Banking/financial jdoramas are a rarity. That's why I even found Tokkan fun to watch. Financial jdoramas are also very difficult to watch for the non-fluent people like me without English subs. I started watching before the English subs came out and I was reaching for my dictionary and pausing every 3 lines till I had two pages of financial terms and jargon which I will only remember the meaning but don't remember the words. The English subs came out just after I finished watching ep1 but there's no point rewatching it.
Hanzawa Naoki is the loan manager of a bank and he was forced to do a 500 million yen loan by his boss. The thing is the company that he loaned the money to, Nishi Osaka Steel goes bankrupt straight away and Hanzawa is blamed for the loan and must now recover the money.
Hanzawa Naoki is an interesting financial conspiracy dorama. However, its not being done by WOWOW or NHK which means lots of overacting and cartoony villains such as the tax office guy who becomes interested in Nishi Osaka Steel. Not only does Hanzawa Naoki have to deal with recovering the 500 million yen, he has to play cat and mouse with the tax office.
I like the story. I want to see how Hanzawa Naoki and his friends survive. I just wish the villains were less scenery chewing/anime-like. An example would be Kagawa Teryuki acting like he's playing a Kenshin villain or when the president of Nishi Osaka Steel distracts Hanzawa Naoki with some stupid line about how banks don't hold an umbrella over your head when its raining. Of course you have to make the villains hateful like the table slapping guy but I would have preferred a more realistic tone like Hagetaka and Chase, two of the best financial jdoramas out there.
I can't hate Hanzawa Naoki for what it is; a banking anime. When I saw the trailer, I thought it looked very generic. The chances of Ueto Aya doing a realistic dorama is practically nil. I'm pretty sure the dude who looks to green to be in finance and is there for exposition is a johnny. Sigh. As long as they can keep the story interesting and keep throwing interesting obstacles at Hanzawa Naoki, I'll keep watching.
On an unrelated note, the second episode of Doctors is up on dailymotion here. I've downloaded it and retimed the subs but I'm not sure I should post it up on furransu's Japanese sub thread.