Series / Doctor X: Surgeon Michiko Daimon

"A doctor must never make a mistake. That's why I tell myself, 'I never fail.' And I said it out loud. Without that determination, I cannot save my patients."

The ivory tower of university hospitals are becoming weaker, and medicine, which deals with life and death, has entered the era of the law of the jungle. To fill the critical shortage in the medical field, freelance doctors, or lone wolf doctors, have emerged. One of them is this woman. She dislikes the herd mentality, hierarchy, and restraints placed by these institutions. Her medical license and well-honed skills are her only weapons. She is the surgeon Michiko Daimon, also known as Doctor X.
— Paraphrased Opening Narration which is slightly altered each season

Doctor-X: Surgeon Michiko Daimon (ドクターX〜外科医・大門未知子〜) is a Japanese Medical Drama starring Ryoko Yonekura. It premiered in October 2012 on TV Asahi, and is also available on Netflix. It has seven seasons as of 2021. In 2017, a spinoff titled Doctor Y was aired on TV Asahi, featuring Dr. Hideki Kaji (Masanobu Katsumura) as the main character.

These tropes never fail:

• Accidental Misnaming: Daimon is terrible at remembering names, especially of people she dislikes.
• Aesop Amnesia: The corrupt doctors are saved countless times by Dr. Daimon, but most don't change their ways.
• All for Nothing: All the effort Yoshihito Tendou did to be the president of the Japanese Medical Centre President was for naught when he is immediately impeached after getting the position by one of the patients, who backstabbed him.
• Alphabetical Theme Naming: There is a Spin-Off called Doctor Y with Dr. Kaji as main character. Dr. Daimon's actress also starred in Legal V: Ex-lawyer, Shoko Takanashi.
• Bad Influencer: In season 7, Dr. Morimoto returns as a successful medical ExTuber to assist with the hospital's PR efforts. The "bad" part is that his advice to delay non-critical medical procedures since hospitals were overwhelmed by the COVID-19 Pandemic caused an older fan of his to put off her medical checkup, until she collapses from an almost incurable cancer.
• Boarding School: It is revealed at the penultimate episode of Season 4 that Mai is at a boarding school in England, explaining her absence or why Dr Jonouchi seems to not mention her during the run of Season 4.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: There are some in-universe, such as a "Proctology Department" sign translated as "Anus Department".
• Brutal Honesty: Daimon does not mince words, ever. "Let me operate on you!" is how she asks for her patients' consent. Sometimes followed by the blunt "You'll die if you don't have the operation."
• But Not Too Foreign: Corporate fixer Nicholas Tange is Japanese Brazilian.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • Daimon's most famous one is "I never fail." Rather than arrogance, however, this is more of a self-reminder that doctors cannot fail since the patient's life is at stake.
  • Ebina's campaign slogan for the hospital chairmanship election is "Change and Challenge!", in English.
• Consummate Professional: Dr. Daimon lives for two things: surgery and good food.
• Contrived Coincidence: No matter where on earth Dr Daimon goes, she will always find a patient/Doctor related to Teito University Hospital who will recruit her back to the hospital at the start of the season.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: Most of the hospitals and medical governing institutions are run by these people.
• Country Mouse:
  • A subplot during Season 4 between the doctors in Teito University as the doctors from the city looks down on the doctors from the countryside or from rural areas of Japan.
  • Director Hiruma and Dr Ebina, among others, are devastated when they're reassigned to rural hospitals at various points in time for their misdeeds or failures.
• Cunning Linguist:
  • Dr. Daimon speaks English, Chinese, Thai, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
  • Subverted by Dr. Kaji, who can read but cannot understand spoken English. This becomes a problem when he misunderstands an American patient's "yes" as him not having any allergies when he actually does. This is common for Japanese people, as they're given more emphasis on how to read, but not how to speak English.
