Notes
This is a high score more so because of the comedy/wit than the drama. For the first two episodes, lines zing around in great J-drama style, and it really puts you into the characterizations nicely. Then as things quiet down and the dialogue gets more serious, everything is delivered well. Not outstanding, but good.
It was episode 7 before I started drumming my fingers. Too much with the detectives, who just kept spewing the same sympathy/remorse every time, or too much with Shii and Togami, which turned Toda Erika into a watering pot every time they met. But hey, episode seven out of ten, that's passing.
Great, as always for J-dramaverse. Koichi could have been a very cool, blah hero (ahem, KE, this is a funk you've gotten into), but Nino played him likeable. Taisuke was spot on as the younger, more reckless, but equally sincere brother. Shii... hit or miss. Oddly, she seemed very detached at crucial moments. Supporting characters, all good.
Effective, but no lasting impression. Thankfully, the grief wasn't overdone or overemphasized, which would have thrown it into wallowing melodrama real fast.
Ah, my old friend, the time jump. It came after the climax this time, so I was fine, but it was still pretty unnecessary. What's with the going to jail? Seemed completely irrelevant to the larger story. A vaguely weird happily ever after.
Standard. I thought Ishii Yasuharu would impress me again, but it was so normal I actually forgot he was directing. Come on, man, where were your racks and ground shots? There were some cool long shots that I'd never seen dramas use before, but that was it.
Kono Shin giving us beautiful orchestrations as always, but the editors didn't really milk it. Mika's "Orion" got more cinematic emphasis than the score, which worked well sometimes, but at the price of little to no BGM memorability.
For maybe the second time ever, I've watched a drama that didn't star a romantic couple! Shocking indeed. So now I find myself in the rare position of rating sibling chemistry. Well, that was great, of course. Nino, Ryo, and Erika all played off each other very well. The ambiguity of whether or not the boys really liked her is never resolved, as usual for the Japanese. It's clear she doesn't feel that way about them, but you never
really know what Koichi or Tai would have tried if not for Togami. Ugh, such a thorn. As for the romance, what little of it there was, Erika and Kaname Jun were less than memorable.
Apple's Tier Ranking: 2nd
