New season drama? With Takizawa Hideaki, Nishikido Ryo and Hikaru Yaotome? A reference to a two-headed dog in the title? The premise? Nishikido Ryo has the heart of an angel… but can kill with just one touch. Takizawa Hideaki has the heart of a devil – but has healing hands! Together they… they… they? Touch each other and cancel each other out? Everyone who I have spoken to about this drama reacts, “whut??”. I have to watch it.

Orthrus no Inu – Orthrus’s Dog. For background: Orthrus was a dog, rather than someone who had a dog – he was the brother of Cerberus – the less famous one who didn’t sell out for a spot in the Aenid. Orthrus had two heads rather than three, and his map was eliminated by Heracles as part of his tenth labour. Two heads = a binary = do you see. (Yes, I know it doesn’t really either). Orthrus doesn’t appear in “Myths and Legends” and I suspect won’t really come up in this drama either… let’s recap this biz.

Night. Heavy rain, pounding the streets. A man stands on a rooftop, brooding… watching. Looking out over the…. City of Angels. A vampire with a sou- oh hang on, wait! That Epic Historical hair… I’d recognise it anywhere. That’s not David Boreanz, the butter-sucking vampire. This is not Los Angeles. This is the one, the only, the Takizawa Hideaki! And we’re not watching Angel – no matter what the director of the show seems to think. More rain pours. Tackey sucks on a stick of butter. Down 50 storeys, Nishikido Ryo – soaked to the skin – is in a police station confessing… to a murder. Nishikido stares at his hands.

A portentous Tackey voiceover.

“If there was a way to change the world… is God the only one allowed to?”

The camera tilts.

Shifts. Aha… I think I see what type of drama this shall be.

Tilt yr neck and flashback with me, to happier times, where cameras were steady and our necks less cricked. Ryo Nishikido is Aoi Ryosuke, attempting to convince the police he’s a killer. Let’s flashback before we get bored of this. Ryo (oh thank goodness, I can keep calling him Ryo when the lines between idol and character blur…), is a genial teacher at a gurl’s private school. White shirt, cream waistcoat, pink tie. Possibly the worst outfit ever. Dressing as a Peaches and Cream Chupa Chup might work onstage with NEWS, with a LOT more sparkles – but not here, dear heart. Turn to page 22, students.

Interspersal with shots from the police station, here’s a Detective Hasebe pulling a Calleigh duCane at the start of CSI Miami. Gun gun shoot shoot boom boom pow.

Wide-eyed pupil by the name of Shirakawa approaches Aoi after class for A Talk. Her tense expression matched with Aoi’s caught in the headlights expression makes me think this is going to lead to a teacher-touched-me accusation, but no, thank goodness. Shirakawa thinks she’s in danger – she overheard some dealers at a club discussing Dark Matters. Outfit watch: is that a pleather shift dress, ginger wig and cowboy hat? The Dealers are discussing some girl, who they didn’t kill – they just left her on the mountain. Uh-oh. Best stay out of this conversation and hope they never notice you…

Predictably…

“Gasp!”

Uh-oh. The dealers look up. Pleather!Shirakawa shuts the door quickly.

Back to school, tense expressions across the table. Fixed grin still plastered on, Aoi tells her that without any evidence, the police are unlikely to believe her. (I’m not sure why he’s saying this – unless we’re meant to make deductions from the outfit that she’s somehow a Bad Girl – all she’s done is overheard a bad conversation, it’s not like she was buying drugs from them or there’s another personal connection that would prejudice testimony? Aoi tells Shirakawa not to worry, and he’ll raise the issue with the Principal.

“Don’t worry! Leave it to me!” – oh foreshadowing do I hear your dulcet tones?

Tower block. Shirakawa running. Inevitable conclusion is inevitable – she trips, falls down the stairs. The Dealers, for it is they, hot on her heels, steadier in their stylish yet affordable boots. She appears to be grasping several baggies of large orange pills. Hard evidence, I’d say? Hard pavement, too. She falls. She doesn’t get up. The dealers pick up the baggies – but leave one in her hand. Camera Angle = challenging and edgy. Get used to this, friends.

From the city to the fields – RAVE ON FEEL DA VOIB: young people! neon colours! this can lead to no good. There’s lots of whopping and hollering, which I for one would find really fucking ANNOYING at a rave but whatever. here’s UNdercover and UNconvincing Detective Hasebe, throwing herself at a That Dealer Again for, DRUGS. Hint 1. Perhaps you shouldn’t wear your suit when you go to psytrance raves? I’m sure it IS your shortest one, and by gum there’s nothing wrong with being dedicated to your work and having outfits to match, but couldn’t the undercover department bring you a fluffy bra and some hotpants?

God that’s a lot of Look going on with the Dealer. Bling street style, conspicuous power displays and depiction of wealth is one thing – but you never see that do you? From the kids in Gokusen (as gangsta as Bob the Fluffy Bunny) to these kids. It’s the JE renzoku yankii paint by numbers kit. Bleach job, bad perm, leopard print shirt, tats. What did “Men’s Egg” ever do to NHK? That Dealer Again is taking a shine to Unconvincing Detective, but other dealer – Kumakiri looks more suspicious. Kumakiri appears to have a barbed-wire tattoo that spirals around his body from lower arm to halfway up neck which is ambitious considering he’s about 12.

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS. Kumakiri is Hikaru Yaotome! Full disclosure – I still miss Ya-Ya-Yah, I love Hikaru and his wonky teeth, and he is pretty much the only reason why I bothered to hear the first couple of Hey!Say!JUMP songs.

I was secretly pleased when Hikaru (and Yabu) were spared the exasperated “oh must we” sighs of appearing in Gokusen 3, but seems the forces still want to get him in yankii garb anyway. Does JE have *any* appeal to yr average Egg reader? Is this the way JE tries to flog their idols to those into that sort of thing? What socioeconomic class does JE aim towards anyway? I know that “London Drunks” can’t be ENTIRELY representative… I’m sure that some people would say JE is so monopolistic it doesn’t need anything so déclassé as a market share when IT IS THE MARKET. I’m trying to find an excuse for the hair product. In bed with L’Oreal? Aaaaanyway this is by the by.

Kumakiri nurses a plastic pint glass full of beer and scowls. Urge to pinch his cheeks and buy him another pint – just for the adorability! – rises.

WEEDY TUSSLE as Unconvincing Detective reveals herself as a Detective. Well done. I’ll call you UCD from now on. Kumakiri nabs the gun from UCD, who puts up feeble resistance for about 2 seconds – this is Tokyo’s Finest?? – and grins manically as he raises his arm. Revealing a set of deliciously wonky teeth. I revel silently. Kumakiri fires, gets Hasebe in the arm. UCD struggles a little more in her restraints until Violet Elizabeth Nishikido runs in yelling and promptly falls over his feet, right on top of That Dealer Again. Kumakiri starts whaling on Aoi , kicking him in the head with what looks like a good element of relish. You know how J&A members being violent is generally unconvincing/cartoonish? I’m starting to feel some weight behind those kicks, Hikaru. Do we have a kouhai/sempai re-wenge situation manifesting itself? Will we have to wait for fanficcers to tell us?

That Dealer Again (whose name is Shuuhei but who cares), about to fire at UCD. Aoi grabs him into a bear hug, and a pulse the colour of wet stone radiates across his body. His veins go black and lace across his body. A deep cuttlefish black. His eyes roll in his head in a really quite icky manner. Cool? Hikaru growls, and after some impressive face pulling at Aoi, who is like, just standing there, wondering whether he left the oven on or not, legs it. UCD faints. Aoi stares at his hands. Oh god, I’m going to be singing Men Without Hats forever, aint I? The body lies in front of him. Dead.

OMINOUS SHOT OF TACKEY IS OMINOUS.

Back to the cop shop. Another CSI: Miami rip off option? A coroner/forensic who croons over the corpses on the table like Alexx with 2 xes. Don’t know this coroners name. UCD asks for cause of death, and Manic Pixie Coroner chirps “tenbatsu”, aka “divine punishment”. Otherwise known as a happy-looking heart attack. UCD sighs, and asks for possible causes. No drug use evidenced. Stun gun? Language fans: Japanese for ’stun gun’ is “stun gun”. UCD is also investigating a case called Skeletal College Girl. Not expanded upon further this episode. Just… FYI.

Debrief room, or something. UCD’s superior runs in, high-blood-pressurises at UCD for her risky behaviour and suspends her from further action. How handy. We can see her go home so we can meet her mandatory Adorable Small Child At Home Who Misses Her Mummy.

Back in the present. Aoi has managed to get past reception and is in the cells, confessing to the murder of Dealer A. Well actually, right now, he’s sitting staring through a very thick fringe whilst the police are all “huh. right” from behind a two-way mirror. UCD is there, despite being suspended . Oh yet another flashback to the club where Shirakawa overheard the dealers and a recap of the conversation I just recapped. In the old days we had corridor scenes for padding. What, NHK, can’t you afford another corridor? Update: Shirakawa’s dress wasn’t pleather. I made that up because I am – apparently – insane. Hasebe asks what happened with Dealer A. He says ‘what happened is what happened’. Helpful!

Aoi stares at his hands some more. CHALLENGING CAMERA ANGLE…. and he rasps…

“My hands are… the hands of the Devil”.
They look pretty nice to me, Ryo-chan.

Cut to a French restaurant. Autopsy lady is describing her beautiful corpse with relish, tenbatsu and describing the delicious quantity of meat that tastes better when it’s not stressed before it’s killed. Getting off on your corpses, much? She’s having dinner with some beardy fellow named Sawamaru, “Japan’s Mr. C.I.A”. They drink from large wine glasses. Not as large as in Korean dramas but what could ever be? Sawamaru looks intrigued~.

Aoi gets banged up. His shirt is lilac. Now he looks like a Parma Violet.

More disclosure: I’ve just finished watching the Quiz Show, which featured another work-focused fairly high powered female (although her male boss makes a powerful presence from the start JUST IN CASE you were concerned she might be like in charge or whatever), with another Adorable Small Child At Home Who Misses Her Mummy. It was a bit – uh. On cue: UCD goes home to meet her AMCAHWMHM. Pigtails check. Missing teeth, check. Small child sleeps with an asthma diary by her bed, which has a REALLY OMINOUS CLOSE UP on it, so perhaps we’re meant to think her asthma is kinda life threatening? Uh – wasn’t there another drama a while back with life threatening asthma? Argh, what was it. Yes, I know asthma *can* be serious….
Shugo Oshinari appears to be babysitting MASC. Shugo! I loved you in Yamada Tarou…

Shugo appears to be a researcher from a pharmaceutical company… and does a bit of promo for euthanasia as a use for being able to kill with a single touch. “Didn’t you wish you had the power?” “Does it have something to do with your job?” UCD changes the subject, and the babysitting… researcher… leaves. That seemed pointless… and… confusing. Presence of Pharma in the home? Fears of intrusive research on adorable children for an Agenda?

The streets. Rain. A homeless has been arrested, screaming about hands of the devil. UCD links them, starts howling at her boss for more information – DESPITE BEING SUSPENDED – oh whatever… Ninomiya, the homeless guy, used to be a policeman. After witnessing a triple homicide, he lost everything, mind first it seems. A flashback shows three twitching corpses pans to reveal Ryuzaki (Tackey!), standing over them, deadpan .A bloodstained knife lies on the floor.

“I wonder if it was really a knife”, UCD muses. OK, in the real world, wouldn’t her superior just be pressing a discreet health and safety button alarm under the desk for paranoid delusion?

EMO GUITARS. A pan across Ryuzaki, white pyjamas, bare feet. Death row.

