Just finished: Perfect Report

 Well, don't I feel foolish for suggesting people watch this.

* spoilers *

After several entertaining episodes of journalistic investigation, this show suddenly slams on the brakes and dawdles to a conclusion. After episode seven, the pace of the show and the constant banter and jokes are replaced by flashbacks, people reflecting on their actions, a noble team spirit born from adversity, and remarkable lack of any real stories to investigate. For example, the mysterious suicide of a potential informer just turns out to be a misunderstanding. He wasn't killed by malevolent forces – he just slipped while enjoying the view from the top of a building.

No, I'm not joking.

In the void left by the absence of any investigations, we're left with one scene after another in which the characters look dignified or learn something valuable about themselves. Violins and pianos fill the soundtrack to hammer home how emotional it is, and while all this is happening, nothing actually happens.

The boss, Aoyama-san spends most of the last three episodes talking in a whisper. This is supposed to demonstrate how upset she is about the recent turn of events but it got a bit tedious towards the end.

This series had a promising beginning and while the members of the team disliked each other, it was an entertaining show. But that's the thing about drama: sad people are more interesting than happy people, and once the team became friends, the show lost its main strength.

Currently watching: Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de

Perhaps the main thing I noticed about the first two episodes of this series was how glad I was to see that the cast of Yuusha Yoshihiko to Maou no Shiro are still getting work. Kinami Haruka is the murder victim in episode one, while Muro Tsuyoshi is a suspect in the second.

That aside, this series is a murder mystery show with a rather unlikely premise. Kitagawa Keiko plays a rookie detective who also happens to be an heiress to a huge fortune. Her boss is an incompetent, vain buffoon (played by Shiina Kippei), so she relies on help from her butler to solve the cases.

At only two episodes, I can’t really tell how well written the mysteries are. The conclusions to both episodes have been a surprise, but I can’t tell if that’s due to the clues being cleverly hidden, or if it’s because the ending is so unlikely I never even considered it.

But it’s not really about the murders. This is a comedy and most of the humour comes from Keiko’s boss’s inflated self-opinion and from Keiko’s ineptitude. Meanwhile the butler (played by Arashi’s Sakurai Sho) is calm and collected, as he guides his employer to the solution. I feel a bit sorry of Sakurai Sho who has to stand almost perfectly still while Kitagawa Keiko takes up the rest of the screen but then the tables are turned when she’s the newbie detective and she has to play second fiddle to Shiina Kippei’s larger-than-life character.

This is a lot of fun, but I found I had a strange reaction to the show: The moment the murderer is revealed, I lost interest. Instantly. As each story closed with a scene or two about how sad it is that someone died, I was sighing heavily and looking around the room for something to distract me. Odd, that.

Mitani Kouki 50th Anniversary Special: Ai Kotoba wa Yuki

This plot for this series from 2000 bears more than a passing resemblance to the plot for his 2008 film The Magic Hour. In both, an out-of-work actor is persuaded to be something he isn't as part of some elaborate hoax. The main difference is that in The Magic Hour, the actor believes he's making a film, while in Ai Kotoba wa Yuki the actor is fully aware of his deceit.

It involves a village trying to stop a big multinational firm from ruining its countryside. But they cannot afford to get a decent lawyer. So one of them goes to Tokyo to find one who'll do it on the cheap. Unable to find that, he convinces an actor to come back to the village and tell everyone it's impossible to win such a case. But instead the actor gets carried away and instead insists they can win and he can help them!

After that, the story mostly involves trying to keep everyone in the dark while trying to find a dignified way out of the mess. It's funny and occasionally quite touching. It's remarkable that an eleven-part series which only has one storyline doesn't seem too long nor does it run out of ideas. Mitani Kouki does an excellent job of coming up with problems and solutions which don't stretch the viewer's suspension of disbelief beyond breaking point.

Mitani Kouki 50th anniversary special: Wagaya no Rekishi

As the Japanese TV channel WOWOW celebrates the playwright Mitani Kouki’s 50th birthday, so I thought I’d also do some posts on one of my favourite Japanese writers.

