This drama is based on the same-titled manga by Ochiai Naoyuki which was serialised between January 2007 and March 2011. The manga itself isn't an original work because it adopts the basic concepts of "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Of course, the character names in both works are different but the basic premise of a man who believes that he has the ability and the right to do certain things can be seen in the original story and this drama. Before I begin talking about how I feel about "Tsumi to Batsu", I think I should start off by introducing the key characters and a synopsis of what's to come. If you haven't watched the drama and would rather not know the storyline, you may wish to skip directly to the review section.
Tachi Miroku (Koura Kengo) is an university student who comes from a small town in Iwate Prefecture and bears the hopes of his mother Yoshimi and elder sister Yoshino by making it to a Tokyo university. However, Miroku has mixed feelings about his family and the weight of their expectations. On one hand, he's proud of the fact that he has the ability to bring glory to the family but conversely, he also hates having to follow the path which his mother in particular wants him to take. He cannot understand why his mother would want him to admire his father who used to be a teacher when he was alive. This is especially so when he found out that his father had committed suicide with his student who he was having an affair with. Miroku knows deep down that he loves his mother and sister but he is extremely unhappy about the fact that Yoshino is going to marry someone who she doesn't love for the sake of supporting Miroku through his university education. Or so he thinks because Yoshino has never said so or expressed unwillingness about the marriage to her fiance.
Without his family's knowledge, Miroku drops out of school and goes around doing virtually doing other than dreaming of becoming a great writer some day. In fact, he won a literature award for a short piece "Shuukakusha no Shikaku" (The Qualifications of a Harvester - the article is about a hypothesis of the likelihood of some people having the ability and right to do certain things which others can't and his reasoning why it holds true) but since then, nothing much has happened to bring him closer to his dream. While out at night, he meets Shimazu Risa (Ono Asuka), a senior high school student, who offers to sleep with him for money. Although Miroku rejects her proposition, his interest is aroused when he realises that Risa is forced to be a teenage prostitute by her fellow schoolmate Baba Hikaru (Hashimoto Ai). Hikaru runs the prostitution business involving her friends like a professional pimp and contributes the takings to a gang. Miroku doesn't understand why Risa has to do Hikaru's bidding and later finds out that Hikaru had earned Risa's trust initally when they first met but later engineered an episode to make Risa the victim of gang rape. Using Risa's dependency on her for friendship and the gang rape to undermine the importance of her own body, Hikaru managed to force Risa into the sex trade despite her reluctance. As a result of this discovery, Miroku comes up with a plan to "set things in order" because he regards himself as someone having the authority and qualification to do so.
Miroku sets up an elaborate scheme to kill Hikaru and rob her of the money she earned from managing the prostitution business. However, as a fate would have it, Risa's sudden appearance at the crime scene causes Miroku to lose control and he also kills Risa who misunderstands that Miroku did everything for her. As Miroku wanted the whole scheme to be perfect and for him to be in perfect control of the situation, he simply can't stand Risa's unexpected behaviour and her assumption that Miroku's actions were for her sake i.e. not as noble as he wanted his cause to be. Although he manages to escape detection (Risa's mother had been working somewhere else but returned home on that same day when Miroku killed the girls), the stress brought about by what he had done causes Miroku to collapse on the street and he falls into a deep slumber for a couple of days.
While in a coma, Miroku dreams about his past and what happened a year ago. He was an intern at a company then and came to know Sudou Kai (Tanaka Tetsushi) who graduated from the same university which Miroku was from. Sudou gave Miroku the impression that he was nothing more than a womaniser but strangely enough, when Sudou came to read Miroku's article, he could understand what Miroku had in mind and even had contrasting viewpoints to point out the contradictions in Miroku's hypothesis. On one hand, Miroku thought that Sudou was a weirdo who kept egging him on to acknowledge his desires for no apparent reason. Sudou evidently saw that Miroku wasn't one who was content to discuss his hypothesis on paper but rather, he had that hidden pride in himself and belief that he was superior to others. As such, Sudou wanted to bring out Miroku's desires to prove himself as someone who's qualified to do certain things. Before any of that could have happened, Sudou disappeared after killing the female president of a company. Unknown to Miroku, Sudou had been the sex slave of that female president and also had secret ties to the underworld which was contrary to Miroku's impression that Sudou was a mere company employee.
Echika used to be Kikuo's student back in high school and she found an unexplainable affinity with him because he unwittingly offered her a place to take refuge from her stepmother's ill treatment. In return, Echika spent a lot of time with his family and young kids which in turn gave her a chance to taste family warmth and feel needed. However, Kikuo's excessive drinking habits caused him to be blackmailed by the school bully at that time and he was forced to set up secret cameras at various spots in school which allowed the bullies to have access to compromising images and videos of the female students. Even so, the bully was still not satisfied and turned his attention to Echika because he could see that she meant a lot to him. Kikuo pleaded with the bully not to harm Echika but was threatened that if Kikuo did not rape Echika in front of him and his cronies, they would gang-rape her instead and expose Kikuo's drinking habits. Having no choice, Kikuo tricked Echika to come to the school's laboratory where he forced himself on her and caused her to be beaten up by the bully's gang.
However, the bully still did not let Kikuo off and sent the video of Echika's rape to the school management. Although Kikuo was going to be fired for what he did, Echika unexpectedly told the school that she was a willing party and she was going to marry Kikuo after graduation from high school. Kikuo didn't think that Echika would do this and was shocked when the latter confessed that she would never forgive him for betraying her and she would make sure he remembers what he did throughout their marriage. Ever since then, Kikuo has never been able to hold his head up in front of Echika who gets involved in the sex trade to support the family. In a way, Echika is also punishing Kikuo by abusing her body because the latter was the culprit who reduced her body to something worthless.