UCD heads to see prison head, Sugimoto. His head office appears to be leftover from the set of Yuukan Club, in the whole beige and yellow tone thing, like if it had been sold to the public sector. Sugimoto is shot exclusively on a slant, creepy music plays, he attempts a bribe – first for catch, then for a grope. Okaaaay… luckily, UCD easily throws him off, and mashes up his face for good value.

More ominous close-ups, now of brick and bars.

Ryuzaki’s cage has a huge painting of a biblical scene. Hahahaha! No idea what it is. I’ll try and add a screenshot at some point.

UCD spouts off about Dead Dealer, and how he was killed by someone who claims he can kill with a single touch. She gives Ryuzaki Aoi’s name and shows him his photo. Crossly she says that no-one seems to believe her crazy story about devil hands.

“Three years ago, you killed three people. Could it have been you have the same power?”

Sugimoto laughs. Totally wrong.

“Just by touching… his hand can cure any wound, or illness”.

Ryuzaki broods.

“His hands are… the hands of God”.

OMG!! The binary! Do you see! UCD double-takes. Sugimoto leaves, and Ryuzaki pads silently to the front of the cage and faces UCD.

“Do you really believe in such a power? “, Ryuzaki asks. “There are many things that only exist because people believe in them.”

zzzzzzzzz

“An example. Gorillas at the beginning of the 20th century were thought as imaginary creatures”.

Whaaaaaaat!

“If people believe, it will exist”.

So, Ryuzaki – your logic is that Gorilllas didn’t exist until enough people shouted loudly enough that they believed in fairies?? What a criminal genius mind you have! I shall eat it with a nice chianti and… some fava beans. So, people believed in gorillas, and then they existed, therefore, if you believe he has healing hands – he has healing hands. Despite the fact that you know he has healing hands, because Prison Warden has just told you. Which of course, makes perfect sense – you wouldn’t want to be keeping something like that secret, would you? It occurs to me that we’re making huge leaps here – Ryuzaki is locked away for murdering 3 kids with a knife. One homeless guy who saw the crime scene yells about “devil hands” and suddenly UCD is disbelieving in gorillas and er – uh – er I am going to have to quickly move on.

Ryuzaki dismisses her with instructions to bring Aoi to him, and ponders over Aoi’s photo in a way that doesn’t appear at all EVIL or PLOTTING. At alllll.

Next scene: The Hotel Lastat! Ahahahahhaa. Everyone’s looking rather pale… this scene is slightly confusing but I am sure it will Mean Something in Due course. A pharmaceutical boss is visiting the Minister of Social Welfare who is laid up in bed. This is completely hush hush. She has a heart problem and apparently, if the media found out, it would be “the end of her life as a politician”. The pharma guy says it is essential to them that she survives, to win the next presidential race. So, some sort of politician in the hands of a Big Pharma lobby, then? Pharma in politics, pharma in the home.

IMPORTANT INTERLUDE. Aoi finds a box of puppies. He cuddles the puppies, and as the paw over his hand, looks pensive, and traumatised. The Piano of Abandoned Puppies plays, Aoi walks off – oh the poignancy! So innocent, but in the hands of a killer. The piano keeps playing through a scene, as UCD explains about Ryuzaki’s God Hand. And just in case we didn’t Get It – a cut shot to the hospital, where Shirakawa is in a coma. The piano swells to the “What Is It With Nishikido Ryo And The Old Bed-Side Manner Dance” peak, strings and all.

Back at the Prison. UCD has successfully delivered Aoi – on the basis that Hands Of A Feather [Should] Stick Together? Does she think they need a mutual support group? That… what?? Ryuzaki is locked up for murderising in the conventional way, Aoi wants to be locked up for murdering in the Devil’s Hand way. What benefit will accrue from meeting privatelyThe advert previews by the way, give away THE ENTIRE NEXT like, 20 minutes. Way to go.

There are some terrible enforcing shots here. Everyone POINTS at each other, DRAMATICALLY, with their HANDS, because this drama is all about HANDS. Groan.

Because this is sane, UCD and Prison Guy let Ryuzaki and Aoi have a Private Conversation. Aoi approaches the cell to find Ryuzaki standing bolt upright in the cell, waiting. I facepalm. Tackey: Yoshitsune you might have been, but Anthony Hopkins you are NOT. The cell doesn’t appear to be under surveillance – no cameras watching someone so dangerous he has his own special solitary cell made of plastic and jam?? Sure. All the prison budget spent on hiring that Yukan Club set. Prison Warden has his wounds healed, and – exit. Leaving two known killers with unknown supernatural/God-given powers, alone, unobserved? One of them demonstrably homocidal – and from the clunky “analysis” section before I guess we’re meant to assume he’s got the same Hannibal Lecter manipulative talk going on?

It doesn’t take long for Ryuzaki to convince golden-hearted Aoi that Ryuzaki has been wrongfully locked up – that on the outside he could help people? If only Aoi could use his powers on the prison guard, Ryuzaki could then heal him and they can… escape together into the night? Ryuzaki riffs on the X-Men ‘we’re all mutants together’, with a soupcon of ‘no-one understands~ us’ and appeals to Aoi’s sense of justice… and that they have BOTH killed. Perhaps they are not so dissimilar! Maybe they are two sides of the same coin? Wouldn’t they have been better doing a Janus reference here rather than Orthrus? Bed of suspenseful sub-Halloween campygoth music runs. And runs. Irritating. Aoi, convinced by this murderer he’s known for about 2 minutes, grabs the Prison Guy in a bear hug.

OF DEATH!!!

The pulse thumps through his body. It’s a really good effect! The creepy eye roll happens again, even more shuddersome this time. Aoi races back to the cell and releases Ryuzaki. Ryuzaki appears to be in no great rush to come out and revive Prison Guy. Strike me down! Aoi is all but hopping from foot to foot. Ryuzaki heads over to the detective, puts his hands to him… and lifts his wallet and gun. Wuh-wah! Welcome to the land of Who Saw THAT Coming.

“Even I, can’t bring back the dead. when humans die, that;’s the end of them”.

Someone has a God complex huh? Oh god. “WE’re the result of evolution. Perhaps the ones with no powers should b efiltered out”. Oh m mnust we?

Aoi depestartely grabs for Ryuzaki’s ankle but is knocked out. Just as I am about to type about how I feel totally terrible for Aoi here – a baroque twiddle? Frothy europop that sounds a bit like “Spice up your life”? It’s the obligatory Tackey theme tune, which plays over another good 10 minutes of action in an, interesting, editorial decision? The theme tune is haughty and hysterical, and totally Tackey. It’s a shame that it’s not at all… RYUZAKI and is the WORST song they could play right at the middle of the first episodes pivotal DE-NOU-MENT! As soon as it ends, back to gothic guitars of angst. I mean, Tackey is hardly ever going to release a Blue Oyster Cult cover version, no matter what a bad bastard his drama character plays, but… eh??? Don’t put his frothy, Latin-lite song right over totally inapproriate events!

Ryuzaki turns the gun on Aoi. Of course he’s not going to heal him. No-one can bring the dead back to life. Ryuzaki knocks him out, legs it and does the classic “nick coppers outfit and wander out NO-ONE SHALL SUSPECT ME” hoosit. He wanders out. No-one suspects him.
Except UCD, who has clearly seen ANY PRISON BREAK SHOW EVER and is ploughing her own lonely furrow – seriously does she never have any backups encountering the Bad Bastards? She corners him with the gun. But, Ryuzaki reminds her, if she shot him – think of all the people he could cure that he wouldn’t be able to? Just in case we’d forgotten: flashback to her small child’s ASTHMA DIARY. He edges closer, whilst UCD thinks solemnly about all the sick and injured people in the world. Nicks the gun.

Escapes.

Rooftop.

BROOOD.

Butter!!

I predict I might make about four more episodes of this. It depends whether it goes more “Angel” (needs lots more Tackey), or focuses more on Nishikido who has been kinda… disappointing so far? After I really liked him in Ryuusei no Kizuna – wah. On saying that, it’s early days, and all Tackey has done so far has been a villain by numbers with some special effects on his hands. Hikaru has been the best. Go Hikaru!!

oh my god oh my god oh my god

ikuta toma is going to be starring (starring!) in a new drama called ‘majo saiban’ (!!!) which is basically “apollo justice: ace attorney” (or, if you must, 逆転裁判4 – gyakuten saiban 4) crossed with Judge John Deed, now with added Johnnys!*

ikuta toma stars as “a typical part-timer with little interest in social issues” (i hope he has a quiff, a comb sticking out of his back pocket and a delightful sneer) who becomes a lay juror, and we assume, develops… some kind… of interest? in social proceedings?

nice upselling of the revisions to criminal proceedings, coming in in… may, apparently? this is corporatelegal services social responsibility the way i like it. first doctor yamapi sells doctors, then SUPER RANGER nakamaru bigs up firemen, and now ikuta toma as everyday layman… hmm. what’s the japanese equivalent of “joe bloggs”? i hope that given the percieved unpopularity of the system that this won’t nosedive.

airs on april 25. must watch, must watch.

*dudes, would it not be awesome if KIS-MY-FT-2 played “The Gavinners”?! uglyface Kitayama (who isn’t really ugly at all, but the name has stuck) could play Klavier Gavin…

Reasons to watch Satomi Hakkenden (2006):

1. Sometimes you just need the pick-me-up that only wafū wire-fu can provide.
2. Nakama Yukie – ie ‘her out of Gokusen’ – looking saintly in period dress there, marvellous.
3. Our old friend, Terrible Gender Politics– i.e. not to spoiler anything but it appears that to express any bitterness at woman’s lot means you’re on the expressway to evil. oh and the only form of power a good woman has is killing herself.
4. Takizawa Hideaki, chewing scenery like some sort of hair-straightener’d hamster. Oh, Takki, Takki, why are you always in jidaimono, is it because your classical girly features are just too ~*dazzling*~ for modernity? Is it because the Jimusho spent so much money training you up for Yoshitsune and they need a return on their investment? Is it because you’re a master of the ‘flip your hair, look impassive and say something in mock-classical japanese’ school of dramatic arts?
   (not but what I very much enjoyed his look-at-my-range bandit/onnagata revenge tragedy whatnot a year ago, in which Takki had some kind of bromance with… himself? I suspect the ichikawa kon original is probably more fun – apparently it has unnecessary jazz? you can’t go wrong with unnecessary jazz.)
5. Let’s jump out a window so we can fight on the roof! Let’s run away from the road so we can fight in a forest! Super bad special effects! I love you, all attempts to create a Japanese wuxia.
6. Was that… did I hear… a speech about the meaning of nakama? Oh, Takki, you shouldn’t have.
7. YAMASHITA SHOON, WIND WAKER.

SHOCK AUTHORIAL REVELATION. Shin and Yuko Kibayashi are nothing more but another pen-name. I can now exclusively reveal the true writers of Kami no Shizuku: IE VIZ: Michael Winner and Matthew Fort tanked up on a heady diet of the Twilight series and 20 bottles of vintage chateaux 2 bouteilles pour un fiveur dans le newsagente locale. Seriously, the amount of purple prose has already been run through a translator, but it goes on! And on! Descriptions from the art galleries! Description by the character of the deep soil in the south of France! Analogy to butterflies! “A mist, a bridge across the mist, a flower field, the intoxicating scent of red BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOOOOD”…. all combined with CGI straight out of those “magic 3d pictures” which we all loved in the early 90s…

FURTHERMORE, in addition to the characters ALREADY lecturing your humble viewer on the matter of plonk ((a)Msr Robert, the long haired wine sensei, (b)the mysterious barkeep who seems to think NOTHING about opening prize vintages for sampling purposes, (c)Tomine Issei and his 3D GLASSES OF EVIL, (d) his WIFE in her fur coat of evil AND (e)manic pixie dream wine girl), we have yet ANOTHER fine wine conniseur who ironically enough – is one of those “Japanese Beer Girls” (TM). Can you imagine! She advertises beer but really likes wine ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH GO AWAY.

