Wow. Kazokugari has turned out to be the surprise good show of this season for me. There were moments in the middle where I thought it was trying to hard to be something else but it all comes together in Ep 8 and 9 to a furious finish in 10. Kazokugari gets so close to being a must watch dorama but it does so many things that well that whodunnit jdoramas tend to not get right. Anyone waiting for English subs, keep watching cause its worth it. If you can't wait, try it with Japanese subs. There's hardly any difficult investigation lingo and the story and dialogue are straightforward. There are no specific spoilers in my review, only general points on why Kazokugari rocks.
WHAT KAZOKUGARI DOES WELL
1. Its a whodunnit that aims to make sense rather than pull something from left field that makes you go huh or has too many twists that you just don't care.
2. All the stories are thematically linked kind of similar to Lady Joker.
3. The villain is the hero who's gone on a different path and I love that the writer spent time to show that our hero could have easily gone that route and makes our cop suspecting her less of a red herring.
4. The villain did not go into crazy overacting and laughing mode when revealed. So many jdoramas fall into this category including Mozu.
5. The villain actually believes he is right and based on what we've seen in this show, he's right in a twisted way.
6. The acting by everyone except Densha is good.
7. You can count the number of doramas that are not afraid to go dark and realistic on one hand.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE BESIDES DENSHA
1. There's this fire scene at the beginning of Ep 10 where the villain is standing in front of someone and all of a sudden the villain has moved a couple of meters. Jdoramas always screw up their geography in 'action' scenes (Shiroi Haru) but this marred the last episode a bit for me.
2. A bit too much explanation for the audience in Ep 10. Not as bad as most doramas but no need to spell things out for the audince.
SUMMARY
I am pretty happy with Kazokugari. Its a dark murder mystery with brains and it makes me want to check out the novel. I can see why they wanted to adapt this story unlike Mozu. Kazokugari does most things right and while I can't call it a must watch, its one of the most memorable jdormas I've seen. If only they had replaced Densha with someone who can do decent serious scenes.
GUESS WHO'S IN RYU GA GOTOKU ZERO?
The only thing that's dampening my anticipation is the free grinding/mini game app for Vita, similar to Ishin. Besides the stupid Ishin ending, I hated the grindfest nature of the game. If I complete all the sub stories and complete all the hostess missions, I expect to have all or at least 99% of the moves and not feel like I'm playing a half baked character for most of the game.
I thought this was Hashimoto Ai and found out its going to be Sawashiro Miyuki. Zero is going to be the first game without Haruka. :(
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