Review of Kagi no Kakatta Heya Ep 1

The drama opens with a scene of the three main characters i.e. Enomoto Kei (Ohno Satoshi), Aoto Junko (Toda Erika) and Serizawa Go (Sato Koichi) in a dark room. Aoto and Serizawa stand at the side while listening to Enomoto describe the closed room setting in the first case. If you are thinking that the mood in this drama is going to be dead serious, you will be sorely mistaken. Somehow, I kept chuckling while watching Enomoto (or rather Ohno) talking with such a straight face and the others being somewhat in awe of him or rather looking sombre because it's a murder case they were talking about after all.

Aoto is a newbie intern at Serizawa's firm and she is in awe of her new boss understandably since it looks like his law firm is a big-name in the industry. Aoto could have thought that Serizawa will teach her lots of things from the start but she is thrown into the deep end by Serizawa who wants her to meet a client on his behalf. And he reminds her not to offend the client in any way which proves to be the key as to how their involvement in the murder case's investigations started.

Being new, Aoto bears in mind her boss' advice and unwittingly promises to help investigate the supposed suicide of a funeral services company's president. This earns her a lashing from Serizawa who tells her that they don't have the time to do that especially since the police had already classified the case as a suicide. While at the vault of a bank on business, Aoto (or should I say Miss Itchy Fingers) presses a button at the door and causes her boss to be locked inside the vault with the bank's president. Now, this is a serious matter since the door can only be unlocked on the following Monday so Aoto is panicky about the repercussions of having her boss locked up.

In comes our "hero" - Enomoto Kei, a guy with thick black rim glasses who walks in to the vault area nonchalantly as he gets to work on unlocking the code to the vault. He doesn't look that promising so Miss Itchy Fingers now also known as Miss Curious starts asking Enomoto what he is doing. This is when Enomoto starts to go on and on regarding how he's going to derive the code to unlocking the vault and Miss Curious tells him to stop because she cannot understand the difficult theory. Anyway, Enomoto manages to open the vault in less than 20 mins which earns him the instant admiration of Aoto (well, not in a fangirl fashion YET).

Once out of the bank, Serizawa lectures Aoto for taking on the investigation for the suicide but she insists that they should get an expert to assess the crime scene first. And almost conveniently, Aoto sees Enomoto packing up to leave and immediately invites him to help out with the investigation. Serizawa is not enthusiastic about wasting time on something which is not going to bring in any monetary benefits for him and has no choice but to tag along because Aoto agreed to take this up on his behalf. On the other hand, I don't think Enomoto is interested in solving the case too. He's probably intrigued by the presence of such a problem and wants to prove that there is no such thing as a closed room mystery. There you have two guys who are obviously in this for totally different reasons and the "culprit" for bringing them together stuck between them in the cramped back seat.

While visiting the crime scene, Enomoto seems to be walking around for no reason while Serizawa keeps hurrying them to finish soon so that he can get back to his "lucrative" work. Aoto is disappointed that nothing seems to have come out from their visit but is pleasantly surprised when Enomoto calls her days later saying that he has some findings to share with them. Apparently, Enomoto had been taking note of the crime scene's key features and dimensions while he visited the place so he was actually walking around the house with a purpose. He shows Aoto and Serizawa the 3D model he made to illustrate his theories and Aoto seems really amazed by Enomoto's attentiveness to details.

Nonetheless, after some brainstorming, the trio are still none the wiser about the case. I won't go into details on how Enomoto come to the conclusion on how the closed room was created but it's quite obvious that the bumps along the way seem to be the reason why the first episode was longer than usual. I thought this part of the episode was kinda draggy but it may have been essential in order to show that our hero is probably doing this for the first time and needs some difficulties along the way before he arrives at the truth. I've also come to notice that Enomoto has the habit of rubbing his right hand's fingers while trying to think so that would probably be his trademark pose just like how Yukawa scribbles on any surface he finds while solving his cases in Galileo.

