoned otherwise the character of Kinue could not have grown in multiple spheres of her life.
Nice to look at , entertaining, and at times a lot of fun. I liked it. A lot.