Joker Yurusarezaru Sosakan

Sakai Masato reminds me of a Japanese Gary Sinise. There's that same kind of squinty inscrutability - you don't know whether he's sad, amused or lost in thought at any given moment - but with a hint of Jackie Chan's light-heartedness masking deeper character conflicts. In other words, a pitch-perfect performance. He gives the Date character an incredible complexity and a palpable chemistry with every other character he interacts with.

Nishikido Ryo is great as his sidekick Kudo, at first an antagonist, then an apprentice of sorts; Kaga Takeshi as the Chief and Osugi Ren as the bartender and ex-cop Mikami, are both pivotal characters perfectly acted, and each a surprise twist. Anne (Watanabe, daughter of Ken Watanabe of "The Last Samurai" fame,) gives Asuka a necessary gravity as the ethical conscience of the group, and Ryo as journalist and ex-cop Saeko, gives a great performance as a somewhat unpredictable wild-card.

The story itself does a great job of examining two related issues: the question of justice vs. revenge on a direct level, and the issue of justice vs. vigilantism itself on a broader perspective. My only complaint is that by the last couple of episodes there are so many different people involved in the vigilante plot and from so many different angles that the ethical distinctions get a little muddled. And yes, you'll find yourself shouting at your TV "So go burn a couple dozen copies of that CD-R already!" You will also find yourself getting a little annoyed that two of the female characters agree to meet with shady characters in deserted warehouses after dark, against all normal sense of self-preservation. Worse, in Asuka's case she turns around and does it a second time after nearly getting killed the first. Nobody with a functioning brain who valued her life would ever do that.

Nonetheless, the series manages to avoid cliches, doesn't wimp out on uncomfortable subjects (child abuse, corruption, fanaticism,) and admirably uses moral choices among characters rather than arbitrary physical conflicts, as pivot points in the plot. And did I mention the casting was excellent?

This is definitely time well spent.

It's a really engrossing story that keeps you guessing until near the end. Then it turns into a cliche of the bad guys trying to get a hold of some incriminating evidence, in this case a CD-R. That's when it starts to become unbelievable, because they could have burned like 10 copies of the CD-R to keep, and they could have uploaded it to torrent sites like the piratebay if they wanted the evidence to be there for all to see.