Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.

Kujaku no Dance, Dare ga Mita?
(クジャクのダンス、誰が見た? / Kujaku no Dansu, Dare ga Mita? / Who Saw the Peacock’s Dance?)
MyDramaList rating: 7.0/10

Hello hello and welcome to a new review. After my tedious last watch, I was really happy when my Spin the Wheel app picked out a much shorter drama, and I went through it faster than I’d expected. I’d been looking forward to this show as it had piqued my interest as soon as it came on my radar, so I was excited to finally get to watch it. In contrast to my last one, this will be predominantly positieve review as I was genuinely impressed by multiple elements of it. Let’s get into that jungle, shall we?

Kujaku no Dance, Dare ga Mita? is a TBS Japanese drama series with ten episodes of about 45 minutes each. It’s adapted from a manga series by Asami Rito by the same name. I watched the whole thing with excellent subtitles (credits to Saim Ul Hassan👌🏻) on KissKH. The story is about university student Yamashita Komugi (played by Hirose Suzu) whose widowed father, former police officer Yamashita Haruo (played by Lily Franky) is suddenly murdered with arson on Christmas Eve. The main suspect is almost immediately caught – Endo Tomoya, the son of a culprit Haruo arrested 22 years ago – but then Komugi receives a letter from her father that states that, if Endo Tomoya is arrested for his murder, he’ll have been falsely accused. The letter further includes a list of people that he asks her to protect, and he recommends a specific lawyer to ask for help. This lawyer is Matsukaze Yoshiteru (played by Matsuyama Kenichi). At first, Matsukaze brushes Komugi off by saying he never even met her father and that this letter proves nothing – how does she even know it was actually her dad who wrote it? However, he ultimately can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more behind it and decides to help Komugi out, who in turn starts working part-time at his law firm. Together, they tread into the deep forest of secrets and lies that connects Haruo’s murder to the case he worked on 22 years ago, and end up untangling a complex web that ties together a lot of people in unexpected ways. What happened, truly? Did anyone actually see the metaphorical peacock dance in the forest?

First of all, I just want to say something about the title. As a language nerd, I always love learning new expressions and wordplay, and I really liked how well the title was used in the context of the story. For starters, the expression “who saw the peacock dance in the forest/jungle?” is already explained by Haruo in the first episode. It personally made me think of the conceptually similar expression “when a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one to witness it, did it really happen or did it even make a sound?” (yes, I also immediately started singing the bridge from Dear Evan Hansen’s “Waving Through a Window”) It builds on the question whether things can be said to have happened when they haven’t been witnessed. In the case of this expression, I believe there’s a slight difference in nuance, since the peacock symbolizes something of value, like a talent or piece of art: can something be called valuable when it’s not being perceived/appreciated? Haruo’s explanation referred to a situation in Komugi’s childhood where she was accused of ripping up someone’s brandnew scarf, even though no one actually saw her do it. I thought it was cool that they kept referring to the title in terms of finding the peacock (the truth) in the deep forest (the complex web of secrets). It took me a while to actually pinpoint what it stood for in the story, but in the end it all fell into place, and that was very satisfying. So yeah, props to the mangaka for coming up with this expression as the title!

One element that made me kind of nervous to review this series was the intrinsically connected cast of characters. Especially towards the end, the way everything and everyone is linked to each other gets pretty complex and hard to explain in a few simple sentences. Nevertheless, I was pretty impressed by how well it was written, especially in terms of the characters’ motivations and connections. Murder mysteries have a tendency to come up with slightly anticlimactic endings or perpretators that you either saw coming from the start, or that are just sprung on you at the last moment. Although there are still a couple of connections that I didn’t fully understand, I think this show (and I guess the manga, originally) did a really good job at tying everything and everyone together. I do agree with Robert Morane’s comment on MDL that it lacked ‘wow’ moments and that it’s pretty stagnant in pace. It kind of reminded me of Saiai; the story was good, but it lacked a certain ‘umph’ that could’ve made the tension and thrill of it peak even more. Having said that, I think it started off very promisingly with several unexpected plot twists and cliffhangers, and I still don’t dislike how everything was explained in the end, even if it wasn’t mind-blowing, per se.

