Mystery

Day Thirty Eight.

At last I finally found a great new obsession that would not make me emotional and would not make me reminisce about the past! And it’s non other than “Mystery/Detective dramas!” They’re perfect for me! They’re fun to watch, they stimulate the mind and there are no mushy and emotional scenes! As I’ve said before, I love watching mystery/detective dramas but I just didn’t have the time to watch that many. Truth is, mystery is one of the first few genres that I loved. I have a bunch of Agatha Christie, Mary Higgins Clark and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novels right at my bookshelf.  I used to borrow them from the school library but now I have my own collection. Mystery is also the genre of the first novel that I completed when I was in highschool. I wrote it in English but translated it to Nihongo and submitted it to my professor for a class project. It wasn’t very good but many people liked the twist in the end.

The great twists in the end is also one of the reasons why I love watching mystery dramas. Trying to figure out that twist makes you analyze the whole story! And analyzing stuff is one of my favorite pastimes! Plus mystery dramas have some of the coolest and most interesting characters! L, is of course, on top of that list! The main characters in mystery dramas are usually really smart and cool but have complex personalities that other people find difficult to understand. That’s why I love them! They don’t quite fit in with society but they still manage to save lives with their brilliant mind!

After Remote, I started watching another old detective drama (old, as in, 2001), called Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo 3 (The Files of Young Kindaichi 3). I’ve heard about this drama ages ago but I ignored it. But now I decided to give it a try since I’m doing a detective drama marathon. The brilliant young detective in this drama, Kindaichi Hajime, is played by a very young and adorable-looking Matsumoto Jun. There were two previous seasons but they have different actors and are way too old so I just decided to just watch the 3rd and last season. At first I found it cheesy because of the whole “Titanic” theme of the first case. Kindaichi Hajime is also not your typical brilliant detective. Genius detectives in dramas and movies are usually cold and mysterious like Himuro of Remote or eccentric like L, but Kindaichi are none of those things. At first glance, he looks just like a normal, goofy teenage boy. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about him. Unlike Kudo Shinichi who has an air of mystery about him eventhough he’s just a high-schooler, Kindaichi Hajime seemed quite normal. In fact he’s quite silly. He loves day-dreaming (while looking like an idiot) and he loves chasing after pretty girls.

I actually got bored while watching the first few scenes of this drama but when people started to go missing and the plot began to thicken, I finally saw why lots of people love this drama: it has really intelligent and well thought-of plots! There are surprising twists in every turn and the murders, though quite brutal, are so artistically clever! Matsumoto Jun also looked convincing as a genius young detective. He may look ordinary at first but once he’s solving mysteries, he’ll give Kudo Shinichi a run for his money! Actually, I think Kudo Shinichi has nothing on this guy! The cases that Young Kindaichi solves are more advanced and complicated than Shinichi’s cases. But unlike other detective dramas, Kindaichi’s cases all have one thing in common: revenge. All of the culprits in this drama were not originally bad people. They used to be kind and ordinary people but horrible things happened to them or to their loved ones. So because of their thirst for vengeance, they committed terrible and intricately-planned crimes. It’s always the same story: an innocent person’s loved-one was wronged by a group of people so in order to avenge his/her loved-one, he/she starts murdering all those people. And it is Kindaichi’s job to figure out who the killer is before he/she kills all of his/her targets.

Figuring out the identity of the killer is the easy part, especially if you already saw the pattern. The killer always turn out to be the most innocent-looking person. It’s usually a pretty young girl (but not ALL the time) who looks like she couldn’t even hurt a fly. The hard part is figuring out how the killer murders his/her victims. Some murders just seem so impossible and some even occurred while the killer was in the same room as everyone else. That is the fun part of this drama! You get to analyze all the clues to figure that out! And in the end everything always makes sense. My favorite case was the one in the Butterfly manor. (They shot this episode on the same mansion where Domyouji lives in Hana Yori Dango. So Matsumoto Jun worked in that mansion in 2001 and then came back to that place after five years!) Anyway, that episode was just plain creepy and the dead bodies are displayed in such a sick yet artistic way. That was also the only case where I wasn’t able to guess the identity of the killer right away. I told you, guessing the killer is the easy part but in that episode it was quite hard. I also love the last case, the one in the Lucia Castle. It reminded me of Liar Game. (Loved that drama too!) Kindaichi also reminds me of Adrian Monk (From the American series “Monk”) because of his catchphrase. When Monk has solved the case he always says “Here’s how it happened…” Well, when Kindaichi finally has all the answers he always says “This mystery is solved!” He also says the line “I’m going to live-up to my grandpa’s reputation” in every episode.

