I’ve always enjoyed a good mystery and the Japanese
literary world is rich with them. This
series was based on a popular manga of the same name and starred Sakurai Sho
and Kitagawa Keiko. I felt like watching something light and witty so I decided
to give this series a try. It aired in
2011 and ran for ten episodes.
The premise gives you a young heiress (Hosho Reiko)
who lives a double life, moonlighting as a police investigator, and her astute
and opinionated butler (Kageyama).
Together they try to solve the murders that the young lady encounters in
her job as an investigator. It just so
happens that in his functions serving, protecting, and assisting his mistress,
Kageyama doesn’t hesitate to insult her and mock her naiveté and her troubles
in unlocking the riddles presented by the murders. He ends up being the one who unravels
everything and solves the cases. And
while Reiko can hardly stand the mockery (she keeps threatening to fire him),
she recognizes and appreciates Kageyama’s help and dependability in almost
every aspect of her life. More comic situations arise due to the apparent
randomness of Reiko’s chief detective (Kazamatsuri) who also happens to be the
nouveau riche heir to an automobile company.
What I appreciated best were the murder mysteries and
riddles – they were really presented so that you won’t find the answers so
simple to decipher. And in the grand
tradition of Sherlock Holmes, Kageyama always seems to make the revelations
painfully easy and obvious. Solving
riddles comes after dinner, though. Too
bad they didn’t delve more into the characters of Reiko and Kageyama. I would have liked it if there was at least
one episode that enabled the audience to get a more involved view of the main
characters even if another riddle had to take the back seat for a while. Reiko, Kageyama, Kazamatsuri and all the
other regular personages came out as quite flat and stereotypical. Thus, the series ended with not much in terms
of character development. Other than
that, the pace was good, the comedy wasn’t too corny, and I generally felt
eager to see the next episode. Not bad
at all.
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