ITEM! This is possibly a little unfair to Matthew Fort but I can’t think of any other wine critics so whatever.

ITEM! do Bordeaux and Burgundy wines really come in different shaped bottles? I can’t say I’ve ever noticed this down Threshers. I suppose I *have* learnt something… unfortunately the major lesson is STICK TO GIN. Come on, Jin’s Gin y’all. COMMISSION x 12 (c) me).

Now I’d best get back and finish the episode, I had to stop 17 minutes in just to post this…

Yuukan Club, the drama unique for throwing the concept of ANY non-Johnnys Entertainment signed tarento as starring actors out of the window, did quite well last season. Akanishi Jin starred as a lollipop addicted son of a bumbling police chief, fellow band member Taguchi Junnosuke dyed his hair bright blonde because he was HALF SWEDISH do you SEE (son of the Swedish ambassador? Why Johnny, with these Rocher you are really spoiling us), and Kanjani8’s pratfall gutter-humour and boob-fixated Yokoyama Yu got himself a preppy hairdid and played a serious straight acting son of a hospital director. As far as I am aware, no-one played the son of a preacher man. (Their female opposite numbers were respectively daughters of a jewellery empire, a tea-ceremony family* and er… eccentric head of a huuuge corporation).

These characters were RICH. Loaded. Rich characters, attending rich people’s public school. (Scrap Teacher, which I am afraid I couldn’t bear for more than 1.5 eps had rich people crashing a poor foax school – when Dewy Eyed Love Moppet Yamada Ryosuke parachuted out of a helicopter you will understand why I had to stop watching it? I’m sorry Yuto Nakajima I do ♥ you but I HAVE MY BLOOD PRESSURE TO THINK OF). Yuukan Club on the other hand gets around the tedious wealth gap by eliminating poor people from the school entirely! This leaves the Yuukan Club in the position where the poor people are – literally! – the playthings of the rich, the Yuukan Club sits in the palatial high school at court and involves themselves in the grebt unwashed’s dilemmas “to pass time”.

I said the other day when considering possible reasons behind the bombing of Kami no Shizuku that “a Yuukan Club, say”, would probably do fine now. I put forward that the yuppie-esque world of KnS is alienating in a climate that wants everyday heroism. Would that mean that if a Yuukan Club aired now, it might also tank? (Putting aside the issue that I highly doubt that a drama with three Johnnys boys in the leading roles would be allowed to tank). I didn’t think so and here’s why:

The Yuukan Club dynamic is less “rich kids/poor kids/bullying thereof” but “idols/fans/relationships thereof”. The Yuukan Club sit aside from the rest of the school, like cloistered emperors – the great unwashed of the school occasionally come in to pay their favoured homages – Kenbishi Yuuri recieves piles of cakes, Karen recieves jewellery, flowers, ermm… Junno (forgotten his drama name OOPS) recieves various things that soppy GURLS like to give BOYS as token of their esteem. The rest wave languid hands to recieve their tribute in the corner of the room for it to lie in state. It’s fandom!

Once you realise that the Yuukan Club are just S Club 7, it becomes a lot easier to swallow the eyebrow-quirking Miroku. “A conformist without a cause”, he hangs out with yakuza but his dad is bumbling Chief of Police Shochukubai – straight out of Benny Hill! The comedy police are just another excuse for much-loved drama standard trope of dress-up vigilantism as playtime. It doesn’t matter that Yuukan Club’s violence is as farcical as always when your main reference points are Miami 7 and Scooby-Doo!

But here’s what made it not so great: every single protagonist is super rich. They’re a bit bored. That’s it! The people they encounter are one dimensional, with the huge exception of an episode that dabbles in beyond the grave appearances, spooky dolls and Our Swedish Hero Learns A Lesson About How To Treat Others – all quickly abandoned in other episodes. There’s an archetype for all – tomboy girl kicks a boy and traditionalist girl tsks in disapproval. Materialist feminine girl chases boys because that’s her aim in life (“her attractive body” is referenced in each episode’s opening credits because THE OTHERS AREN’T EVEN PROPER GIRLS!!). Taguchi Junnosuke’s character is described as a playboy but really he’s just a fop, Seishiro as played by Yoko – is a male counter to Tea Ceremony Girl and Shochikubai Miroku is yet another counter-balance in playing the “cool” kid who makes gadgets out of scalextrix and in his spare times loves nothing more than having a massive throbbing engine between his legs. I say – calm down.

I don’t know about you but given the knockabout shonky gadgetry of bored rich kids vs avenging counter-swindlers I’d rather have Yamashita Tomohisa’s Kurosagi on my side. His dress-up wardrobe is grounded in mistrust and brooding – Yuukan Club dresses up for kicks, to entertain and indulge the huge crowd of “others”, their interference met with breathy applause and their payoff is to be a little less bored for the day, which after two or three episode leaves you with an exasperated and kinda hateful taste in the mouth.

I’ll leave this with my own special little highlight, which was Miroku being ambushed by unexpected filial piety ringing up his dad and blubberingly howling out a song of FAMILY KIZUNA~~. People say Akanishi Jin can’t give convincing tears but it was better than every punch he threw.

Omg, I was just looking up the song to see if I could find the name and have come across an Okinawan song (てぃんさぐぬ花 or “the Balsam Flowers”). The page mentioning Tinsagu nu Hana also mentions another Okinawan song called “Jin Jin”! It then goes on to say: The title means “firefly”; the lyrics implore the firefly to “come down and drink”. Shoukichi Kina and Champloose’s version of this song, with slide guitar by Ry Cooder, was a minor hit in British discos. Takashi Hirayasu and Bob Brozman released a 2000 collaboration album by the same title that is a collection of various Ryukyuan songs or nursery rhymes. Their song Jin Jin is track 6 on this album.

A track in British discos?! I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard it. COME TO ME, SPOTIFY…

*how many tea ceremony families ARE there? There’s one in Hana Yori Dango, one appeared in Yasuko to Kenji, I wouldn’t be surprised if *I* were from a famous tea ceremony family – given the amount of tea I drink I am surprised my blood isn’t pure tannin).

The current Yuukan Club – is this a new rule? there is always a Yuukan club? Anyway, this season’s equivalent to Yuukan Club is this tripe.

Elements of Mei-chan no Shitsuji:
It’s set in a school where people are ridiculously rich! But also really MEAN. (Yuukan Club, Hana Yori Dango, all school bullying drama, all poor-girl-in-celeb-land drama)
There is a HUGE cast of people: all the girls in school, plus their fittt butlers oh god even saying it makes me feel like a moron (for certain definitions of ‘fit’. seriously, the definition of ikemen in these dramas is pret-ty loose. and yes it seems like the majority of the cast are direct from Hana Kimi.) (Hana Kimi, the Gokusens, all vaguely comedic school drama)
Lead character really likes making udon as it reminds her of her family. (all food drama ever. Mind you, this time it’s washoku for once)
Tomboyish girl has to learn to become ladylike for utterly contrived reasons (that Aya Ueto stewardess drama, actually all Aya Ueto dramas ever. i remember when i used to like Aya Ueto. it was before i saw any of her dramas.)
Actually, you know, spending more than a couple of seconds thinking about this drama’s setup makes me feel as if the neurons are steadily falling out of my brain. There is some kind of insaaaaane gender politics to be drawn out of here (so every spoilt rich girl has a male ‘butler’ who exists to serve her, on first glance someone who reflects her emotions/opinions but some of them have – gasp – their own motives for choosing service), but the utterly tired combination of
1) bitchy-rich-girl bullying
2) opaquely-motivated dei ex machinae
3) thinly-veiled allegory for the necessity of becoming more feminine in order to get on in life
4) sheer boringness
has kind of put me off watching any further.

In other drama news, as Sarah says, this season’s theme seems to be “the japanese, they’re pretty noble– in their everyday lives“. Take VOICE, Ikuta Toma’s current (he’s back to playing the unthreatening unexceptional best-friend part, who’s surprised): it’s like a CSI or Silent Witness in which no-one has been murderised. People have died in mysterious circumstances which turn out to have been acts of kindness! Or at least they turn out to be so after Eita has stroked his chin and looked ~pensive~ for five tedious minutes. I know I complained about Innocent Love and its unrelenting emotional sadism but I did not know how good I had it; I’d rather lol catholicism and Horikita Maki as lightning-rod of all the misery than this utterly uneventful pollyanna nonsense.

It’s enough to turn you to drink. Before I could even write up my first thoughts about new season wine-based drama Kami no Shizuku, comes the news that it’s tanking. Going belly up. On the rocks (much like the much hyped Jacobs Creek rosé “over ice” promo much pushed in pubs of London over the summer). From the source:

According to Shukan Josei, a decision has been made to move up the ending of the drama as an excuse to hurry up and finish filming.

I’m kinda baffled – not because I think the drama is so good I have the desire to watch the rest of the episodes, but because the drama is no more or no less bad than anything from the past two seasons! Thematically we have manic pixie dream wine girl played by Naka Riisa as the sommelier-in-training sidekick – we can also think of her as a “supertaster” in training. Her “mentor” is Kanzaki Shizuku, played by Kamenashi Kazuya, who in a “only from manga” plot set-up, enters into a rivalry with wine ctitic Tomme Issei over his late wine-critic father’s 2.5mil wine collection.

Issei is another supertaster. But wait! Kanzaki loathes wine, but a mere sniff will send him into cut-scene revelations of flower-fields (rendered by someone’s Dreamcast they dug out of the attic).

So we have another two supertasters, one is the foreign-educated (French, natch) wine critic, whose taste is based on learnt art and high-falutin’ ways, and an “inherent” supertaster (or sniffer!), who derives his ability from bloodline, from fambleee, an authentic connection with the memory of, um… grapes…. whoa, it’s a whole SEA of supertasters, this must be the best drama ever, right?? (Never mind the part where Kame sings chevaliers de la table ronde in ropey French and does a little dance)…

Obviously not. On seeing one episode, there’s not so much to say about Kamenashi’s acting – it’s fairly bland, but same old, same old. The most obvious thing that I can think of that works against the drama is the world in which it’s set compared with the world in which it’s airing IE VIZ, Johnny, what’s the Japanese for “recession”? The overwhelming feel~~ of Kami no Shizuku is remarkably 1980s – there’s a large company paying it’s employees quite well, there’s a mansion. there’s an extensive wine collection, a cast who namedrop wines (and by the way, just when I feel pleased with myself that I can understand maybe about 20% of katakanized words – “Rothschild “from a Japanese tongue is a twister and a half) and order that cost a generous £300-600 per bottle. Even more painful when Kanzaki claims not to even want to drink the wine he orders! I’ll bloody drink it.

The air of yuppie is so overwhelming you almost expect Issei or Kanzaki to start twanging red braces. Issei himself is a pantomime evil restaurant-wine critic, complete with 3D evil glasses – all the better to sneer over, my dear – accompanied by a fur-wearing, nicely made-up, perfectly coiffeured and volumised female companion. If she pulled out a mobile phone the size of a brick from her handbag I wouldn’t be surprised.

It’s a world at odds with the mood of viewers who may well be desiring something more down to earth, everyday heroics yah de yah Japanese people are still awesome y’all. RESCUE, with Nakamaru (eee) and Massu is storming ahead – I’ve not seen an episode yet but I understand that they are heroic firefighters, the pride of Yokohama, hard-working men who endure strenuous physical and mental training in order to rescue kittens from trees (and more than a few ‘bath scenes’… apparently). Compare this to the indulged (I want to say ‘yuppies’ but this it a little unfair – their consumption is solely in hugely expensive wine, but look at where they GO to drink the wine! look at what they wear to drink the wine! look at where they live, you can’t have one w/o the other) world of Kami no Shizuku and the mists begin to clear.

