Everything to Know About Plastic Beauty: We spend years being told that we should love ourselves as we are, while we always have advertisements that tell us how a little difference in our features can make us look “better”, and the definition of “better” does keep changing.
Everything to Know About Plastic Beauty: What Is It About?
Netflix’s upcoming Japanese drama, Plastic Beauty, is walking straight into that contradiction. Plastic Beauty is set in the Japanese cosmetic surgery industry, and follows a gifted ER surgeon who finds herself in the world of aesthetics. She comes face-to-face with a celebrity cosmetic doctor whose idea of healing is different from hers.
At the centre of the story is Fumi Numata, played by Mayu Matsuoka, a talented emergency room surgeon for whom the real world of medicine is a passion but is forced to move into cosmetic medicine.
This is where she encounters a famous celebrity cosmetic surgeon, Rin Tohyama, played by Riisa Naka, who believes that physical beauty can heal and save people and thus has a very different philosophy from Fumi Numata.
The series naturally has the two women on opposite poles. Netflix describes the series as, “When a gifted ER surgeon is thrust into cosmetic medicine, her clash with a celebrity doctor exposes the greed and desire beneath the glamour of the industry.”
The Series Does Not Seem To Simply Be “Plastic Surgery Drama”
This is probably the most important thing. Plastic Beauty is not using cosmetic surgery as the premise but the larger subject of the cosmetic industry itself. The trailer itself makes it clear that the film is perhaps going to be about the emotional struggles behind cosmetic surgeries rather than treating the surgery as an empowering or destructive act.
Among the patients entering the clinic are content creators attracting online reactions, someone who is simply bored of their nose, someone who appears deeply caught in repeated cosmetic procedures. There are different people, different reasons, but the same question: how much would you change to become the version of yourself that you think you are supposed to be?
There Is a Darker Side to the Glam
The glossy clinic, celebrity doctor and a promise of transformation are only half the story; behind them is an industry shaped by money, ambition and desire. The trailer explicitly shows a world where patients’ insecurities, aspirations and desperation are caught up in professional ambition.
Plastic Beauty seems to be looking at the light and dark of the cosmetic industry, which makes the series pointed.
Who Else Is in the Cast
The series has an ensemble surrounding Maya Matsuko and Riisa Naka.
The cast list reportedly includes Shitaro Mamiya, Minami Tanaka, Hiromi Nagasaku, Atsuro Watabe, Riku Hagiwara, Mijika Nagai, Yumi Adachi, Kavka Shishido, Daichi Watanabe, Reiji, Yu Shirota, Naosumi Masuko, Sosei Takeda, Rika Izumi, Kentaro Tamura, Eisuke Sasai, Hana Amano, Hina Kagei, Naoko Ken, Kayo Noro, Rin Furukawa, Shunsuke Kazama, and Kōki.
So this is not going to be a two-doctor argument story, but there is an entire ecosystem around them.
Who Created Plastic Beauty?
Plastic Beauty is directed by Yuki Saito, while the screenplay comes from Junya Ikegami. The series is produced by Harue Miyake and Katsuhito Motegi, with K2 Pictures on the production, and Netflix is producing the series.
Netflix itself mentions, “this time turning its focus to the country’s booming cosmetic surgery industry. Set against a culture that increasingly embraces diverse definitions of beauty while still grappling with lookism, the series examines the price many are willing to pay to become someone new.”
This is particularly interesting as the series is not approaching beauty as an abstract idea in the air but has specifically rooted realities of Japan’s changing relationships with cosmetic procedures and beauty standards.
What Makes Plastic Beauty Interesting?
The most intriguing part of Plastic Beauty is that it does not seem to be asking whether plastic surgery is good or bad; it is rather poking at something messier.
It seems to deal with what really happens when the desire to change yourself becomes attached to the way society teaches you to see yourself. It can be noted that wanting to change something about your appearance is not automatically self-hatred; sometimes people want a transformation which can be empowering, but the desire does not exist in a vacuum. There are advertisements, filters, celebrity culture, beauty standards, social media- everything playing a role in the driving force.
This is where Plastic Beauty could become more than a glossy medical drama and become something all of us watch and ask ourselves.
Plastic Beauty premieres on September 17 on Netflix.
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