O.A. Date: 14 Oct 08Ratings: 15.2%
As this is a suspense thriller, I expected the first episode to be nothing more than introducing the background of the key characters. However, some of the cast members put up a rather compelling performance which should help to pull in more viewers as the action thickens. By that, I am referring to Nakamura Tooru and Ihara Tsuyoshi. The lead character Taguchi Kohei played by Ito Atsushi simply bored me to death. I just don't see why he gets to play this lead role and repeats his one-pattern acting time and again. Since he looks like a meek guy who gets bullied, shouldn't the casting director choose someone else to turn up the chemistry and tension between Taguchi and Shiratori? Compared to Nakamura or Ihara or even members of the Batista team who had much less airtime, Ito fails to impress, at least from what I've seen so far. I do hope that he will prove me wrong.
Given the fact that this drama adaptation comes after the movie adaptation, there will no doubt be comparisons. However, as I've not seen the movie nor read the novel, I can't judge which is better. Nonetheless, on paper, the movie version boasts of a stellar cast including Takeuchi Yuko, Abe Hiroshi, Kikkawa Kouji, Ikeuchi Hiroyuki, Tamayama Tetsuji, Igawa Haruka, Tanaka Naoki, Sano Shiro and Nogiwa Yoko etc. I guess the movie version had a bigger budget to begin with but I'm generally OK with the cast selection except for Ito. By the way, the movie made 1.56 billion yen at the box office when it was shown from Feb this year. Another interesting thing which I noticed was that the movie was produced by TBS but FujiTV is making the drama. Let's see who will do a better job at the end of the day.
Coming to the story, I'm OK with the pace so far but I hope the scriptwriter can turn up the speed a little and focus more on the development of the investigation instead of showing Taguchi weeping all the time. It does get on my nerves when I'm obviously watching this for the suspense. Like what I said, the first episode serves mainly to introduce the team members i.e. the suspects in this possible series of murders. It has yet to be established that the deaths during surgery were intentional but going from case 31, the operation looked flawless. As such, like what Shiratori said, this is likely to be a serial murder which could destroy the hospital too if it is really the case.
As for the theme song, it didn't leave a deep impression on me. I guess I need to listen to it a few more times to see if it will grow on me.
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