Will you operate on the evils of this world?
Dr. Chocolate is a Japanese Medical Drama and Whodunnit series, first aired in 2023 on Nippon TV.
8-year-old Child Prodigy Yui Terashima (Noa Shiroyama) lost her parents, a prominent surgeon father and genetics researcher mother, when an agent of the terrorist cult Megumi blew up their home. Escaping to Singapore with her father's apprentice Tetsuya "Teacher" Noda (Kentaro Sakaguchi), they returned to Japan two years later for Yui to operate as the underground doctor known only as "Dr. Chocolate", saving lives of people of the underworld in order to find clues about the organization and bring them to justice.
All tropes are listed once. It's the same for each one:
- All There in the Manual: The show's official website named the medical crew "Chocolate Company". Their van is also called the Company.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Despite the makeshift nature of their operating areas, infection has never been an issue.
- Back-Alley Doctor: Despite her extreme competence, Dr. Chocolate is an unlicensed doctor, not least because she's 10.
- Badass Crew: Dr. Chocolate and the Chocolate Company can set up an operating area anywhere imaginable with the equipment stored in their van and successfully carry out even the most complex surgeries.
- Career-Ending Injury: After his hand had to be amputated, Noda can no longer work as a surgeon and became "Teacher" to Yui.
- Catchphrase: Dr. Chocolate's "We only live once. It's the same for everyone" and "Don't call me a child! Age is just a number".
- Child Prodigy: 10-year-old Yui can perform better surgery than actual surgeons, thanks to her father's training and practicing countless simulations.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Me-sama, a.k.a. Mutsumi Kitazawa, started the Megumi cult because of her frustration over being laid off from the research center where she worked with Yui's mother, Aoi Terashima, as well as her unfulfilling personal life. It got out of hand when a cult fanatic murdered the Terashimas following her offhand comment on the cult's blog and she shut it down, but then police superintendent Machino became the new Me-sama and used the cult for his own ambitions.
- Cool Car: The Chocolate Company goes around in a chocolate-colored (with a small cacao pod decal on the back), left-hand drive 1983 Dodge Ram 250 van. It's also Yui and Teacher's home and can fit the entire Chocolate Company and all their medical equipment.
- Cult: The Megumi cult killed Yui's parents and is the show's main adversary.
- Cursed with Awesome: Ashiyu's photographic memory makes it hard for her to heal from the loss of her husband and son.
- Dirty Cop: Detective Yabushita is a member of Megumi, because of her admiration for its leader, police superintendent Machino.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The Megumi clan is disbanded, its key members and leader, police superintendent Machino, arrested, but cult founder Mutsumi is acquitted as she didn't actually order the Terashimas's murder, and her relationship with her husband is also improving. The Chocolate Company members avoid getting arrested and pursue their own goals with the money they earned, while Nagisa receives an award for her report on the murder case and Megumi. Noda regains his confidence as a doctor and works with Yui as volunteer doctors in Ghana to lay low. Nagisa visits them and they rekindle their relationship.
- Easter Egg: The TV in Dr. Chocolate's waiting room in Ghana is branded "Noatec", after Yui's actress Noa Shiroyama.
- Gratuitous English: Yui calls Noda "Teacher" in English. Most of her notes are also in English. She's shown to be fluent in the language when she talks to her Ghanian patients.
- Intrepid Reporter: Nagisa Okuzumi reported on the Terashimas's death two years ago, and becomes Yui and Noda's ally.
- Longevity Treatment: Aoi Terashima's has made a breakthrough in her research on sirtuins and its effects on human aging.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Mutsumi didn't expect that a member of her cult would murder the Terashimas for their supposed involvement in the "Deep State" and shut the cult down. She also resolves to protect their daughter, Yui, after her identity as Dr. Chocolate is exposed. However, she's overcome with guilt and attempts suicide after confessing everything to Noda, Yui, and Nagisa, and accidentally stabs Yui, who tries to stop her.
- My Greatest Failure: Noda claims that he has killed someone. When they were on the run in Singapore, Noda performed an emergency operation on a young girl, but botched it due to having lost his right hand and the girl would indeed have died had Yui not intervened. The incident made him reluctant to perform surgery until the final episode, when he saves Yui's life. The girl happened to have wealthy parents and they provided the funds to start their work as Dr. Chocolate.
- Once per Episode:
- Noda explains the requirements to receive treatment: 100 million yen, a signed non-disclosure agreement, and optionally chocolate.
- Yui says her catchphrases.
- Yui tries the chocolate given by her patients and really enjoys it. Noda does it too in the epilogue, implying that he and Yui now share the pseudonym Dr. Chocolate as he has started practicing again.
- Only Known By His Nickname: The surgery crew only know each other by nicknames to prevent information leak, except Noda and Yui who recruited them. However, they later reveal their real names as they become closer.
- Otaku: Gilbert's other job is manga illustrator and she often compares the situation they're in to manga plots.
- Parental Abandonment: The story began with Yui's parents' death in a house fire.
- Parental Substitute: Noda is certainly this to Yui.
- Photographic Memory: Ashiyu, the team's nurse, has a photographic memory, which helps her find various objects to improvise during their operations.
- Product Placement: Dr. Chocolate's payment includes chocolate, which are all real-life products.
- Punny Name: "Megumi" is a common feminine Japanese name meaning "grace", but the cult's name is actually two words: "Me" ("eyes") from Me-sama and "gumi" ("group").
- The Queenpin: Despite her unassuming usual appearance, Anju Momose turns out to be the (mostly benevolent) leader of a yakuza gang, and occasionally helps out Noda and Yui in return for them having saved her life.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: A retired doctor with a prosthetic right hand (Noda), a Child Prodigy surgeon (Yui), an underpaid animator clinical engineer (Gilbert), an eidetic out-of-work operating nurse (Ashiyu), a struggling comedian radiologist (Owarai), a Chick Magnet lab technician (Degawa), a gambling addict anesthesiologist with an estranged daughter (Zandaka), and a chief nurse discredited for reporting a medical malpractice (Unagi).
- Roadside Surgery: Dr. Chocolate's team has operated everywhere, from a corporate boardroom, a disabled elevator, actual operating rooms, and literally on a road. In fact, her first real surgery was amputating Noda's infected arm in a forest while hiding from the Megumi agent.
- Show Within a Show: Yui enjoys the Korean drama Handcuffs of Love, and convinces Noda and Nagisa to watch it as well. After the Megumi cult is disbanded, they move to work in Ghana, where the drama's ending takes place.
- Speaks In Shoutouts: As an animator, Gilbert often quotes anime when talking and is herself nicknamed after a character from Violet Evergarden.
- Spin-Off: There's a spinoff focused on Nagisa titled Newspaper Reporter Nagisa Okuzumi and the Suspicious Women, detailing her own investigation into the Megumi cult.
- Tattoo as Character Type: Megumi members can be identified by their tiny double helix tattoos.
- Trademark Favorite Food: It's right there in the title. Yui loves chocolate since her father used to reward her with it during their surgery practice sessions.