I still think that a Yuukan Club, say, would fare averagely if it aired now. Yuukan Club wasn’t great (bosom-heavingly shexay appearances from Jin and Yoko aside – swoon, swoon), but the world the characters lived in was a blatant fantasy, filled with ridiculous gadgets and plain silly plots which can sustain the characters in their bubble. And if they didn’t perhaps Jin could just take his top off some more. (I really hope Kamenashi doesn’t resort to this – he should wear jumpers more. And eat about fifty sandwiches).

On saying that, it makes my heart feel sad that a wine-based programme isn’t getting any love. This wouldn’t have happened if they’d just given Kame a few bottles of Blossom Hill and got him to talk straight to camera for an hour. THAT I would love to see. Perhaps he could explain the reasons behind his cringesome solo song and dance number? My dears, I shuddered.

My suggestion for next season is to book Jin Akanishi in a show about GIN. It could be called Jin’s Gin. DO YOU SEE? DO YOU SEE??? DO IT NOW.

This is a bit late but I’m sure I have a good excuse. I’m afraid I’ve just been knocking back the port and occasionally shaking at the woefulness that is KAT-TUN’s christmas single. Making a song without a chorus is impressive academically in this day and age but this does NOT give it any further inherent value. Even the sleigh-bells sound resentful!! Dreary, dreary, although there’s a bling bling Santa with a gold sack in the video. Try harder next year! To try and make up for my delay, please find below a picture of Sister Angela with a leek.

SHE LOVES THEM THE WHORE.

We open up on the Mezrbox and Kousaku is wearing a towel over his head. Thankfully this drama hasn’t taken a worrying turn for the racialist, it’s a black towel and it is meant to signify that Kousaku is re-enacting his recent successful confession to our favourite leek obsessed nun. Kousaku’s eyelids flutter as he breathlessly repeats… “anata ga skiiiii desu”! Boxers roll eyes across the floor. Dewy Eyed Love Moppet Yamada Ryosuke picks them up, rolls them back. Ueda expresses polite disbelief that anyone could confess to Kousaku Hatanaka. Kousaku repeats his reply to Sheeshter, whilst DELM glowers in the corner, swirling his eyes around his sockets until I feel dizzy. He watches. It’s almost as if Kousaku thinks that the act of a shrieked confession in the shoddy excuse for a church means that this ridiculous crise du cour is over! Alas…

It’s been so long since we’ve had a boxing match, I had actually forgotten that we are meant to be paying lip-service to the idea of Kamenashi as a boxer. Now I have to get used to the whole ridiculous idea again! We’re going to need more protein. Puffa lady (wearing a nice jumper instead of a puffa jacket today) informs Kousaku about his next match with “a foreigner”. Oh noes, foreigners! Puffa has lined up a nice man from Thailand who has…say this solemnly…. “never…. lost a match”. Hold on, has Kousaku fought ANYONE who has ever won a match?? Kousaku laughs away the suggestion that he might want to research the boxer and… does a laugh which goes A BIT LIKE THIS

Puffa copies the laugh very convincingly, and then pulls a face as if she has drunk a pint of delicious acidic vinegar. I love her. Cut to Kousaku spying on the nice Thai boxer. Kousaku is wearing his shoes on his feet, because that helps you spy better as we all have learnt from years of James Bond wearing driving gloves on his feet. OR SOMETHING. Thaiboxer jogs! His tracksuit is not as nice as Kousaku’s. Thaiboxer crushes an apple, (80yen), WITH HIS BARE HANDS!, much to Kousaku’s open mouthed adoration. I do quite like Kousaku’s approach to his opponents always being wide-eyed adoration, placing atop pedestals and downright LOVE.

OMG! OMG! Sheeshter is walking along the same street with her bike! Everyone she sees is Hatanaka-san! For a minute I thought we were going to have a crazy twins plot! Godammit, that would be awesome if Kousaku had an evil over-aggressive twin who is actually a wet and a weed and despite being a BULLY on the outside could not lift wot the Fr. Call a concombre.

I cannot see if there are any leeks in the bicycle basket.

Sheester closes her eyes, breathes, and the world pops back into place, by which I mean, she immediately then bumps into Kousaku and they go for ramen, because KOUSAKU LIKES EATING IF WE HAVE NOT MENTIONED THIS ALREADY.

Sheeshter and Kousaku are awwwwwwwkward. Ouch! It’s like when you meet up with someone a few days after you pulled them at a party after drunkenly talking about neglected sunshine pop classics into the small hours whilst emptying a bottle of GIN, only to find out that sober, you have NOTHINGTO SAY and would much rather be sitting at home contemplating EXACTLY how Jin Akanishi can make a cricket jumper look like the sluttiest outfit on earth. A bit like that, but with more ramen. Sheeshter looks anywhere but at Kousaku. Kousaku tries to be nonchalant until…

He spots… Thaiboxer! Thai!boxer works at the ramen shop! Home-spun ramen noodles from the hands of a FOREIGNER indeed! It’s almost as if they were trying to get him off some sort of “hook” for being a foreigner by teaming him up with a good bit of ramen-ai.

I’d bother caring if Kousaku wasn’t insisting that Sheeshter feeds him pork in order to “look like a couple”, and to make it look like they are not stalking Thaiboxer (remember, stalking is “cute” in 1PG).. Sheeshter refuses, hopefully on the basis that tbh eating ramen is a messy enough business as it is, and goodness knows what germs she might catch from Kousaku.

This is all in vain anyway, as Thai!boxer recognises Kousaku (how?? Do boxers normally get full dossiers of their opponents two days before a match??) and they shrug it all off. I am guessing right now that boxing must be a compulsory subject in the schools of Where-ever-This-Drama-Is-Set because whereever you turn there’s ANOTHER one. Sheeshter snots and stomps off back to the convent like an awesome sulky teenager to put on her Radiohead records. She then storms over to Mother Superior and puts herself on unofficial house arrest, which in some languages is known as “seclusion” and is what nuns USUALLY do if they haven’t spent too much time watching Whoopie Goldberg in Sister Act. Kousaku runs about and shouts and screams about becoming a champion because yet again, he is an idiot and makes no sense and argh shut up shut up shut up!

BANGUMI! CANON! SUZUKI! DOCOMO! COCA COLA! MEIJI! SOMETHING WITH A MOON! How does one show need so many frakking sponsors? Not that I even know what channel this airs on and I suppose we can’t all be as lucky to have the “uniquely funded” BBC on our sides huh? TEIKYO OKURISHIMASTA

Completely contrived Weigh-in Scene down at the Merzbox., Kousaku panders to that elusive mpreg enthusiast audience by standing on the scales in a green pair of boxer shorts featuring a stomach that won’t quit. This week’s weight loss target is 8 kilos in a week. The weight loss targets on this show have now lost ALL meaning apart from to have Kousaku sweat it all out in his pants in a steam-room in the last five minutes of the show. For goodness sakes, there are surely EASIER ways to get a Johnny to take his top off.

Now to the DELM bullying plot-line, DELM is going off to run a marathon next week, isn’t that interesting. Hopefully not a marathon in the formal sense of the word? DELM is tiny! Ueda (dad-substitute elder boxer) tries to get DELM to box with him. Poor old bullied DELM. Ueda says that Puffa would be happy if DELM tried boxing. I bury my head in my hands.

Please, don’t tell me that this had never even occurred to Katsumi (DELM’s character name)! The previous shows have done such a good job of setting up the dynamic of a slightly neglected and bullied child resenting his mothers focus on boxing (and by inference, violence) over her child’s presence, that I will be SO upset if this is all resolved simply by Katsumi overcoming … laziness? and facilely just putting on a boxing glove as instant pour-on-water panacea. Yamada Ryosuke has played entirely resentful and scornful of the boxers stock in trade really effectively (his facial expressions! This sneer is haughty disdain! This sneer is disappointment! This sneer is futility and yet they are the same sneers!!).

DELM slowly curls his hands into a fist, and is about to throw a punch at Ueda, but then utter Moment-Spoiler Kousaku runs in and it’s as if they’ve been caught about to have a BIG GURLY SNOG. Ueda flails and hides the boxing glove and DELM turns away and runs his hand through his hair. SMOOTH YOU GUYS. They’ll NEVER TELL.

Back in the convent of leeks, Sheeshter is in solitary confinement. Somewhat missing the point of “solitary”, we then find Sheeshter Millie is with her and trying to help her forget about Kousaku. Sheeshter Millie’s wonderful method for this is decrying to the four winds of the earth “Kousaku is an enemy of our faith!!” and “Kousaku is a filthy devil”! Good old Sheeshter Millie! This is more like the fire and brimstone nuns we have all known and been terrified of. The nuns continue to curse and rant! I like this, but unfortunately come the next day at the Merzbox…

“Along comes a Sheeshter to sit beside Puffa!”

Yes, Sheeshter Angela has turned up at the Merzbox.

She’s here to train?
She’s says “too immature” to be a boxer?
So she wants to be a boxer?
She wants to overcome her weak will through physical training! And the only way that she can do this is go to exactly where her problem is, to make the problem worse both for her, Kousaku, the rest of the boxers and MY BLOOD PRESSURE?

Puffa boggles for a minute, then suggests the Sheeshter goes to train under a waterfall. Another boxer raises the point that this might be just for monks – what the hell, shove her under the waterfall, I don’t care. If it’s good enough for Maya Fey it’s good enough for a boxing nun.

What the holy heck.

The nuns in the convent panic at Sheeshter Angela’s disappearance. I don’t know WHY, she surely gets up at 7am every morning for the daily leek run… yet somehow wise old sage Mother Superior (whose round glasses I wish to break) remains calm. In the Merzbox, we see Sheeshter is punching at a thingie but still wearing her nun costume. Could she change please? Would it be a CRIME to see a pretty girl in a tracksuit? Sheeshter turns out to be very good at punching. I really do wonder whether it will turn out that her birth parents were pro boxers and that is why for some reason she feels a connection to Kousaku (arf it would be funny if they turned out to be siblings, ha ha sorry, I am cruel).

Skool, ho, SKOOOOL! DELM is surrounded by BULLIES who have DEFACED his skool book by gluing it together. DELM expresses his anger with the best “compressed annoyance” face ever. He trudges home miserably to find his mother encouraging EVERYONE ELSE TO FIGHT BUT HIM. Why can’t she even NOTICE him??? DELM tries to talk to her, but she tells him never to talk to her when she’s training. But isn’t she always training? I absolutely cannot bear Sheester boxing in her nun outfit. What the, holy, stupid, fuck. Perhaps DELM will run off and become a nun.

Back in the convent, Mother Superior gives wonderful Sheeshter Millie a hard-time about her treatment of men and hints with the subtlety of a grand pianner that Millie herself might well have never had any luck with men. OH FUCK OFF. So what if she’s had her heart broken. She’s still a better nun than Angela but perhaps oh oh! Perhaps Sheeshter Angela is a special snowflake? She was never destined to be a nun despite her upbringing? Her… kizzzzuuuuunaaa~~~ is all to do with boxxxxxing. Oh get to it, come on. Patience disappearing.

Breakfast time at the Merzbox, up and at them, we have broken the ice on the bathwater, now make your beds. Sheeshter makes breakfast for everyone. Let’s see what we have. I am interested and slightly horrified by Japanese breakfasts (and Western breakfasts to be fair as I rarely eat it myself, so the idea of having something as strong as miso soup before you’ve had 10 cups of coffee? Shudder).