As we get to the standard confrontation part of the story, Enomoto explains his rationale and reasoning for determining that the suicide was indeed a murder and how the closed room was created by the murderer. In most dramas, the identity of the murderer would have been kept under wraps but in this drama, it was made very clear who the main suspect was so the highlight of the story is how the closed room was created rather than who or how this person killed the victim. I'm not sure if this is going to be the direction going forward but it does look likely since the focus should be on Enomoto.

True to what he proclaims, Enomoto just sits aside with his earphones plugged in after explaining how the trick worked. Effectively, he's saying that "I solved the mystery but I don't care who is the murderer and if he/she is going to be arrested" which I think makes Aoto and Serizawa rather exasperated. However, Serizawa steps up to remind the murderer that they are still able to get him arrested due to a particular reason so it's good that the killer doesn't get off scot-free.

Serizawa may have been really dismissive of Enomoto's abilities from the start but I think he was impressed with the latter by the end of the case. He's probably too proud to admit it though. Meanwhile, Enomoto seems to be unconcerned about what's going on around him. On a side note, I'm very curious about what he's listening to all this while and I have a hunch that it's not music. It would be nice if the drama could provide the answer by the end of its run. Using earphones seem to have two meanings here. It helps Enomoto to concentrate when doing his work i.e. unlocking the vault but I think it also serves to help Enomoto block out things that he doesn't want to know or just to give the impression to others that he doesn't care about his surroundings.

First impressions of this drama: despite this being a longer episode than the usual 45 minutes, time flew by very quickly except when the trio were briefly hit with distracting information that almost threw them off the murderer's trails. There is a lot of humour and fast-paced exchanges and one particular scene I would like to mention is when Aoto and Serizawa were sort-of arguing after they left Enomoto's office. Serizawa was trying to convince Aoto that as lawyers, they don't need to do investigations into something which the police had already concluded and he got really "hysterical" when he complained about how suspense dramas were being illogical in many ways. For example, the star detective would always chance upon a case whenever he/she goes and even if they know the culprit, they would always say something like "I know who the guy is but I'm not telling until I finish explaining how he/she did it". Serizawa was saying this as a matter of fact but somehow it had the unexplainable effect of making me laugh.

I must say, Ohno is really great as Enomoto who is almost like his real-life persona in a sense. That spark in his eyes when he sees something he's interested in is unmistakable just like when he talks about fishing in his variety shows. What do you imagine he was doing when he had that expression in this screenshot? He was just being happy about unlocking an ancient lock but just look at how pleased he appeared to be! ^__^ He rattles off things about locks expecting people to understand but it's often too difficult for a layman to understand. And while keeping a straight face, Ohno is still able to make people laugh especially when Serizawa kept pestering Enomoto to say that he was busy so that they could wrap up the visit to the crime scene quickly but Enomoto simply said that he was really NOT busy. I really liked Ohno's performance in Maou some years back but his subsequent dramas like Uta no Onisan and Kaibutsu-kun didn't go down too well with me especially Kaibutsu-kun which I couldn't even finish the first episode. I'm glad that he's back at something which shows his acting skills again and with the great onscreen chemistry with Sato Koichi and Toda Erika, this drama should be worth staying with for the rest of the season. Toda has undergone an image change of some sort because I've always seen her glamourous pretty side in the dramas I've watched but this time round, Aoto is plain, has her hair not tied up perfectly and wears plain pants suits. There may be a bit of over-acting here and there as she reacts to words from Enomoto or Serizawa but I think that's still acceptable considering that she's a newbie law intern and is easily impressed by things she don't know. As for romantic links between Enomoto and Aoto, it looks likely to be a one-way traffic for Aoto because Enomoto really doesn't seem to be interested in anything else except his locks.

One thing I would like to point out is the heavy use of loud BGM to tune up the intense factor or to make certain developments appear stylish. However, it became a bit jarring to the ears towards the end due to the overuse of BGM so I hope that future episodes would not have this problem. Somehow, the music sequence or arrangement seems to be quite similar to what was in Liar Game as in the timing of when the music comes in is about the same and features strong sleek beats.

Next week's episode features Nakamura Shido and Fukuda Mayuko as guests but it's going to be another case about a supposed suicide. Episodic stories don't work for me most of the time but I hope that this drama will keep me interested with its acting and chemistry between the main trio.