I'm not sure how I should describe my feelings after watching the 2nd episode. In my last review, there were some things which I liked about the drama but this episode seemed to be headed in a different direction from what I was expecting so I'm starting to wonder if how long I can persist in watching this.
Harumi brings Yoshitaro to a romance seminar in order to help him get over his phobia over women. As the lecturer goes through tips to get closer to the opposite sex and build a romantic relationship, Yoshitaro dismisses the advice as highly ineffective and can't be bothered to pay much attention to the session. What would have been an uneventful day goes the opposite way when the audience finds the lecturer murdered after the screening of a DVD. The baffling thing is, the audience had been hearing the lecturer's voice until the lights came on in the room again so it would have been near impossible for anyone to have killed the lecturer. What's more surprising is that someone had gone to the session and signed her name as that of a woman who committed suicide! As usual, Yoshitaro faints at the sight of blood on the victim and is lectured by his colleague Nemoto.
Now this is where I have my first complaint. This case is highly similar to what I've seen in a HK drama years ago. There are some subtle differences between the two but at first glance, it was easy to see that these cases were the same. I don't know if it's just a plain coincidence or who actually thought of this idea first. It doesn't really bother me here whether there is an issue of copying one another's ideas but this signifies that I already know the trick behind this seemingly difficult case. Even before we get to the resolution of the case, I already know who was the killer and how it was done. The mystery being too simple to guess is a big taboo in a suspense thriller story. As a result, I was more or less "switched off" as the story progressed. I didn't feel interested enough to follow what was going and it felt like a long journey to get to the end. There was a lot of time spent on Yoshitaro's strong belief that Ryoko (Takimoto Miori) was not the murderer but frankly speaking, it didn't matter to me at all.
In my last review, I mentioned that it was quite interesting to see Aiba's scenes with the cat. That being the first episode, it was no wonder that the drama had to spend a lot of time describing Yoshitaro's meeting with Holmes and how they came to get together. However, this episode didn't really show much of an interaction between the two and I simply don't find the scenes when Holmes turns into a human funny at all. There is a strong lack of chemistry between human and human compared to when Yoshitaro was facing the cat-form of Holmes. I really wonder if this drama has the intention to show how Holmes' "intervention" or so-called hints is of use to Yoshitaro because I somehow get the feeling that his own siblings play a more active role in the case solving compared to Holmes.
As I said before, I am not keen on episodic stories so it takes a lot of effort and enough pull power to make me stay throughout the whole season. I like Aiba and can see that he's trying hard to make things work. However, if the drama is going to give me really "juvenile" suspense/investigative stories throughout its run, I don't think my interest in him is strong enough to keep me invested in the show. I know that this Saturday timeslot is supposed to be a family-friendly one where kids can enjoy the drama as well but if the drama doesn't find its footing soon enough and decides whether it wants to focus more on its case-solving side or the family-friendly developments, it runs the risk of ending up as a drama which cannot make an impression on its viewers. And another bugbear I find with this drama is, Yoshitaro keeps getting scolded in the harshest way possible (just like Himekawa in Strawberry Night which I stopped watching after Ep 7...not that keen to continue for now) and I really don't think it will make him improve in any way. It just irks me to see people screaming at the top of their voices for no apparent purposes. Anyway, I'll try to give this drama another chance and hope that the next episode can convince me to stay on.
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