Scrambled egg, some.. spinach? Japanese potato salad (which is not as foul as normal potato salad which I hate, then again I’ve only ever had Japanese potato salad in Korean restaurants GO FIGURE), rice, miso soup (bright yellow almost), two sliced strawberries and a glass of water. Yaai! It’s the most I can do in the mornings to neck my morning brandy. The boxers all moan in ecstacy about the “cooking of a young lady”. Ah, grown men living together. You can’t beat it. Speaking of cooking, haven’t we forgotten about the other cook in this programme, the ramen-cooking thai!boxer? Anyone? Anyone? Anyway, Kousaku enters the kitchen but because HE IS A FATTY REMEMBER, he only gets a glass of water. Sucks 2 B U.

More physical training. But Sheeshter is standing about with towels. Wasn’t she meant to be training to discover her true feelings through physical exhaustion? Or perhaps it turns out that, despite being a nun, she’s still a woman so really should just take her true place as a piece of hot nun-toast? Isn’t this just “running away”?

Sheeshter and Kousaku walk along with her bike again. There’s something in the basket but I can’t tell if it’s leeks. Kousaku heads to his “play spot” and leaps about on a play train. This is sort of the best playground ever! It’s a shame creepy boxers hang out there instead of kiddies. Kousaku confides in Sheeshter that this is where he comes to hide when he wants to eat in secret, PAGING OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS HERE, you’ve got a problem dude. Kousaku then spills a long list of hiding places to Sheester, who is obviously going to dob him in. Sheeshter moralises and then Kousaku just does the hysterical laugh again. It’s awesome.

On the way somewhere else from the park, Kousaku bumps into Thaiboxer (whose name is ‘Tiger’! Sure thing, whatever) who, apropos of nothing, says that HE is going to be a champion for his family back home, and pulls out a snapshot of at least 20 brothers and sisters. Wot a noble reason to be a champion, Sheeshter thinks audibly. Yet whereas Sheeshter is humbled, it rolls off Kousaku’s back. I do wonder whether she will ask Kousaku to throw the fight again?

It turns out she doesn’t have a chance. Arg, arg, most KY ever godammit. Sheeshter is clearly thinking about Motive and Competition and boxer’s asses, in fact she’s thinking so loudly she might as well have a foghorn. Even I can read the atmosphere in this scene and the acting is hardly Golden Globe. Kousaku is like a sledgehammer. He interrupts Sheeshter’s train of thought and brings up the topic of her family. TOUCH-Y. He talks about Sheeshter never really having a family (so how does Sheeshter think of the nuns who brought her up from childhood, then?). Sheeshter makes little response. Kousaku then continues onwards, with the best idea yet – she should marry him – and THEN she’d have a family! Mouth. Wide. Open. In. Horror. We cut away, QUICKLY.

Back at the Merzbox. DELM stomps into his mothers office and asks her to sew his zekken (school badge?) onto his PE kit. She grumps that he should stop giving her needlework, he knows she’s no good at “motherly things”. DELM’s forehead wrinkles and he spits, “what motherly things ARE you good at?”.The barb drifts over her head as she says “nothing, I guess”. Harsh.

DELM carries on rummaging through his bag, finds his zekken missing so goes off to find another one. Puffa then spots the zekken in DELM’s bag, but it’s covered in footprints. She has a look through the rest of his bag and finds the glued together book from earlier.

“What’s this”?

Katsumi comes back and she asks him what’s going on and if he’s being bullied or not. DELM tries to deny it. Puffa gets cross and DELM’s jaw clenches and unclenches as she rants on. He throws the book at her and runs downstairs where the rest of the boxers are training. She yells at him that he’s an idiot. She then yells,, “I didn’t raise you to be weak and bullied”!!

Silence falls over the rest of the boxers. She tells him that he needs to reverse the bully-scenario and beat up the bullies. Furthermore, his weakness is embarrassing. This is enough, and Katsumi screams I NEVER ASKED TO BE BOOOOOOORN! Ueda tries to step in, and Kousaku says “not everyone is strong like the Chairman”, and DELM runs away. Sheeshter runs after him, Kousaku follows. Running through streets, screaming, etc. What’s the point? There’s only ONE SREET IN JAPAN. Find him by the river.

Puffa and Mitaka debate what it’s like to be bullied. Mitaka says he doesn’t remember how it felt. Puffa guilts about being a bad mother, then applies the same to her gym trainees (I’ve been a bad trainer) and somehow, her feelings towards DELM feel cheapened. Wah. So what if I’m a sucker for disconnected mother stories.

Sheeshter and Kousaku are still running, and then they end up in the same park where Kousaku plays hide and seek. Would you believe that DELM was hiding in the same place that Kousaku hides as well? DELM spots Kousaku, and tries to run (I would recommend this tactic to all), but Sheeshter’s endless hand-wringing stops him in his tracks.
DELM puts forward the following good points: Sheeshter ganbaru’s because she has the lord. Kousaku and the other boxers have boxing as their focal point for the ganbaru. But Katsumi? What does he have? Empty, empty. Cry! This is actually QUITE TOUCHING. He has nothing to ganbaru for!! Don’t cry, DELM, you can dance and twirl about too…

Kousaku and Sheeshter somehow drag DELM home and a boxer called idon’tcarewhathisnameis-san has made some STEW. All the boxers are all gathered together and smiling and welcome him back and it is almost as if his REAL FAMILY IS GATHERED TOGETHER. Except it’s totally the boxers and not his actual mother but never mind.

Sheeshter however, refuses to come and eat, she says she has to leave. She’s learnt, she’s changed, and her training is over. Back to the convent with her. Would someone please tell me WHAT she might have learnt here?? Sheeshter apologies to Sheeshter Millie but hardass Millie won’t let her back! HARSH!! Where’s hippy Mother Superior when you need her?? Sheeshter’s face falls.

As Sheeshter is about to go off to a park bench or something, Kousaku runs up and begs for her to be allowed back in. He delivers an impassioned plea about how originally he wanted her to leave the convent but now he realises that the convent is her home! He will take the punishment! He points at the crucifixes and asks which one and produces some nails from his lovely tracksuit pocket – ok he doesn’t really. Millie’s cold heart is melted by a MAN who takes into account the sympathy of others eh eh zzzzz. Sheeshter is allowed back into the convent hurrah hurrah oh what a surprise, REALLY I thought she was going to be homeless and this drama would take a turn for the old Social Conscience. Just kidding. I kid.

Classroom, Skool, J-PAN. DELM is asked to read a page from his glued-together book. I bet this is the Japanese version of THE BROOK (the only poetry allowed in schools). DELM stands up miserably with his book full of prit-stick. Back at the Merzbox, Mitaka ruefully asks himself why women are so forgetful, and pulls out a pair of miniature boxing gloves with “beat them with all your might! Love puffa!” written on them in childish hiragana, as we have a tiny flashback to their own childhood together, when Mitaka was bullied and got over it with the help of chibi-Puffa. Back in the classroom, DELM turns the book over, to find “open the book with all your might!” is written on the back, from “Mother”. DELM clenches facial muscles which are still yet unknown to anatomists, and rips open his book. GRARRGHHH! MORE POWERRRRRR! Obviously he can’t read it, so announces “can’t read it!” to the class, who all, including the bullies, erupt in the laughter but the important thing here is HIS MOTHERS LOVE. Oh-kaaay. And cue that KAT-TUN song – CREDITS!

Um… did Kousaku ever fight that Thaiboxer??? If so, it must have happened so quickly I didn’t even type it up. This show would be so much better if they were darts players – THEN we’ll show you the REAL meaning of overweight!

Next week: nice boxer Ueda’s dad turns up, and punches him out cold! Gasp!! Sheeshter wrings hands, and, I don’t know. You’ll have to read the next recap, which I’ll actually try and not take over 3 months on…

Like Sarah said, Ryo’s new drama better be good – to justify his current drama hair, and to justify the fact that… I dunno, he was pretty underwhelming in Last Friends? He could have been a lot creepier– I don’t want to go too much into my personal theory about violence on Japanese television (oh ok i do. essentially: violence on j-tv is rarely convincingly acted, making it very hard to copy violent behaviour from j-tv. contrast it with the romantic gestalt: you can learn romantic behaviour from japanese youth drama, likely interactions and appropriate reactions, how romance arises. what’s very unclear is how violence arises, even in drama like gokusen that front-and-centre teen violence in a teen-friendly (also moral-drawing) way), but the very unsatisfying thing about Sōsuke, Nishikido Ryō’s character in Last Friends, was that the domestic-violence setup was too rushed, the jump from ‘nice boyfriend’ to ‘abusive domestic partner’ happened so fast that the later ‘how she keeps going back to him’ part of the narrative was difficult to keep believable. Michiru, the girlfriend, was one of those ‘victim characters’ that Japanese dramas love so much – the girl born with a ‘kick me’ sign on her back, who people can’t help but bully, the reason for bullying always opaque or unconvincing. Presumably the audience appeal lies in their inherent victimhood: the idea that someone who’s ‘naturally’ a target can escape that fate. And so, as a born victim, no wonder she keeps going back to her abusive boyfriend– but it would have been more interesting, narratively, if Sōsuke had been presented as a refuge from a bullying world who then turns into a bully, rather than a girlfriend-beater whose character is fleshed out after the fact. Also maybe we’d have got some better acting out of the boy.

So let’s talk about Ryūsei no Kizuna, Ryō’s new drama. It is good! I mean, I think it is? I can’t really tell, because as dramas go, it’s the most bare-faced mélange of previous series that I’ve seen yet. Originality has never seemed like the biggest priority for Japanese drama, but you might have expected it from a Kudokan script (with Ikebukuro West Gate Park, Kisarazu Cat’s Eye and Manhattan Love Story he was more the one being copied from than the copier). Instead, what he seems to have done is made trope-borrowing a strength – he’s built this ridiculous beast together from revenge tragedy, food-and-family heartwarmer, wacky-hijink-of-the-week renzoku, totally assured that he’s genius enough to make it work. Seriously, all it’s missing is lol catholicism.

So let’s talk about the various parts, trying to avoid spoilers:
1. REVENGE TRAGEDY
The great thing about revenge tragedy is that it’s a tragedy whether you’re venger or vengee! ‘Revenge Tragedy’ is basically a branch of a slightly more general trope in dramas, which I’m going to come out and call ‘Shakespeare’s Late Romances’: something AWFUL happened SEVERAL YEARS AGO and now the affected are of age to do something about it. You know, Prospero gets exiled to an island for twelve years, Hermione ‘dies’/pretends to be a statue for sixteen years, Cymbeline’s infant sons are kidnapped and live in Milford Haven (milford haven!!) for twenty years, that sort of thing. There’s been a lot of this in Japanese drama over the past few years: Unfair, Kurosagi, Maou (in many ways Maou is a retread of ‘Unfair’, just without the interesting female lead), this season’s Innocent Love, a bunch of others. Innocent Love stands apart because, as yet, the ‘revenge’ part of the story hasn’t quite appeared: it still has that focus on the inescapability of one’s past, though, not just one’s own actions (as in Unfair) but the actions of others (as in Kurosagi, Ryūsei no Kizuna). The lead female character in Innocent Love – Akiyama Kanon, as played by Horikita Maki – can’t positive-think her way out of her past any more than Michiru could avoid being a target of bullying (the two dramas have the same writer, ASANO Taeko, who’s just recently made the jump from marriage drama to youth issues plots, via the Nana films).
Maybe I’m being too Western-centric by calling them ‘Shakespeare’s Late Romances’ plots? It might be more appropriate to coin the phrase “Sōgamono dramas”. There’s a crime committed when the protagonists are children: when they come of age they take revenge, but the world will punish them for it. The only difference is that these days ‘the world’ is as likely to be their own conscience as any official justice.