• Dr. Jerk: As attitude goes, Dr. Daimon is a very straight example. The doctors in hospital management also qualify as they're willing to give suboptimal treatment to the patients, or even refuse to perform life-saving treatment and let them die, for personal gain.
• Falling into His Arms: In season 7, after Daimon shares a pleasant dinner with Dr. Hachisuka, she twists one of her ankles and almost falls over. Hachisuka catches her in the last second and accidentally pulls her flush against him. They both look absolutely bewildered by the turn of events.
• Food Porn: Everybody in the show loves good food, which are shown in loving detail.
• Furo Scene: Daimon and Akira often visit the local bath house and have a chat over the separating wall.
• Genki Girl: Nurse Masako is a wide-eyed and friendly young woman who is mostly unaware of the power struggle among the doctors and simply wants to help the patients.
• Glamorous Single Mother: Although she occasionally worries about money, Jonouchi makes a good living as an anesthesiologist to provide for her daughter Mai. Her ex-husband is a pediatrician and still cares for Mai too.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language:
  • English: Hiruma's secretary in season 6 is learning English and often scolds her boss and other doctors in it. Hiruma and few other doctors also insert random English words into their speech.
    • Dr Kitano has a habit of speaking English, possibly employing Code-Switching, but his pronunciation is horribly butchered *despite* studying abroad for a long time.
  • Director Hiruma is the king of this trope, saying greetings or goodbye in foreign language whenever the mood comes up.
  • In season 7, to demonstrate Dr. Hara's newfound superiority after he returned after working in China, he peppers his dialogues with Mandarin vocabularies, even calling himself and Kaji by the Mandarin versions of their names.
• High-Pressure Blood: In the first episode of season 7, this happens during the second surgery, splattering Dr. Daimon and causing Dr. Hachisuka to let out a high-pitched shriek in terror. He is justified since the patient is infected with Lassa Fever.
• Honor Before Reason: Most of the time this reason is given as to why Dr Daimon cannot operate on certain patients.
• Indy Hat Roll: In season 7's finale, Dr. Hachisuka quarantines himself in the new research center. Trying to mount a rescue mission/surgery, Daimon, Kaji, Ebina, and Hara infiltrate the place using this method. One of them even skids across the floor like a penguin in the process.
• In-Series Nickname:
  • Dr. Kaji often calls Dr. Daimon "Demon", even after their relationship improved.
  • Daimon can never remember Dr. Hara's name and thinks he's her old elementary school classmate, Kin.
  • Starting from Season 3, the nurse organization as a whole is constantly referred to as "Ooku" (translated as Shogun's Harem)
  • In Season 7, as Daimon and Dr. Hachisuka's relationship improves, she takes to calling him "Hachi" ("bee" in Japanese).
• Insistent Terminology: Dr. Daimon is a freelancer, not a part-timer as some like to mock her (she does work eight hours a day).
• Iron Lady:
  • Masae Mihara,'The 21st Century's Lady Kasuga' or 'Reiwa era Kasuga-no-Tsubone'
  • Head Nurse Shiraki from Season 3
• I Was Never Here: Due to her status as a freelance surgeon, all of the operations she conducts are credited to another doctor. Akira takes advantage of this to leverage expensive bills from the current Director or the highest authority in charge of the surgery.
• Jidaigeki: Many of the characters in the hospital organization acts and talks as if they're in a jidaigeki, what with the constant references to Warring Era. Dr Daimon occasionally lampshades it.
• Jurisdiction Friction: Most seasons feature power struggles between departments of the hospital, especially when the patient can be treated with either one's expertise.
