Keizoku

I understood what the drama was going for. A witty peculiar drama, which attempted to play on the charisma of the Nakatani Miki and the chemistry of the two lead roles. The story line and the mysteries to be solved were not that compelling and Nakatani Miki could be annoying at times when she becomes oddly high-pitched. Personally, I think TRICK is waaaaaaaaay better. They had similar aims, Keizoku failed and TRICK wins hands down. I did not really find the story clever or interesting.

Early on, this follows a predicable pattern: a brilliant, somewhat eccentric Tokyo University grad (Miki Nakatani) starts off in the police department's dead file room. With her special abilities for deduction, she manages to solve some of the most baffling dead cases, usually half-way through an episode.

The pattern is fairly uniform. Miki Nakatani is competent, but never a particularly skilled performer. Her relative blandness is matched with a number of skilled, eccentric personalities - and an ending that's completely unpredictable (and really quite thrilling).

Aside from the rather repetitive and seemingly juvenile first couple of episodes, this dorama leads the viewer down a deceptively simple path through the first couple of episodes and then takes you completely by surprise as twist after twist emerge. Unquestionably, this police dorama was completely riveting in the second half - truly one of the most well-thought out (in terms of complexity) and well-executed police cases I've seen on TV. The cast played their roles very well; kudos to Nakatani Miki and Watabe Atsuro. As a rating, the first half deserves maybe a 7/10 but the ending was undoubtedly a 10/10. Overall, exceptionally good build up to one of the most suspense-filled endings I have ever watched! Bravo!