2. FAMILY-RESTAURANT HEARTWARMER
I’m fairly sure there are lot of studies on the role of Japanese food in the invention of Japanese identity. There are all those titbits of information to be gleaned from articles: I swear I read somewhere that the rice diet wasn’t universal across Japan until after the Asia-Pacific War, which is crazy when you consider that people’d been paying their tax and tribute in rice since, like, the Heian period. And that whole ‘Aomori is for apples, Iwate for nanbu senbei’ popular conception is a post-war creation: not the fact that nanbu senbei are made in Iwate, or that Aomori’s climate is well-suited to pomology, but the choice to officially and explicitly emphasise local delicacies as national identity, to create a map of Japan from omiyage.
So far, so Eric Hobsbawn. Check those j-tv listings, my friends, and you will find that in every season there is at least one drama on Japanese TV that is about food, and it is about food as identity. Tradition, in Osen; social responsibility, in Kuitan; but most of all, in Teppan Shōjo Akane and Zettai Kareshi and Lunch Queen and a grillion others, it’s that natsukashii aji, that sweet taste of home. It’s people with tastebuds so princess-delicate they can pick out the taste of their father’s demiglace sauce or their grandfather’s cream puffs from among a million rivals, like picking out their mother’s face from a crowd of strangers. It’s yōshoku, so-called ‘western’ food, laid claim to as intimately Japanese; as something as personal, and as universal, as family.
…also I really want nanbu senbei now. :(

3. DRESS-UP VIGILANTISM
Here’s a fact well-known to all characters in japanese drama: the police ain’t gonna help you. If something goes wrong, if you’re swindled out of your life savings or have your friend kidnapped or someone writes some libellous graffiti about you on the school toilet doors, the appropriate reaction is never to call 110 and get the authorities in: no, no, what you should do is take on the criminals yourself, preferably while wearing a wig and sunglasses so they won’t know it’s you. Or, at least, you can rely on a class of people who spend their time doing exactly that. I’m talking Kurosagi, here, but also Yūkan Club, or Akihabara@Deep, or any number of older dramas. This is a huge class of drama: generally you can divide them into the wacky-played-for-laughs ones (like the borderline unwatchable Yūkan club) and the ones where the vigilante’s fighting their own demons, which are generally, like Kurosagi, a leeeetle boring. The problem is in the cognitive dissonance: either the wackiness makes the problems solved look silly, or the seriousness of the backstory makes the dress-up seem bathetic. Either you watched Kurosagi and thought “ah see he uses dressing up to escape himself and in the process becomes like a normal kid who’s having fun play-acting; but alas with each success must return to the blank slate of hate and vengefulness that is his base identity; how touching“, or you watched it and thought “this is super ridiculous, when will he take his top off again?”
Kudokan is really good at funny scenes that turn suddenly painful, embarrassment comedy that’s believably unwatchable rather than unwatchably bad. There is, in fact, an excellent family scene in episode five of ‘Ryuusei no Kizuna’ which switches in one breath from knockabout silly to sinister. But it’s a hard awkward line to tread, between family tragedy and wacky crime-of-the-week ridiculousfest.

4. SUPER TROPE BORROWING
Few dramas are original. It seems like everything’s based on a manga, a popular novel, a korean drama, the film of the anime of the book of the personal column of last year’s Asahi Shinbun. It’s not just a case of an imagination drought – though, you know, there’s probably an element of that. There’s something very satisfying about another sports story in which the combatants gradually increase in difficulty; another school story where slightly too-old boybanders in seifuku learn important lessons about the meaning of nakama and ganbaru; another OL story where the twin pressures of femininity and the office have to be balanced against one another; another mystery story where a series of rube goldberg murders can only be matched by an unconventional genius’ native instinct. Surely it’s even more satisfying when seifuku‘d boybanders of indeterminate age solve rube goldberg murders on an exponential curve of difficulty, while learning important lessons about hard work and companionship and the construction of personal identity within rival social pressures? Or maybe it’s just confusing.

Dramas – novels, manga, poems, rumours, things with plots or just with scenarios – are like myths, familiar things retold for whatever necessary purpose. Rather than a hundred different retellings of the Oedipus story, of Yoshitsune’s various travels and travails, we have a hundred, or a thousand, different retellings of the bullying narrative, of the passage to adulthood, of feeling powerless in the face of our own paranoia, of trying to resolve the bitterness of our lives. They don’t solve anything. You don’t read the Sōga Monogatari and thereby get over the umpteen-year-old injuries of your past; that sick slightly-admiring fear that true evil might really exist doesn’t go away when you watch a twisted genius’ last murderous machine dismantled five minutes before the end of the programme. But they provide clues, or maybe hints, or maybe the sense that this thing that you’ve been fretting at in a corner of your brain is a valid thing to be fretting at. They reiterate certain messages, certain morals, for us to take comfort in already believing.

The twists and turns of vengeance plots are savagely satisfying, but the Sōga brothers have to be put to death at the end or the whole thing falls flat: revenge stories can’t end until there’s no-one left to continue the cycle of retaliation. Family food stories need you to have already subscribed to their magical-thinking world of hypersensitive tastebuds and psychosomatic reactions for their mawkish plotlines to work. Vigilante stories require a fairly popular combination of cynicism and credulousness, a healthy mistrust of authority spoiled by a distinctly unhealthy tolerance for lone gunmen with motives either dangerously personal or worryingly callow. The three plot types at once? Surely this show must be hideously strange viewing for anyone who’s not used to the conventions of the medium? Am I only enjoying it because I’m a ridiculous formalist?

I can’t really tell, but here’s your spiel, cos the translated blurb on the d-addicts wiki makes it sound crypto-misogynist, and it isn’t (well, not in the way the blurb implies, anyway). It’s a family drama, it’s a food-nostalgiafest, it’s a revenge tragicomedy, it’s wacky vigilantism fluff. It’s written by, I think, the best j-drama scriptwriter around. It’s got Nishikido Ryo out of NEWS, Ninomiya Kazunari out of Arashi, and Toda Erika what was in various dramas I ain’t watched like Code Blue etc, and they none of them need to do any acting more complicated than “be quite likeable” to make this one work. So, you know, I’m a little bit confident: it’d be nice, this season, to get a drama that’s a little bit better than competent for once.

This is uhm a month late? I blame… pirates. Or anarchists. Or perhaps both.

Maou, basic premise: a Revenge Drama and Crime Procedural; a Family Tragedy; concerned with Religion, Spiritual Power and The Nature Of Evil; with Injustices Both Systemic and Personal; with the Inescapability of one’s Past; with Guilt, with Righteousness, and with Moral Responsibility.

What I’m saying is: it’s your standard friday night renzoku fare, starring two JE idols and a dear sweet pretty girl the bulk of whose characterisation is carried by her selection of peasant smocks.

Let’s do this thing.

THE STORY SO FAR

Yōsuke, a shouty loan shark but nevertheless a cherished childhood comrade of our hero, the rebellious young detective Serizawa Naoto (as played with aquiline-nosed prowess by IKUTA Toma), has died, of an asthma attack brought on by having tear gas sprayed in his face by a woman who thought he’d kidnapped her daughter. In Serizawa’s opinion, the loan shark was killed – a murder caused by the indirect manipulations of a puppetmaster known as ‘Amano Makoto’. We believe him, because we know that the Angel Lawyer, Naruse Ryo (portrayed by OHNO Satoshi, ‘leader’ of boyband Arashi), nourishes a secret and bitter hatred for Serizawa, and all connected to him. This hatred manifests itself in an implausibly complex system of deaths-foretold using pseudonymous express deliveries or tarot cards and other objects which turn others’ long-held grudges into acts of murder, and also in the bland-yet-secretly-meaningful platitudes that he trots out in every conversation the two share.

Serizawa is having a bit of a breakdown, having just discovered the reason for this campaign of persecution: while in middle school (that’s years 7-10, for those of us who went to secondary school) he was part of a gang of bullies, and caused the death of a classmate. The verdict recorded was ‘justified self-defence’: the two murders that have occurred so far have had Naruse as defending lawyer, and in both cases he has achieved a verdict of ‘justified self-defence’. Serizawa no doubt thinks this an awful, awful irony: he does not, so far, appear to suspect Naruse of anything except being a lawyerly thorn in his maverick-detective side.

Also, there is a girl, called Shiori, who works as a librarian by day and in a friend’s coffee-shop in the evenings. She is very sweet and nice and she fancies Naruse: they have adorable conversations where they are polite to one another in a way that betrays interest. The viewer is torn between ‘awwww’ and ‘oh man this is a really bad idea given he is secretly eeeeevil’. The situation is complicated by the fact that she is helping out the police in their investigations, because she has psychic powers which enable her to see the left-behind memories associated with an object. The viewer is required to suspend disbelief about this part of the story. It’s not clear whether Naruse-the-evil-mastermind is aware of her use of her powers for the police bureau, or whether it is just a coincidence that she always sees the right thing to push the plot along. She has told Naruse-the-kindly-lawyer about her ~*psychic abilities*~, however, just in the last episode, and presumably is now afraid she’s convinced him she is a crazy person. The whole psychic thing is complicated by the fact that she’s a Catholic: she’d thought her ~*powers*~ were a gift from God but now she suspects they’re Satan-sent.

She led Serizawa to a place she’d seen in one vision: his old middle school, the site of his act of ‘justified self-defence’, the place where as a child she – da da daaaaaah – saw a boy dying, a knife in his chest.

This isn’t quite what was shown in the minute of background information the drama gives you, but… I think it’ll do? No, maybe it won’t, here’s a little more:

Ms Shinitani, the woman whose tear-gas caused Yōsuke’s fatal asthma attack, has a daughter. If you recall, a few paragraphs ago, the daughter was kidnapped: or rather, went off with a stranger to a playground. Naruse was at the church bazaar, with Shiori (I really dislike how the lead men are known by surnames and the lead woman by her first name. but am i doing anything to counter it? no–), so he has an alibi. The little girl, Sora, claimed to Serizawa that she does not remember who it was she went off with – and once out of eye-shot shot a surreptitious peace-sign at a feller lurking in the dark beyond her house. We’ve seen him before: a Mr Yamano, someone who knew Serizawa and his friends at middle school and certainly hates Serizawa’s old mucker Sōda. Mind you, I hate Sōda. Everyone hates the man, he’s a blight on civilisation.

That’s certainly enough background for now.

EPISODE FOUR

Naruse walks from the cemetery, in awful close-up.

Serizawa is driving away from the school, in no fit state. In a flashback, little Hideo says “don’t pick on Yamano!!” and hateful little Serizawa holds up the knife; the stab looks more like a punch in the gut; HIdeo falls forward and little Serizawa back; Hideo on the floor (wait wait wait did they roll over or something?); wide-eyed horror;

“look out!” Shiori shouts, and Serizawa looks up and stops the car just in time to not run over some kid on a zebra crossing.

“Mr… Detective?” Shiori asks, concernedly.

He’s still mid-bloody-and-flashback, curled toward the steering wheel. Apologises. Apologises.

Yōsuke’s cremation. His nose is stuffed up with cotton, which is… a detail I did not want to see. His brother cries and calls on him, his mother cries; Kasai and Sōda are sombre; Naruse looks saddened. The coffin slides smoothly into the incinerator.

And then Serizawa runs in – not in a suit this time – and runs to pull the incinerator doors open, calling Yōsuke’s name. He’s pulled back by Kasai.

“You’re late,” Sōda says. “Oi, what the fuck are you doing!” Wasn’t he your friend? If it was you who’d died, he would have come flying here. Serizawa folds down in grief; when he straightens up again, Naruse is in front of him.

