WHAT I LIKED
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
Strawberry Night does ok police procedure but it is nowhere near the holy trinity of Rinjo/Gonzo/Gaiji Keisatsu because it tries to do too much and feels too superficial. If its supposed to be a show about heads of sections backstabbing each other for glory then make it so instead of leaving the job up to Kinpachi sensei and not making him interesting. Have everyone spying on each other and leaving false information instead of spending more time on Takeuchi Yuko's personal story, team Himekawa and the old forensic dude. Its sort of watchable and easily better than your usual crap like Boss but not good enough. I'm dropping this and may take a peak later for Takeuchi Yuko.
7 comments:
i havent seen this one yet. looks like i will never have the chance to see it either. this is one of the benedits reading ur blog. im not even curious about it. maybe i should check rinjo. im done with gonzo and that one is really good.
@jt, Mike is very particular about his taste when it comes to cop shows. Look at the 3 shows he listed as benchmark. Do you see a pattern? *cough*
I've seen Strawberry up to ep 3 and while it's no WOWOW's grittiness and intensity, it is a pretty good show with just enough elements to decouple itself from run-of-the-mill j-cop shows.
Or maybe I've become less picky after jesuscop called me a hater. I actually ended up not minding the Kim Tae Hee show. Sure it was pretty crappy, but the show had a really good and positive 'vibe'.
btw, Hungry 7 is pretty fun too. Eita completely shames Matusmoto.
I am not very convinced either. It is not a bad show but the fact that yabe kenzo sort of discovers one culprit in ep. 2 and they ignore that completely is a big fail in my book. Also, just watched ep. 4 and found it extremely boring. I like Takeuchi Yuko and that's the reason I'll keep watching this, but she has to stop crying for everything. This is not her usual romantic drama; she's supossed to look tougher. Well, that's only my opinion, after all.
@ jung
the bar has been raised. haha..
i like Hungry!. foodwise or chick wise. i havent watched lucky seven so far but i might try to check it out. this season is pretty much good for me.
Rinjo is very straightforward forensic show and its a cop show that knows what it is and doesn't try to do too much.
Sevmpe, you just reminded me that there were a couple of scenes where she should be angry but she looked like she was about to burst into tears.
JC, there's too much stupid stuff for me consider Strawberry Night to be 'gritty'.
I recently watched Answer with Arisa Mizuki as the lead. It was shown in the same year as Strawberry Night, but got nowhere near the same attention the latter had. The show was full of typical elements of cop shows like Arisa's character made a blunder and was transferred to a department for the rejects, she had to run against a bunch of incompetent, misogynistic superiors. However, what worked for me is that Arisa Mizuki really has the charisma to play a tough, intelligent female in a world dominated by men, which can't be said about many Japanese actresses.
The show is straightforward but it never tried to speak louder than it was really is. I finished from start to finish in one go because each case is unpredictable enough for me to keep guessing. Strawberry night, on the other hand, is quite tonally flat IMO.
@Buck : Downloading Answer from Avistaz. Thanks for the review!
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