Rinjo ep 1

Kono sekai ai wa aru no?

Gonzo is back! I wish they'd do a second season of Gonzo but this is probably the next best thing. Uchino Masaaki plays Kuraishi Yoshio, a character similar to his half carefree/half serious Gonzo without the unforgettable past. Except this time, instead of being a cop, Kuraishi is the police in charge of investigating crime scenes. Yes, CSI Tokyo is here.

Am I going to be typecast as the carefree but cool police dude now?

Playing the role of Kuraishi's antagonist is Tachihara (Takashima Masanobu), the police investigator who dislikes Kuraishi meddling into his investigations. He believes that Kuraishi's job is to examine the crime scene and determine the cause of death but to leave the investigating to him. Takashima Masanobu always had a tendency to be very wooden in his acting. He is always playing nice boring characters and its good to see that he can act more naturally.

Kuraishi obviously liking what he's seeing.

Matsushita Yuki plays Kosaka Rumi, a subordinate who looks up to Kuraishi. She's his only ally in the police and will go to great lengths for him. Watanabe Ken's son plays he other subordinate who is placed in forensics by Tachihara. His acting doesn't stand out but lets see how he goes in this series before determining whether he got acting jobs cause of his dad or his talent. Added to the mix is the reporter Ai-chan who uses her feminine charms to get info from Kuraishi. Her presence as fanservice is very important and I hope her role will be expanded later.

You may not be as robotic as Sakuma but you're not as interesting.

Rinjo seems to be more of an episodic series instead of having an overarching story like Gonzo so the quality of the series will be judged based on how interesting the murder mysteries are. Having seen my fair share of Japanese cop shows, I'm not keeping my hopes up. As long as nothing is laughably bad like 100 police officers pointing their guns at one suspect, Kuraishi's antics will be enough to entertain me. A must watch for Gonzo fans and a decent show to to try out. Time will tell how good Rinjo is.