• Leg Focus: While they rarely get acknowledged by characters in-universe (with the exception of Director Hiruma occasionally mentioning her 'beautiful legs', which she warns counts as sexual harassment), the lengths that the show's costume and camera crews are willing to go to put Dr. Daimon's legs on display are notable. This is understandable, as she is played by Ryoko Yonekura, who tops Japan's "celebrities with the most beautiful legs" surveys year after year, and who has even commented that filming the show puts a good deal of strain on her legs owing to the way the show emphasizes their beauty: within most of the series, Dr. Daimon either wears high-heeled over-the-knee boots with very slim shafts or goes for similarly high-heeled pumps. And, as if intentionally flaunting her confidence, she never wears any stockings or hose and is always bare-legged (even in a professional environment such as the hospital, where almost every other female character wears hose).
• Lockdown: As season 7 focuses on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, this is inevitable. In the penultimate episode of season 7, Dr. Hachisuka puts the entire new research center in lockdown, causing a stampede of panicking medical personnel hurrying outside the building. The first half of the finale focuses on how Daimon and Co. are going to bust 'in', since there's a patient in the building in desperate need of surgery.
• Magic Antidote: In season 7's finale, Dr Hachisuka catches a highly infectious new strain of virus and insists on quarantining himself in his new research center to collect data on the virus before dying, despite also suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer. He manages to synthesize a vaccine by himself in a few days, allowing Dr Daimon and others to excise the cancer without getting infected themselves.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Part of Hiruma's name is "hiru," which means "leech" in Japanese. The name befits his greedy nature.
  • The shrewd and aggressive Dr. Hachisuka has "hachi" (bee or wasp) as part of his last name. The series itself even lampshades this by having a CGI wasp land on the miniature of his infectious disease research center.
  • In a later episode, Dr. Kuwagata contemplates whether to ally with Hachisuka or Hiruma, saying that he would go into shock if he gets stunned by the bee (Hachisuka), but he would lose blood if he is bitten by the leech (Hiruma).
• Mentor Archetype: Akira is Daimon's mentor and manager.
• Once a Season: Each time Dr. Daimon starts working as a freelancer at a hospital, Akira distributes a list of things that are often expected from doctors working at a large hospital but she won't do since they don't require a medical license, such as accompanying the director to golf or doing superfluous administrative work to look busy.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: Dr. Daimon loves slipping her shoes off whenever she can, be in in her office or on a train. Many scenes have her bare feet shown prominently on screen (with the famous recurring hot tub shots where her soles are directly facing the camera being the most notable), and the show makes it obvious that she never wears hose with her heels and never wears socks in her boots and sneakers either, so it makes sense that she would take as many chances as she can to pop her shoes off and air out her sweaty feet.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • There is an episode where an entire hospital computer was compromised by a malware, echoing the case of malware attacking companies and hospitals through e-mail attachments at the time, resulting in a botched demonstration of the robotic surgery machine. Thankfully, Dr. Daimon is there to save the patient of the day.
  • The seventh season in 2021 features the Internal Medicine department being prioritized over Surgery due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well the rivalry between Doctor Daimon and Doctor Korogi, who abandoned his duties when they worked together in New York during the height of the pandemic.
• Red Baron:
  • The titular Doctor X is a moniker given to the doctor (or doctors) willing to put patients through risky and unproven procedures, which most see as gambling with lives. The person currently referred to as Doctor X by the media is Dr. Daimon, but it's implied that the doctor who gave notoriety to the name was her mentor Akira, who has lost his license.
  • Hideki Kaji, the "Wizard of Laparoscopy".
  • Masae Mihara, 'The 21st Century's Lady Kasuga' or 'Reiwa era Kasuga-no-Tsubone'
• Retired Badass: Akira lost his medical license in an unspecified incident and now runs an agency for freelance doctors.
• Running Gag: For a long running show, this is a given.
  • Daimon being bad at Mahjong.
  • Her employment conditions scenes. Later seasons have characters constantly lampshading it.
  • Dr. Daimon looking intensely at the clock, but someone mistake her as acting hostile.
  • Akira presenting post-surgery bill, with the director's current assistant freaking out and screaming "This is unreasonable!" at him.
  • Dr Daimon's lack of money.