Anyway, if you’re fan of mystery dramas then “Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo 3″ should definitely be on you must-watch list. Plus Matsumoto Jun fans would certainly love this! Honestly, I’m not a big fan of Jun but I think he really look great in this drama! The spiky hair really suited him and he looked super cool in the ending video! The only thing I didn’t like about this drama was Suzuki Anne playing the role of Hajime’s childhood friend and love interest, Nanase Miyuki! She’s just so…ordinary. Her acting skills are quite average, her looks are quite average and she doesn’t have any screen-presence at all. You could easily overlook her!

After watching the Kindaichi drama, I watched the 2005 Special. The Special is more like a prequel to the drama. In this prequel, Hajime was just an ordinary highschool student. He’s also completely different from the Hajime in the drama. He doesn’t have that strong sense for justice yet, he doesn’t like meddling with other people’s affairs and he’s a bit of coward. And if the Hajime in the drama was so proud of his grandfather, the Hajime on the special hates being the grandson of the famous detective. Oh and he likes chasing girls even more in the Special. It’s like the Batman Begins of the Kindaichi drama. In the Special we get to see how and why Kindaichi became the brilliant young detective in the drama.

But don’t go looking for Jun in the special because this time around, Kindaichi Hajime was played by KAT-TUN’s Kamenashi Kazuya and Nanase Miyuki was played by Ueno Juri. Kame did an okay job in portraying the immature and irresponsible Hajime but he wasn’t as cool and convincing as Jun when solving crimes. Also, when he said Kindaichi’s catchphrase it didn’t have that much impact. It felt quite odd. Plus, the way Kame’s character talked and moved in this special is exactly the same as the way his other character, Shuji, talked and moved in the drama Nobuta wo Produce. In short, he wasn’t versatile enough then, since I could see traces of his other character in his role here. Ueno Juri, on the other hand, is hands-down, the better Nanase Miyuki. She was perfect for the role and her performance was really good. Plus Miyuki got to be one of the suspects and victims in the Special so she has more significance to the story, unlike in the drama where Miyuki was more like an irritating sidekick.

After watching Kindaichi, I made a list of the next mystery/detective dramas I’m going to watch and these are the ones recommended to me by various people on the internet: Galileo, Sexy Voice and Robo, Tanten Gakuen Q, Trick 3 and Unfair. I started with Unfair since it’s not that old, it has two of my favorite actors (Eita and Shinohara Ryoko ) and the story looks pretty interesting. Besides, it’s kinda refreshing to see a cool genius female detective as the lead character since most of the detectives I’ve seen are guys. I’ve only seen three episodes, but I’m really hooked! I love Yukihira’s personality. She’s cold, smart and mysterious like Himuro but she’s also quite eccentric like L. If L loves eating sweets, Yukihira loves walking around her apartment naked. She’s like a Japanese Angelina Jolie! Tough and intimidating but feminine and seductive at the same time! Oh by the way, Nodame would feel right at home in Yukihira’s apartment because it’s just as messy as her own! Another thing I like about Yukihira is that she also hates Orihime type of women! In episode 3 she looked disgusted when that whiny girl was crying in front of her. She said “I can’t stand it. I’m not good in associating with that kind of woman.” LOL! (I am so with her on that!) I also love her unique and funny relationship with her partner, Ando (Eita).  They’re like Himuro and Kurumi with reversed genders.

On a totally unrelated note, I think my insomnia is finally taking its toll on my body. I’ve been really dizzy for a week now and it gets worse each day. I feel like I’m in a moving ship everyday and whenever I’m in a cab I feel like I’m going to throw up. I could barely walk in one straight line anymore. It’s like there’s a mild earthquake in my apartment everyday. I really need to get some sleep! I went out to buy sleeping pills today, but they gave me this Dietary food supplement called Sleepasil instead. Yeah, like that’s gonna work on me! I woke up while I was on the operating table for crying out loud! And they gave me strong stuff back then, so I doubt food supplements could help me sleep! Man, I need real sleeping pills! The only things that’s keeping me going now are chocolates and cakes. Seriously, I probably would have fainted a while ago if I didn’t immediately shove 3 large slices of chocolate mousse in my mouth!

Oh just in case you’re wondering why I don’t talk about anime anymore… I haven’t stopped watching anime yet. I’m still watching D.Gray-man, Bleach and Vampire Knight. But since I only get to watch one short episode of each of them every week, I don’t have much to talk about.

By the way, I saw these pictures a while ago. I find them really amusing so I thought I’d share them with you. I’ve said before that Oguri Shun is the Johnny Depp of Japan, well, now I have proof: LOL!

End of Day Thirty Eight.