“I’m dreadfully sorry for your loss,” he says. “I too understand what it is to lose someone important.” It is meaningful, do you see. The camera is wobbly on Serizawa’s face to express his turbulent spirit.

Naruse turns to look back, as he walks away from the crem, a horrible sneer across his features. And he’s caught, in the viewfinder of a camera: click, click, click (click click click bang bang bang).

Serizawa walks through the sliding doors of the police station (Shibuya East, location fans), up to the office.

“What have you been doing? I”ve been calling and calling,” says his asymetrically-haircutted colleague, graduate of a.n. university and the one woman who gets to have a career-track job in the entire show. Serizawa doesn’t grace her with an answer: he goes straight to the chief’s desk and lays down a white envelope. it’s his letter of resignation.

“What’s this,” says the chief; Universite Graduate and Anonymous Third Detective look equally confused.

“Please accept my resignation,” Serizawa says (in so many words). University Graduate feels her starttement can only be expressed in words.

“Come with me a minute,” says the chief, and with a manly tug at the shoulder of his coat they go up to the roof. “What happened? Give me a good reason and I’ll let you go. Answer me!”

“I’m not qualified to be a detective,” says Serizawa. “I’m a bad person. I’m not qualified to arrest people.”

“A bad person? What are you saying?” The chief asks, scornfully. Yeah, I was expecting him to say something about how he’s been completely unprofessional in attempting to investigate cases where he’s too intimately connected to the victim to successfully conduct an interrogation, too. OK, no, I wasn’t. “Don’t joke”

“No, it’s true,” Serizawa says. “I forgot, but-” and this is a fantastic face he pulls, right here, rueful and self-mocking. “I’m a bad person. I’m a wretch.” And off he goes.

Who could it be, cheerfully coming up the stairs? His face quietly happy, like he’s humming a tiny little tune inside? It’s everyone’s favourite lawyer! But the person he’s going to meet ~*by chance*~ on the stairs isn’t Serizawa this time: it’s a shady middle-aged man!

Shady Oyaji, also known as Ikehata, is a journalist with the ‘Shuukan Journal’, which is the kind of name that really inspires trust in a publication. “Angel Lawyer,’ wasn’t it?” He asks. “But aren’t you really a devil?”

Seriously, this binary is getting old.

House Of Serizawa. It’s a big house: not all that nice-looking, though, which is odd given I thought the family had its money from new-builds. Serizawa’s looking through a school yearbook. Ah, memories. Ah, seishun. And there’s the face of the boy he (in an act of justified self-defence) killed!

“Hideo,” he says. I don’t know whether he’s addressing the dead kid or… reading his name from the page? That would be really awful. He turns to the next page: photos of the middle-schoolers on various outings, etc: and Hideo’s always accompanied by the same friend. He’s got a bowl cut and glasses. suspenseful music!! flashback!!

The four-boy gang are sauntering as another boy runs, “Wait up,” someone shouts, menacingly. “Yamano!”

Back to the present time: three swoops of the camera to signify a lightbulb going off in Serizawa’s brain.

In Naruse’s office: “Ah, that was what you meant,” Naruse says, comfortably.

“Yes. A master lawyer like Kumada would never have foreseen that the case of his own death would go unprosecuted. To the victim, Naruse, you’re the very devil.” Gosh, you know, for a minute there I was so very worried that Shady Oyaji was onto Naruse’s evil side!! Or… not so much.

“And what you came here to talk about was?” Naruse prompts. So, what, Shady Oyaji just brought up that tiresome binary to get the audience’s Naruse’s attention? Teeeeedious.

“Well, I heard that you’d been asked to become the Serizawas’ family lawyer. Would you do me a favour and decline it?”

“Why?” Naruse asks. Quite correctly. Shady Oyaji, why are you asking such favours from strangers? That’s just weird.

“Because Serizawa Eisaku (i.e. Detective Serizawa’s dad) is the scum of the earth.” uhhhh… and? “Some years ago, I wrote an article on corruption he was involved in. And he used every means to get it pulled – bribery, threats, everything. And when that didn’t work, he went to my company and got me fired. I can’t forgive him!” He has a little fit of the hissing unintelligible apoplexy; recovers. “But if he’s got such a capable lawyer as you on his side, it’ll be difficult for me. So– please?” Smile~~~

o.k. what.

Naruse understands what he’s said, But he’ll decide for himself. Is that’s okay with you, crazy man who goes around asking completely excessive favours of total strangers?

It’s not as if Naruse has any tie with the Serizawas!

Funnily enough, Naruse says, I kind of do. The past two cases I’ve dealt with, the son was the detective in charge.

“A detective? Serizawa’s son?” Shady Oyaji asks. Oh, for heaven’s sake, man, do your homework. His eyes do the cunning sideways shift that’s pantomime for: i am a cruel person, and i have had a cruel idea. “’scuse me,” and off he goes.

Naruse’s all– oh, did I say something very interesting? How curious. His minion pops on to exposit that Shady Ikehata is the kind of journalist who’ll use any methods to get a story. Yup, Naruse says, got that.

OPENING CREDITS. I’m starting to like this Arashi song– up until the vocals come in. Emoticon of frustration.

bangumi, sponsaa, teikyoo. It always seems to be the same sponsors, no matter what series I watch. Maybe I just fit a particular demographic? The demographic of… people who watch OL dramas with JE dudes in? I don’t feel like that’s a very specialised target market, somehow.

Serizawa’s power-walking and talking on the phone. Has Kasai (for it is he) had any sort of contact from Yamano Keita? Kasai hasn’t, but, come to think of it, Sōda mentioned seeing him the other day. No idea where, but he works for Kōsen publishing.

Run, Serizawa, run — but outside his house lurks creepy journalist oyaji, who has something to say. More than just ‘ah, young master, how lucky to suddenly run into you like this’ when he’s been waiting outside the house. I enjoy how pantomimically creepy people are able to go through their lives being pantomimically creepy with no-one thinking ‘but isn’t this guy super-shady and not to be trusted’ all the time.

He’s Ikehata, who wrote that article about that incident eleven years ago, does Serizawa remember? Anyway, how surprised he was to find out that Serizawa had become a detective, a defender of justice, is that really right? You might expect Serizawa to perhaps mention that he’d actually quit being a detective, so bog off, creep, and, seriously, stop standing so close, but this is not a world in which you volunteer such information.

Kōsen publishing: suddenly it’s late in the evening! Yet one person is still working, and that person is Yamano. His mouth works in terror, like a hamster’s. Perhaps Serizawa ought to not consider whether looming over a person you used to bully is the ideal strategy of approach.

“Do you remember me?” Serizawa asks, in I suppose unintentional echo of what creepy oyaji said in the last scene. “I wanted to talk to you: may I?”

“No,” Yamano says. Even knowing he was the one who ‘abducted’ Sora-chan earlier (and ergo is eeevil) it’s hard not to feel for him in this conversation. Especially not when Serizawa grabs him by the arm! Oh, Serizawa, you can do nothing right. Yamano breaks free, runs outside: Serizawa follows and grabs him again, by the coat this time.

“Ishimoto’s dead,” he asks, “did you know? Do you know why he died?” F-F-S, Serizawa, here I was thinking you might come and perhaps apologise for being a horrid little twerp in middle school and instead you’re here to jump to conclusions? Okay, from the evidence available to the viewer you’re totally right in those conclusions BUT. Flies, catch, honey, vinegar.

“Oh,” says Yamano unconvincingly, “Ishimoto died? When was that? How sad for you, I mean, it’s really hard, when your friend dies.” His command of irony really doesn’t match up to Naruse’s, does it. He walks off.

“Just– give it up already!” Serizawa shouts. Yamano’s face, turned away, is curdled with something like glee. “I was my fault – all of it was my fault. I’m your target, only me, so don’t involve people who had nothing to do with it!”

“What are you talking about?”

“What can I do? How can I make it up to you? Name it and I’ll do it. i”ll take whatever judgement.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand at all. But–” and Yamano turns around – “you were a really awful person. Of course you’ll be judged. And you’ll suffer.” and off he trots.

The cold hard light of flashback: young Yamano is watching the big four bullies play basketball from up on a roof. (how do schoolkids in j-drama seem to spend so much time on the roof? we were never allowed up there.) He has a knife! and he is using it to imaginary-stab them from a huge distance, face fevered with horrid rage. It’s great how everyone in this drama is a genuinely horrible person at at least one point in their life – except Shiori, because as a girl who wears flowy blouses she is all that is good and true. Oh, and except Hideo, because he was a saint. And martyr.

There’s Hideo himself: “What are you doing with that?” he asks. “Give it here.”

Yamano’s all “no! i’m gonna kill ‘em!” but as he is a weed and a wet Hideo easily overpowers him, with such classic lines or persuasion as “don’t let them make you a bad person!”.

Hideo takes the knife into safe-keeping while Yamano weeps. BAD IDEA. And so adult Yamano weeps, in the street, and everyone politely ignores him. dude, dude, it was all your fault, you minor psycho.

Serizawa, meanwhile, stands head hanging where Yamano left him, Yamano’s words ringing through his brain.

SCENE CHANGE: Naruse! in a car!

SCENE CHANGE: Library, late! The lighting is really low for a place where people are meant to be able to read, I’m just saying. Shiori – loose yellow pinafore-dress-style thing over white blouse over jeans – puts some books away, then notices: Serizawa, standing on the other side of the bookshelf. She moves to join him, but stops when he speaks:

“I wonder,” he asks, “if God will forgive me?” Wait wait pick me I can answer this one: yes. Infinite forgiveness for infinite sin, that’s Catholicism. The thing about original sin, right, in terms of things you have to constantly atone for, at least it’s better than various esoteric buddhisms where you get lifetime after lifetime in hell for the crime of menstruating. Uh, total tangent, sorry. Let’s concentrate on the way their separation by a bookshelf is visually suggestive of the confessional. “Back when I used to go to that middle school,” he says, “I was an awful person. I’d pick on the weak kids, beat them up, bully them. And then, eleven years ago… I killed a classmate. In that scrap yard, I… this kid, Hideo, he was trying to protect another boy I bullied, but. And I thought if I worked hard, lived righteously, God might forgive me, but. I don’t know. Is it right to go on living? What should I do?”

Pause.

“Sorry for disturbing you so late.”

I can’t work out if this is honestly affecting or if I’m just a total sucker for people being emotionally retarded in a way that, for once, doesn’t involve telling pointless lies.

“You don’t have any choice but to live,” she says. “There’s no such thing as a perfect person. Live the best you can. You’re already a detective, for the sake of others–”

He looks up and she’s come around to his side of the book case. Awww. They stare at each other in silence, while a piano plays way too loud. Turn it down, guys, jesus.

Then he goes back to the office and apologises for being a drama queen, probably for the first time in his life. I like this new you, Serizawa, even though I know it won’t last. He has something to say! eleven years ago, he–

The chief already knows, he’s known since Serizawa transferred into his section, Serizawa’s not the type to run from his past, blah blah okay I’m bored of the emotional stuff now. Nameless Junior detective wants to know, but University Graduate practices some loyalty oneupmanship so he’d look like a tool if he tried to find out. Don’t tell me she won’t be googling it up the moment the chief’s back’s turned.

The plot’s bored of this emotional bobbins too: it’s a special delivery! It’s from Makoto! It contains… a red envelope! Which contains… pictures of Serizawa, from youth until today! And the scary scaaaary hand reaching in to the photo to squish his head strangulate his distant image!!

Serizawa is the target after all!! Ten out of ten for observation, cupcake.

And there’s a piece of paper, too: three lines of a quote. Where’s it from?