  • During Season 4, Dr Kikawada will be interrupted mid sentence by Dr Daimon, who ignores what he says most of the time.
• Sassy Secretary: Hiruma and other hospital directors' personal assistants are these.
• Share Phrase: The sycophantic doctors respond to orders with an acknowledgment phrase often heard in jidaigeki, "Gyoi!" Daimon occasionally lampshades this.
• Shockingly Expensive Bill: Dr. Daimon's manager and mentor bills the hospital at least 10,000,000 yen ($100,000) for each special operation (i.e. the main operations of the episode).
• Shout-Out: Akira's cat is named Ben Casey, after a 60s American TV series about an outspoken doctor of the same name. In season 7, it has a kitten named Gannon, named after the protagonist of Medical Center, another 60s medical drama.
• Signature Move:
  • After each operation, Daimon puts her hand on the sedated patient's shoulder for a few seconds. It's significant that she doesn't do this to a wealthy but abusive patient, signalling her utter disdain for him.
  • Dr. Kaji raises his hands and flexes his fingers when he introduces himself by his title, "Wizard of Laparoscopy".
  • Kanbara does a high-spirited jig whenever he receives Daimon's surgery fee from the hospital's director.
• Skewed Priorities: There is enough example in this series to warrant a page for itself.
• Skyward Scream: Dr. Hachisuka lets out a particular guttural one when he learns that he might die from a new strain of virus he caught.
• Slave to PR:
  • Most of the doctors shown are very concerned of their public image, especially the directors, resulting them trying to stop Dr Daimon from operating because she's a 'part-timer'. Akira exploits this to charge them high fees for Dr Daimon's surgery while they can take her credit.
  • In season 7, a vice minister is accused of getting himself admitted to the hospital to avoid participating in an important summit, which would also become a PR disaster for the hospital. Director Hachisuka solves this by claiming that the vice minister has stomach cancer, and live streams another person's surgery as evidence, to convince the public that his stay is justified.
• Sleeping Their Way to the Top: Dr. Maria Nakayama, or Nakamari to her fans, is a former Totei University beauty queen who became an internationally famous surgeon by seducing good surgeons and taking credit for their work in the operating room.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • Despite everything that happens, Dr Daimon will always go back to working at Teito University Hospital.
  • Starting from Season 4, Hiruma will always be taken out of his position of authority, before getting it back after 1 or 2 episodes.
• Sycophantic Servant: Most of the doctors, but the greatest one is Ebina.
• Team Power Walk:
  • The directors of Totei University Hospital, especially Hiruma, are fond of conducting this with their posse of doctors.
  • A humorous example in season 7: Doctors Ebina, Kaji, and Hara do this on their way to help Dr. Daimon and Jonouchi operate on Dr. Hachisuka. They are accompanied by nurse Masako, who has to walk behind them because the hallway is too narrow. She is also too short to show up on camera behind them, so she hops a few times in an attempt to be seen onscreen.
• Televisually Transmitted Disease: Nine times out of ten, the patient has a rare form of cancer. As well as some of the doctors, including Akira and Daimon herself.
• Terrified of Germs: Somewhat justified due to COVID-19, the Internal Medicine department's salute is covering the face with both arms and they're very averse to the Surgery department's usual yelling matches.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Some aside from the main cast and some recurring characters, most of the supporting characters disappears after their season ends.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Masae Mihara 'The 21st Century's Lady Kasuga' or 'Reiwa era Kasuga-no-Tsubone'. She encourages the nurses to emulate this lifestyle towards their patient as well. This is also the reason given so that the surgeon in charge of her granddaughter's surgery to not remove her pelvis and ovary.

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A surgeon's operating power is determined by training. How enthusiastic the surgeon is about learning surgery, and how good the surgery looks. Repeat the basic techniques so that it flows like water in a river, and create a beautiful final surgical field. That is the ideal surgery. And the most important thing is to never give up on the patient, no matter how hard the operation.