In terms of style, his is a comfortable, easy-to-watch genre. He rarely pushes the boundaries in terms of social commentary or hard-hitting realism. Instead his works are meticulously structured, taking a situation and squeezing out every possibility without it seeming contrived or unlikely. It would not be harsh to call him sentimental. The endings of The University of Laughs, Radio no Jikan (Welcome Back Mr McDonald) and The Magic Hour are all the most touching you could expect.

I've already written about his work before, so now here's the first in a short series of posts about some of his other films and TV series.

Most recently, he wrote Wagaya no Rekishi. This three-part drama follows the adventures of a family in the latter half of the twentieth century, and as the years progress we see them getting caught up in the major events of that era. It’s an interesting idea, and a nice way to learn some recent Japanese history. The cast is full of famous faces, and the various periods of history are carefully recreated.

But for something made with such care and attention, it's a little hollow. The problem is that some of the storylines are pretty convoluted as members of the family suddenly have to go to Hokkaido, for example, just so the story can include a particular historical event. Weaving a family history around the history of an entire country doesn't quite work. But the series has an epic feel to it, and it certainly feels like you've sat through a lot of modern history by the time you get to the end. And I mean that in a good way.

Currently watching: Suzuki Sensei

I usually steer clear of dramas set in high schools. Perhaps I find it patronising to see adults be taught lessons in life from some schoolkids. I certainly find the morals behind these kinds of stories to be simplistic and glib.

But Suzuki Sensei is a little different. This time, the teacher approaches the problems he faces almost as if he were a detective. I don't mean he walks around questioning suspects and finding clues. That would look absurd, but we can hear his thought processes as he weighs up his options when trying to control a situation before it gets out of hand. This gives an added depth to the drama and helps us to empathise with the teacher.

As well as the usual issues in the classroom, Suzuki sensei also has problems of his own to face. Specifically, his love life – he’s recently met a woman that he’d like to date but can’t get past his obsession with one of the girls in his class.

This is a great drama, well-written and with a good balance of drama and humour. It is shot in muted colours and the schoolchildren do not resemble models or pop stars, so it looks and feels more realistic than most high school dramas.

Currently Watching: Himitsu Chouhouin Erika

This series follows in the same time slot as Detective Conan - Kudo Shinichi e no Chousenjou and it offers the same format: a mystery or crime to be solved in half an hour without too much reliance on intricate plots or clever deduction. In fact, so far a lot of the crimes have been solved by using a voice manipulator and some martial arts.

Chiaki Kuriyama stars as the ex-spy who is persuaded by her ex-boss to work for her as an undercover agent investigating criminal activity. All the while, she's trying to keep this a secret from her husband and child who have no idea that she's anything other than a doting housewife.

As you'd expect from a J-drama, the main story is just being hinted at in the first few episodes. There are occasional references to her boss having a hidden motive for hiring her again, and that she is being targeted by some dark, mysterious organisation. And perhaps even her family is under threat.

Chiaki adds a bit of big-screen glamour to a fun but otherwise unremarkable series. She's certainly very watchable and she handles the martial arts sections very well. The trouble is that everyone else seems a bit anonymous next to her. Since she's the one that looks after the family/goes undercover/solves the crime, no one else has much screen-time to establish a character.

I'll be honest, I don't expect this series to surprise me. I'm pretty sure that somebody will try to kidnap her son. Similarly, her boss will double-cross her before he sees the error of his ways and helps her right at the end. If this show can avoid either of these two cliches, it will have done better than my expectations. In the meantime, I'm enjoying watching it for what it is: some lightweight crime-solving with a little action sprinkled on top.

Currently watching: Nankyoku Tairiku

Okay, okay, I get it. Japan isn’t shit!

This series is basically a big-budget boost to the Japanese psyche. It's set in 1957, and it tells the story of Japan’s first trip to the Antarctic since 1912, and its importance to the self-esteem of the Japanese nation at the time. In telling the tale, the programme possibly exaggerates the extent of Japan’s international isolation and instead focuses on the hard work of the Japanese people in achieving this apparently impossible mission.

It looks good and the acting’s okay. But I found myself worn down by the selfless nobility shown by almost every character in the story. Even the dogs. It seemed like every five minutes, somebody did something heart-warming, complete with a sweeping orchestral soundtrack.

However, I will be watching the next episodes because in searching for the news article to illustrate this blog post, I discovered what happened to them once they reached Antarctica, and it gets pretty interesting.