Before I start on my character analysis, I want to elaborate a bit more on the context of the story a little bit. As mentioned in my intro, Komugi’s father Haruo used to be a police officer and 22 years ago he investigated a very high-profile case known as the Higashikayama Incident, named after the vicinity where it happened. This case included the murder of a family of six, the Hayashikawas, of whom five were found hanging from the rails of a staircase. The only survivor was the then six months-old baby daughter, Hayashikawa Uta. The person arrested for this case was a man called Endo Rikiro (Sakou Yoshi), as he was the Hayashikawas’ gardener – meaning he had access to their property – and the first person to find the bodies. Because of his arrest, his young son Tomoya (as a child fantastically played by Yuda Kouki) was left all alone, as his mother had already left before, due to his father’s drinking habits. Now, 22 years later, Haruo – an officer who aided in Rikiro’s persecution – is murdered in his own house, which was set on fire. As Tomoya (as an adult played by Narita Ryo) was spotted near the crime scene, the police immediately assumed that he had done it to avenge his father. However, in the letter Haruo leaves Komugi, Tomoya’s name is mentioned as one of the people that would likely be ‘falsely accused’, and would therefore need help. That’s the starting point of the story.

Let’s talk a bit about Komugi. Honestly, in hindsight I feel like she’s probably the main reason for the lack of ‘wow’ factors in this show. I personally found it quite hard to gauge her personality at times. For starters, we never actually learn what she’s studying at university, and we only ever see her interact with one friend, Arisa (Seino Asahi), whom she’s apparently known since elementary school. Other than that, she seems to be quite timid and soft-spoken, except for her occasional banter with Matsukaze. The only thing that she had going for her in the end was her determination to get to the bottom of everything, even if that meant unraveling one painful truth after another. I can’t deny that it was satisfying to see her persevere on, especially because she initially starts out as a deer in headlights. Still, I didn’t feel like I really got to know her. Despite feeling for her with all the shite she got to deal with involving her own identity and past, it always felt like I was watching her deal with everything by herself from a distance, rather than that I got to feel her sadness and pain with her. She always remained a bit closed off to me as a main character, and that was a pity. Her growth was definitely much more subtle than that of others; there were actually a lot of side characters with pretty emotional and elaborate backstories that I related to way more than I did to Komugi. I always prefer developing a deeper bond with a main character, so I would say that was kind of a bummer. I feel like she was written to be a tragic heroine, which was fine, but sometimes I would’ve liked her to have a bit more personality, or that she would’ve at least been defined by more quirks than just rubbing chopsticks together to break them apart more easily. I would even say she was ‘drowned out’ by the vast number of characters that did have more outspoken personalities, which was kind of disappointing for a main character. Having said that, I did really admire Komugi in the end. I liked her banter with Matsukaze and how she gradually opened up to him. I liked how she became so determined to face every single aspect of the truth, even if it wouldn’t put her mind at ease. She definitely had guts and I’m glad she didn’t become a full-flegded “it’s all my fault” martyr in the end. I guess I just wished she could’ve been attributed some more interesting personality traits.

Speaking of interesting personalities, let’s look at Matsukaze. While he’s initially introduced as a bit of a grump, it doesn’t take long for him to start opening up to Komugi. I personally really liked his character’s growth, it was very subtle and gradual. It wasn’t as if he made a very sudden transformation, but it was clear to see how he softened while watching Komugi go through all those painful revelations. Despite their mutual distrust in the beginning, it was pretty wholesome to see how much they ended up relying on each other. It was nice to see Matsukaze become someone Komugi trusted completely, how he went from being such a cynic to someone she could rely on without it getting too cheesy. I’m beyond happy that they didn’t push them together romantically, because there really would’ve been no room for that. I wouldn’t say they got so close as to call them ‘friends’, but they definitely became powerful allies and I loved their budding ‘companionship’.
I also liked that we got a bit of backstory on Matsukaze. We find out that his father, Kuze Masakatsu (Sasai Eisuke) used to be a police officer, but disappeared without a word one day. At some point, Matsukaze ends up tracking his father down for information about another police officer, and they are reunited, albeit very awkwardly. It was nice to get some closure between them: it actually touched my heart seeing Matsukaze finally face how he’d been feeling towards his dad, and to see those two grown men cry together. I liked getting to see a more softer side of his dad as well, as he’d seemed so stern in the police force. (By the way, I couldn’t help but giggle at the thought of him sharing his son’s last name: Matsukaze Masakatsu would’ve been a real tongue twister, lol.)
Even though Matsukaze also remained quite low in energy, it really worked for him that he had the ‘tsukkomi’ thing going on. It was also nice to see his partnership with Hasami Yukinobu (Morisaki Win), his fellow attorney. With everything going on and all the surprising revelations, it honestly wouldn’t have surprised me if Hasami turned out to be more involved in things as well, but in hindsight I’m glad at least he was an unproblematic character that was really just there to help Matsukaze and Komugi with their investigation.