Shiori-san knows because Shiori-san is up on her esoterica. Or, at least, her Western Lit. It’s Dante! It’s what’s written over the gates of hell! No, not ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’: it’s (as Longfellow would have it):

through me the way into the suffering city
through me the way to the eternal pain
through me the way that runs among the lost

Serizawa would like Shiori to use her magical powers to see some psychic after-images, but she’s not sure. It’s not that she’s had enough of being his confessor and adviser, it’s just that… well, the criminal knows that she’s involved. So maybe he is controlling what psychic after-images are left on the paper. Because he is even more magic than her! They may have to have a psychic powers showdown! Look, look, it’s Naruse’s evil face: how much do you want them to combine their magical orphan psychic powers? They could totes destroy Tokyo. It’s sort of a pity that Shiori’s so concerned about not being used by the devil to do his evil works.

Serizawa doesn’t really care about her scruples. I suspect that he, like me, is a little fuzzy on this whole ‘can control which psychic afterimages are left on an object’ sorcery business. And even if he has to go to hell–

Shiori, who this evening is wearing a white blouse with little ruched capped sleeves and a gold necklace, works her mojo: a gloved hand, a red envelope, coin locker, number 333. She’s shaking: Serizawa reaches out and almost touches her, but doesn’t quite manage it, because the Japanese just don’t do skinship. I’d like to take a stand right here and say that I seriously hope there will be no romance between these two? It’s not just that they haven’t shown any romantic chemistry, it’s that it’s so good to see an opposite-sex pair of friends where neither fancies the other for once. Also, love triangles are super lame.

Shiori feels like she’s seen the 333 before? Huh, useful.

Secretary Kasai gets a red envelope: inside, a picture of himself and the boss’ wife. With the kind of timing you see in actual real life, the boss and his wife come in at that very moment, so he hides it away. It seems like boss is suspicious! But actually he’s telling Kazai to stop working so late! Ah, jokes, jokes. What’s that photo? It’s a photo from the past! Get a girlfriend, Kasai, you work too hard! Does the boss’ wife know anyone Kasai might like? Watching this programme leaves me incapable of appreciating irony in the wild.

Kasai and the wife have a ren-dez-vouz behind a pillar outside the building, where they’re obviously totally safe from prying eyes, so he can tell her about the photograph. She panics; he hugs her to calm her down: don’t worry, i’ll look after you, etc etc etc. YOU’RE IN THE OPEN. That’s not exactly sensible.

…aaaand someone takes a photograph. Maou: leaving no obvious scene un-shot.

Shiori’s coffee shop! Which is called Coffee Galanthus, galanthus being the Latin name for ’snowdrop’, but the little image on the sign looks more like a… chipmunk? Is it just me?

Naruse is reading a story! It’s about a little girl whose big brother goes into a tunnel, but she doesn’t want him to, because there might be a witch inside, or a monster, and– yes, he’s reading to little Sora-chan, who is so scared at the thought of a monster that she runs and hugs Shiori (blue jeans, white t-shirt, pink overdress thing) and drags her back. Shiori and Naruse smile at each other and aaaaah why can’t they just run off and be politely into each other forever and she can stop being the confessor and go-to-girl for a maverick policeman and he can stop indirectly killing people in order to ruin the life of a maverick policeman and everything will be fine.

As if to ruin my little shippy moment, who is at the door but Serizawa. Damn you, Serizawa. He looks grumpy, even when greeted. Shiori’s friend takes Sora off so the adults can talk. Serizawa’s apologetic for calling them out: the thing is, they think they’ve found out who took Sora away. And they’d like Sora to identify him.

The music says: this is a sting op! Tension, tension. Sora et al are hanging out on some roof garden, Serizawa’s hanging out in the street, Univerity Graduate wishes her phone were a walkie-talkie, it’s all happening. Here comes someone! He’s got bad hair! It’s… Yamano!

Serizawa is supremely unconvincing: gee, thanks for coming out, I wanted to ask, uh, did you really know nothing about Yōsuke’s death? Really and truly?

Yamano insists he knew nothing and makes a bolt for it: Serizawa grabs after him, which ain’t going to help Serizawa’s rep much. Sora-chan definitely doesn’t approve. She’s asked if the man who took her away was like that man down in the street? maybe? possibly? extended pause? Naruse looks intent.

Leave me alone!, Yamano says. I’ve got work! and speeds off. Serizawa lopes up the stairs.

Wasn’t him, University Graduate indicates. Serizawa never believes anything she tells him and so asks Sora directly, in his usual pushy way. He’s so pushy she runs off to Naruse for a hug. burrrrrrrnnnnnnn. Naruse’s all, ‘Seriously, mate, what are you trying to do? are you saying this adorable little child lies?’

This adorable little child totally lies. peace sign~! Yamano returns the peace sign from some overpass somewhere down the street, except he then turns it the wrong way round and totally flicks the Vs at that innocent adorable little child. Dear Japan: please stop flicking the Vs and thinking it’s a peace sign.

Flash! back! Yamano tells Sora that if she waits at the church her mama will come and pick her up, and says: y-y-you haven’t forgotten your promise to me? If nasty people come and ask you if you know me, what will you say?

“I don’t~” says Sora. She’s such a good girl!

Back to Yamano in the present. He walks along the overpass, he’s heading down the stairs, and on the video-advert hoarding behind him appears a BRIGHT RED EYE what the actual fuck. And it watches him go down the stairs and this is some doors of perception shit right here.

Serizawa and University Graduate are sitting in a city park in a back-to-the-drawing-board kind of mood. Serizawa can’t believe it seriously wasn’t Yamano, because his instincts are actually better than all evidence.

Middle-aged men are talking in a corridor! That corridor is at the police station, and those middle-aged men are the Chief and another guy. The Chief spills the beans about Serizawa’s stabby stabby past and the connection to the current situ. So he’d like to find out about the relatives of that past stabbed kid. Please? People might die.

Naruse and Shiori are walking and talking, like they do. Remember that story Naruse was telling Sora? What does Shiori think were the little sister’s reasons for not following her brother into the scary dark tunnel? Did she go in to save him? Shiori – who by now is in a tunnel herself, with Naruse, because irony’s just another word for nothing left to lose – suggests that the little girl wavered about following because the tunnel was dark and scary. Oh, but there’s another reason, Naruse says. The little sister wanted her brother, who bullied her, to disappear. But when she asked for that he really didn’t come back. She felt guilty, so she couldn’t go and look for him. So long as you feel guilty, you will waver over the tiniest thing.

gyaaaaaaaaaaah

Naruse, on the riverbank: with his brother’s harmonica. Will there be a “Somewhere over the rainbow” flashback? No! It’s a different flashback!

Bad Dye Job Papa Serizawa, back when his hair was all one colour but looked convincing, accosted outside his house by a baseball-becapped boy. Who are you, he asks?

“I’m the one whose brother your son killed,” he says. It’s only marginally easier to say in Japanese. “I’ve come to ask you a favour: please live well from now on. Don’t die, stay just as you are: no, be better off–”

Papa Serizawa knows what he’s thinking, but it was, he says, an accident. Does young Naruse care? does he bollocks. He’s clearly practised this speech.

“Please remember this: no matter where or when, I will be watching you and your son and your family. And when we meet again– “

Aaaaaaand we’re back in the present.

Bad Dye Job Dad’s office: oh, Naruse, Naruse, if you become our lawyer we will give you whatever conditions you like. Oh, Naruse says, well, I have just one? Don’t keep anything secret from me. Trust is so very important. Of course of course of course, Papa will tell him everything. They shake hands: a Handshake… Of Fate!

Naruse struts out of the building: Ikehata watches him go, with a comedy old man double-take. Papa Serizawa knows Ikehata’s about, too, but, pah: what can Ikehata do? he asks. What indeed.

Kasai wants to know who Ikehata is, too. Big Brother says: well, he’s an investigative reporter who loves digging up dirt so it’s a good thing you’ve not got any isn’t it, Kasai, unwitting irony unwitting irony. Okay, actually he doesn’t, he talks about the incident eleven years ago and how Ikehata wrote articles and Serizawa’s dad got him fired and blah blah exposition.

Even the director knows this is boring – we’ve moved to a shot of Naruse’s red red darkroom of doom, where’s he’s got some articles by Ikehata and some photographs of his shady reni-hatted physog, and some waily background music, And Naruse’s phone ringing. Does he answer the phone inside the darkroom of doom? Looks like a no.

Well aren’t we in trouble, Ikehata says, it seems like you’ve taken the Serizawa job. Now I’m going to have to investigate you. No doubt you’ve one or two things you want to keep hidden~

Naruse looks a little worried? Or, perhaps, constipated.

Kasai goes home after what seems to have been a thousand years at the office. Hey, I’m back, he says. Sōda, you in? I had almost forgotten Sōda existed, my dears, and my life was happier for it.

Sōda doesn’t seem to be around. Kasai suddenly thinks, oh, what if Sōda was behind that incriminating photo of me cuckolding my boss, and starts digging around in Sōda’s bag, which of course is a cue for Sōda to appear behind him. “Dude, that’s my bag,” he says, and wanders off with it.

Kasai says: oh, I was looking for something? For, uh, um, a… a tarot card? Because Yōsuke was killed, it’s true, Serizawa said so. Like, we might be targeted. And there was a tarot card. So I was looking. Uh.

Sōda looks… sleepy? Whatever, he says, you trust Serizawa too much, he’s a murderer. Bollocks was it an accident. He told you to say that, and you say it, because you’ve always been Naoto’s errand boy.

Oi, Kasai says, shut it. He grabs Sōda by the front of the shirt in the least butch fashion ever. Sōda’s all– you really want to do this? and Kasai lets him go. Don’t underestimate me, says Sōda.

Naruse: in his fashionable apartment, looking at photos, listening to his music box play “somewhere over the rainbow”. You’d think he’d be bored of that song by now. Or at least fed up with the super-twinky music box version (innocence, youthful dreaming, slowing down into hesitant intermittent plunks).

An empty apartment! Eleven years ago, University Graduate exposits, a mother and two sons lived here. Oh, no, wait, she’s asking the landlord. Well, yes, he says. The mother died. It was grief, well, a heart attack at the wake whatnot. Then the older son moved out.

They pass the news on to Unnamed Junior Detective, who’s got some of his own – that older son? Yeah, I’ve got a piece of paper here says he died. A year after Hideo.

Naruse’s walking through a corridor, with flowers.

Serizawa gets a phone call, from Shiori, who keeps wearing her librarian gloves even to use the phone, the weirdo. How can you even press the buttons with gloves on? Shiori’s worked out where the 333 is — so Serizawa runs runs runs to her side, probably just to get away from hanging out with his fellow detectives. They look a little lost without him, poor loves. What do we do know, they wonder, since there’s no clues within Hideo’s family? Hideo’s family name, by the way, is Manaka. Not Naruse. Curious!

University Graduate wants to know: what did happen to Manaka Hideo’s brother, Manaka Tomō? Maybe they should find out how he died.

Naruse, again with flowers. He’s in a cheery mood! There’s a girl in a wheelchair! There’s a perky nurse greeting Naruse by name! The sun is shining!

That 333 is written above a shelf in Shiori’s library: the Italian Literature section. Devilish in its simplicity, eh? Serizawa finds a book of Dante, and inside that book of Dante– an envelope, red. Addressed to Serizawa Naoto, Esq..

Naruse arrives at the girl in the wheelchair, who isn’t quite looking at him.

“It’s been a while,” he says, “big sis.”

Her head turns a little in his direction: “Ryō!” she says. She’s blind. How on earth did he manage that.

NEXT TIME ON MAOU:
Serizawa attacks Yamano!
Naruse asks Serizawa to catch the criminal!
Shiori thinks the criminal wants to be saved!
Sora’s crying cos her mum’s a murderer!
Naruse has something to say to Shiori!
Shiori faints!
Serizawa’s dad’s got heartburn!
etc!