At the hospital where Kikuo's body is resting, Miroku meets Echika for the first time and becomes drawn to her in an unexplainable manner. He knows that he indirectly caused Kikuo's death but decides against telling Echika about it. At the same time, with Kikuo's passing, his mother tells Echika to leave the family and live for herself instead which in turn causes Echika to be unsure of what the future holds for her. Miroku and Echika decide to stick together because they think that they would be the only people capable of doing that for the other party.
Review
There are a few key story arcs in this drama despite it being shorter than the usual full-season dramas. They may seem rather unrelated but each of them is a building block which gives us some information on why the key characters are behaving in a certain manner.
First of all, Miroku's story with Hikaru and Risa formed the groundwork as to why he thought he was someone who was qualified to do certain things i.e. correcting a wrong by killing someone. Miroku's one conflicted soul because on one hand, he feels inferior about certain things (e.g. his father's not-so-glorious death or the fact that he didn't achieve any success as a writer despite winning a newcomer's award) and yet he also thinks that he's above others when it comes to doing righteous deeds. Frankly speaking, I don't sympathise with him at all because he really wasn't wronged or treated unfairly by anyone in the first place. The supposed unfairness was what he had thought it should be and it felt like he was using that as an excuse to explain why he was less successful than he thought he would be. His motive for killing Hikaru wasn't even for the money nor to save Risa from her agony. It was more like he was disgusted with how Hikaru behaved when she barely flinched while abusing Risa as if the latter was her slave. If Hikaru had expressed a tinge of conscience, Miroku might not have gone to the extent of killing her. Risa, on the other hand, was another character which I found it difficult to understand. Hikaru had caused her to be gang-raped and abused her friendship by forcing her into the sex trade but Risa found it difficult to break away. I'm guessing that her dependency on Hikaru and the lack of alternative friendships as support caused the situation to continue. When Miroku killed Risa, it was such an infuriating scene because he did it just to make his scheme perfect. What a control freak he is! If he had told Risa not to say anything, she would definitely oblige because she already saw Miroku as a saviour and would never go against him. There was really no need to kill Risa other than the fact that Miroku couldn't stand the thought of Risa tainting his lofty aspirations of correcting a wrong.
Last but not least, Echika's story was the last of the introduction portion of this drama. It took such a long time before Mizukawa Asami made her first appearance but it was worth the wait after all. I'm impressed with how she managed to potray such a complicated character. It was just a pity that she did not have more airtime to develop the character further and Echika sort of became an accessory to Miroku after the two got together.
I don't think Echika is entirely like what Sudou described her to be i.e. a leech who latches onto a man's misfortune in order to feel needed or at least Echika doesn't do it knowingly. Logically, Echika should have hated Kikuo when she became the victim due to Kikuo's actions. However, Echika saw that even if she had sued Kikuo for the deed, the only people who would have suffered would be his family. Through her earlier interaction with the family, Echika had built up a bond with them and derived satisfaction from being needed by them. As such, I'm of the opinion that she let Kikuo off and went to the extent of marrying him in order to protect his family. And as seen from her sense of loss when Kikuo's mother declared that she is free to leave their family since Kikuo had died, Echika evidently wanted to be needed by someone somewhere. I don't think there's anything romantic between her and Miroku too but rather Miroku's "timely" appearance felt like a life buoy was thrown at her. Miroku needed her and that was all she needed.
There is a similar problem between this drama and "Shokuzai" in that they both suffered from lack of consistency. Some episodes were extremely engaging e.g. when the murder of the girls took place and Echika's story while some paled in comparison. I also feel that this drama lacked a bit of punch in its conclusion so it was a pity to see that the smaller story arcs were sometimes much more interesting that the main storyline. I am just wondering, could this drama have been even more controversial and darker than Shokuzai if it didn't decide to hold back at the last minute? The ending could have been very different if it was decided that Miroku's character was stronger and more egoistic than he was in the drama and that he was slightly tempted by Sudou's proposition to run away together.
As for the acting, I think Koura Kengo did try his best to play the complicated and idealistic Miroku. However, I think Miroku turned out to be more on the pessimistic and cowardy side and his egoistic side was largely restricted to his inner thoughts. It might have been better if he could show this God-wannabe side of Miroku which would be good to contrast against his normally insecure side. Frankly speaking, the most eye-catching person in my opinion was Tanaka Tetsushi because Sudou was such an intriguing character. No doubt he wasn't the lead, he actually stole the limelight with his limited appearances to the extent that Miroku/Koura was no match for him.
In conclusion, if you want something which is dark and explores a theme which is rarely seen in most regular season dramas, this might be for you. However, be warned that this drama is a half-baked attempt at a potentially extreme theme and you might find yourself wondering why the ending did not match up to the anticipation built up in the earlier episodes.
And my ratings for this drama...
Story: 4 out of 10 (Suffered from lack of consistency and an ending which literally fizzled out)
Acting: 7.5 out of 10 (Especially from Tanaka Tetsushi and Mizukawa Asami during Echika's arc)
Theme song: 5 out of 10 (Didn't leave much of an impression on me)
Visual effects / Scenery: 4 out of 10 (Very dark colour scheme as if the characters reside in a world without colours but still not as monotone as what was in Shokuzai)
Teamwork / Chemistry: 5 out of 10 (Most of the time, it was always one party being stronger than the other so there were some sparks lacking.)
Total: 25.5 out of 50
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