Atelier

My wife started watching this show, but I got hooked shorlty. I believe the values presentes in the script are one of its best features and production is very good. It really makes you appreciate the effort on lingerie creation.

I'm currently learning Japanese and the type of conversations taken on this show are perfect to get the feel of normal Japanese people (unlike anime) and tune the ear for the languaje. The respect and candor of the characters is just like many Japanese persons I met on a recent trip. Worth watching !

I was surfing Netflix for something new and started watching Atelier out of curiosity. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point I was drawn in and couldn't let go. I'll save you the trouble of looking it up: Atelier is a French word for an artist's workshop. The plot is a fairly predictable Cinderella story (even referred to in one episode): Young country girl just out of school goes to work in the big city. The store is a high-end custom lingerie shop. High-end meaning all hand made for an exclusive set of clients, and costing $500-$1000. Mayu is a fabric expert, not a designer. I think what kept me watching was that the show doesn't focus exclusively on young Mayu. There is strong character development of the whole cast as the series progresses. The obsessed and perfectionist owner, the assistant designers, the business manager, etc. I enjoyed watching how the story developed for many of the peripheral characters we see early on. We get to see how they are really integral to the story, and how they progress and influence things much later. My wife asked me why I was watching a chick flick and my only response was that I found it interesting even though I had to see the whole thing in subtitles. Kudos to the translator for bringing out a lot of subtleties, double entendre, and depth. I have heard the Japanese language is nothing but such things. The meaning is well-conveyed by the acting which was excellent across the board. The only weakness in the cast was that of Mirei Kiritani, the lead actress who plays Mayuko. In many scenes she just comes across as a stereotyped young Japanese girl, the kind we see portrayed too often. (Maybe that really is how they act? I don't know) My only other annoyance with the series was the strange time jumps that would sometimes occur without warning. They seemed to cut past some important developments or just jump too far ahead too fast. All in all I felt like Atelier was much like anything created by BBC -- It's better than 90% of any American commercial crap.

Years ago there was a local PBS channel that was leased for Japanese broadcasts in its off-hours, and I saw so many great Japanese TV series. So I thought I'd check this out.

This silly show is about a young, eager woman who goes to work for a prickly lingerie fashion designer. The young woman is very passionate about textiles, and makes a number of speeches in the first episode about how wonderful some are, and the whole series portrays the creation of bras as this amazing, noble thing, and it's all rather odd.

Outside of the first meeting between the girl and her boss, who offers the wit and presence lacking from the rest of the series, there was nothing in the first episode that made me want to watch a second. It's not terrible, but it's a far cry from those series I saw in the 90s like Kagayaku Toki no Naka de or Furuhata Ninzaburō. I know there's good Japanese TV out there, but outside of anime it's hard to find.

The young and the old, both in transition, makes up the story of "Atelier" a 2015 miniseries from Japan.

Adorable Mirei Kiritani stars as Mayuko, a young woman who comes to work at the Emotion salon in the Ginza section of Tokyo. Her boss Mayumi (Mao Daichi), made up to look like Anna Wintour, is tough but fair. The lingerie is hand-made and exquisite, and Mayuko falls in love with the whole industry, to the point where she wants to create something herself.

Mayuko and Mayumi learn more from one another than either one thought possible, as Mayuko works to find out who she is and Mayumi realizes she needs to invent herself.

Lots goes on in these 13 episodes: designs stolen, a theme for a fashion show stolen, a child who is estranged from his mother who appears, going into mass marketing, and lots else.

I have never been to Tokyo - it looks so beautiful on this show - it's like watching Manhattan, where I have lived, on Suits or White Collar. At the end someone is out on the sidewalk and you can really see that the streets are crowded like New York in midtown.

Learning a little of the culture was amazing also - lots of bowing, not a huge amount of touching, people seem to treat one another with respect. It's a more formal culture.

Someone on this board said the show reminded them of anime because some of the younger women had plastic surgery. I was wondering during 13 episodes why some of the women seemed to be a mix of American and Japanese.

Mirei Kiritani is so pretty and played the part of a naive girl who wants to learn everything very well. Mao Daichi, who seems like Japan's answer to Joan Collins, is perfect in her role of an elegant, somewhat imperious woman who hides her vulnerability underneath. She wears an Anna Wintour wig -- I'm not sure if I saw her in something else if I would know her. I believe at one point the character is said to be 50, or maybe I misheard - Daichi is 60, and I could have believed she was late forties.

The other actors were all wonderful, including Mayuko Kawakita, Ken Kaito, and Wakana Sakai.

Highly recommended - and for those concerned about language and nudity - this is cleaner than a Disney film.

Good to see content from Japan. Great production values.

I found the musical score intrusive and too 'on the nose'. Signaling what you should be feeling now in case you can't figure it out from the script - determination, inspiration, sadness etc. Lush, redundant and mostly saccharine. Especially that damn piano! Coincidentally just having rewatched The Birds which has no musical score at all. Wish there was a separate mute for the music.

Subtitles in yellow often lost on a light background.

A weirdly depopulated Ginza and too-blue sky over Tokyo. The distraction of anime-looking characters thanks to cosmetic surgery especially among the young actresses.

The melodramatic line readings and swelling music when someone said something like, I will make...bras that I like! The simpering overacting and fumbling by the doe Kiritani in the early episodes.

Male characters mostly emasculated or evil. What was up with the coffee guy? Poor schmuck.

Not crazy about the stereotypical work-life imbalance, would like to have seen some of the characters' lives outside of work.

Other than Kiritani, a great cast. In particular could watch Mao Daichi sew and drink coffee all day. Without music and maybe without that Anna Wintour haircut. Her 'regal bearing' is an inspiration, as is her enunciation which is great for students of the language.