Review of Orthros no Inu Ep 1

"Orthros, a double-headed dog in Greek mythology. His name means speed and one who flies quickly in Greek. Being the son of Typhon and Echidna, his elder brother is Cerberus, the guardian dog of Hell. He is black in colour with each strand of its beard made up of snakes. Orthros is rash and hot-headed. When he was guarding the bulls for Geryon on Island Krete, he was beaten up and killed by Hercules. Orthros fathered 4 sons and 1 daughter with his own mother while he was alive."

From the way it looks, the reason why Orthros was chosen as a figure to personify the drama's theme could be the fact that he is double-headed. If the power to heal or kill someone is represented by Orthros, the two heads would probably signify the good and evil natures of human. The same power can be used differently among individuals so switching the stereotypes of good and evil is what makes this drama interesting, at least on paper before the season started.

On one end, we have Ryuuzaki Shinji (Takizawa Hideaki), an evil man who has been in prison for three murders he committed when he was 18. He doesn't show his true feelings and would do anything just to achieve his aim. Having the power to heal, he doesn't think that he should use this power without gaining anything in return. On the other end, we have Aoi Ryousuke (Nishikido Ryou) who is a Japanese language high school teacher. He has a kind personality but has the power to kill by touching someone. He seems to realize that he had this power some time ago but would only use it to protect the people he cares for. As such, we have one man who's more than happy to use his power for his desires and the other who seems reluctant to use his power even when the situation calls for him. If not for the fact that police detective Hasebe Nagisa brought about their fateful meeting, things may not have gone out of control...

Frankly speaking, I liked the concept of the story before the season started. It seems like a story which could go against expectations and present lots of twists and turns in the process. I like such stories which can spring surprises on me. However, some portions of this first episode made me wonder why there are so many illogical developments and similarities with other works.

Firstly, Ryuuzaki's resemblance to Yagami Light in Death Note is simply hard to disregard. I am not talking about appearance but rather their motives and characters. Although Light initially had good intentions of improving the world with his Death Note, I always felt that deep down, he looked down on people who were not as good as he was all the time. If not for his elitist mindset, he wouldn't have killed people without batting an eyelid. Similarly, Ryuuzaki thinks that in order to achieve his goal, anything can be sacrificed. It is still not known whether his behaviour is by nature or induced by some events but his theory about being God and trying to improve the world by being heartless is definitely twisted like Light's. Yeah, right! It is just a loser's attempt to justify their actions, in my opinion.

Secondly, the idea of having two male characters who should never have met and chaos is bound to happen as a result of their meeting reminds me a bit of Maou. Remember that in Maou, we have Naruse (Ohno Satoshi) and Serizawa (Ikuta Toma) whose fates are interwined in a tragic manner and they ended up dead together. Likewise in this drama, based on the trailer for the 2nd episode, it seems to suggest that Ryuuzaki and Aoi could have met with something during their childhoods which led to them possessing their powers to heal and kill. If this is indeed so, does it mean that the ending will be something like this i.e. Aoi kills Ryuuzaki and then commits suicide because he feels bad about killing people? If so, doesn't this look too similar to what was in Maou?

Thirdly, I can never fathom why Aoi is so stupid. Ryuuzaki was right. Being able to heal someone doesn't mean the dead can be brought back to life. And being kind doesn't mean being gullible, right? I don't know why the scriptwriters had to make Aoi a guy who cannot think logically. Oh well, if Aoi wasn't senseless, how could Ryuuzaki have managed to break free from prison? I guess I have to accept some illogical events so that the story can progress. Then again, given Ryuuzaki's intelligence, he might have come up with another way to break free of prison one day even without Aoi's "assistance".

Last but not least, the significance of Hasebe Nagisa (Mizukawa Asami) is quite similar to Shiori's position in Maou. All Hasebe does is to run around like a mad woman and get fooled by Ryuuzaki. Sooner or later, her life is going to be in shambles now that she has one foot into the animosity between Ryuuzaki and Aoi. Something may happen to her sick daughter (maybe Ryuuzaki blackmails her to do something or he would not save her daughter?) or her boyfriend may leave her (either he betrays her or he is killed in the process?). At least these are some of the developments which I can guess based on the information so far. I seriously think that it is a waste for Mizukawa to be relegated to such an unimportant role but I don't think setting her up with the guys is a smart move too. It makes me cringe just to think that the two leads will fight over her. It has nothing to do with their ages or appearances but rather from the fact that their characters are arranged in such a way that forbids any romance to bloom between them i.e. Ryuuzaki being so evil and Hasebe having a daughter and a boyfriend. As such, it's best to keep romance out of the picture and focus on the dynamics of manipulation instead.

As for my views on this drama so far, I would say that this is on a KIV list. For a start, I do not like Takizawa Hideaki at all. Although his monologue was pretty good at conveying the coldness and ruthless nature of Ryuuzaki, I don't really fancy seeing him on screen especially with that long hair. I can understand that his hair grows longer because of Ryuuzaki being in prison for a long time but surely there are barbers in prison, right? Then again, Ryuuzaki is probably categorised as someone who's too dangerous for the barber to approach. Now that he's out of prison, he should head for a haircut ASAP. I really hate it when guys have such long hair especially when they don't look good in it.

In addition, this story is full of loopholes so I may not be too happy with the developments if this goes on. For a suspense thriller, logic is a key ingredient to making it work. For heavens' sake, it is not a romance story (romance doesn't need too much logic ^__^) so I hope that the scriptwriters do not treat the viewers as idiots. No doubt the concept is relatively far-fetched but still it should not deviate from the norm too much. The way this drama is written is said to be quite different from the normal process. Usually, most dramas will have one chief scriptwriter but some will also have a few sub-writers for a small number of episodes. In this case, there will be 6 writers who come up with the outline for the episode. 3 of them will then be selected to write their individual scripts. Subsequently, the good parts from each writer will be picked out and put together into an entire script by the show runner. Let's see if this drama will do well by using this method of script writing usually seen in American dramas.

Last but not least, I seriously hope that this drama will try to do something extraordinary. If the ending is what I predicted above or if it turns out that Ryuuzaki repents, I think this could be quite boring. Frankly speaking, I am hoping that Aoi will change for the worse because his character is too boring. I liked Nishikido best for his performance in "Last Friends" where he balanced evil and good very well. In this first episode, I simply detested the sight of Aoi. He is someone who we can hardly find in real life so I do not like the idea of having someone who's so angellic until we cannot find fault with him. It will be interesting if Aoi becomes bad because of Ryuuzaki's doings and the evil fight the evil in the end. If Aoi continues to be goody-two-shoes throughout the drama, I can safely say that viewers will only take notice of Takizawa's performance and forget all about Nishikido in the end.