This mainly goes for Arisa and Hasami, but I really appreciated the way that this show dealt with even the supporting characters that weren’t tied to any of the cases. I loved the moment where Arisa came clean to Komugi about how she kept quiet about that scarf incident in elementary school, and how she just started crying out of pure compassion when Komugi told her about what she’d found out about herself. She was such a genuine friend to her and I remember thinking to myself that it was so good to have her there, because Komugi really needed people that weren’t part of that cesspool, to fall back on. Same went for Hasami. I was just grateful for him to be a genuinely loyal friend and colleague to Matsukaze, and that he remained so helpful in their investigation, even if it had nothing to do with him and he had his own clients to deal with. We need more unproblematic side characters like this, who contribute to the story even when they don’t partake in the dramatic parts of the plot.

I can’t move forward without first talking a bit more about Haruo himself. In my eyes, even though his character died in the first episode, he was the true hero of the story. I’m really glad he remained a regular character through the flashbacks, and we still got to know so much about him. Even as a police officer that had to interrogate potential suspects, Haruo was an incredibly good-hearted man. We saw how he dealt with Someda’s questioning – he always saw the good in people and tried to understand where they were coming from. He started re-investigating the Higashikayama Incident out of genuine worry and regret that he had caused the wrong person to be arrested – I loved how they clarified this even more at the end by showing that Haruo’s earlier disruption of the crime scene caused a discrepancy with Rikiro’s testimony. He genuinely wanted to make things right, even if he would have to acknowledge that he made a mistake. This in turn became even more powerful with the revelation that the real culprits were unable to own up to their mistakes. All in all, I just felt like this story did such an interesting job at putting things in perspective – the ‘good’ people were punished for doing the right thing, while the ‘bad’ people got away with ruining other families’ lives in order to ‘protect’ their own.

To me, one of the saddest side character arcs of this series was the one about Mr. Someda. Someda Susumu (played by Sakai Toshiya) is introduced in the first episode as a friendly elderly man who runs a ramen stall that Haruo and Komugi often eat at. He’s an old friend of Haruo, that is to say, he used to be a convict but Haruo encouraged him to turn over a new leaf. Sadly, he is also the first ‘collateral’ death in the story. Through his backstory we find out that Someda used to have a great life with a good job, a wife and a baby son. However, because of a wrong investment choice, he lost everything at work, causing his wife to take their child and leave him. In his fragile state, he ended up opening up to the wrong person, who got him addicted to drugs and used that to force him to forge signatures on illegal contraband. When he was arrested for this, Haruo helped him to get out and change his ways, but his past always remained a dangerous liability for him. After Haruo’s death, someone manages to persuade him with drugs again and he’s threatened into confessing that he faked Haruo’s letter to Komugi, as he’s had experience with forging handwriting before. Although he ends up admitting everything to Komugi, he’s lured away before she can take him to Matsukaze, and his body is discovered in the river shortly after.
Honestly, I had mixed feelings about Someda’s death. With the danger of his situation, it was very predictable that something would happen to him before he could confess the truth to the police. I really wished Komugi wouldn’t have let him out of her sight when she went to get Matsukaze. Even though it’s understandable that she was oblivious to the actual danger he was in, I still thought she could’ve been more careful – he did just tell her that he was being watched and threatened by someone. So yeah, I felt like his death was unnecessarily cruel. His only real crime was his prior felony of drug use and forgery, plus the fact that he’d agreed to help cover up that Haruo actually wrote that letter to Komugi. In the grand scheme of things, that definitely wasn’t the worst thing, by far even. He never meant to cause Haruo or Komugi any harm, and they never blamed him for anything, either. In any case, it was nice to see his history with Haruo. Gosh, I really loved Haruo. I think I’d actually call him my favorite character. You could say that, even though he died in the first episode, his legacy was continued by Komugi. She always carried his goodness and kindness with her, and this I think is also what made it bearable for her to find out he wasn’t her biological father.

Although the possibility is already hinted at in the first couple of episodes, it’s only until halfway through the story that Komugi is able to confirm that she’s actually Hayashikawa Uta, the sole survivor of the Higashikayama Incident. She was supposed to be taken in by a relative of her biological father, a guy called Tsujii Kota (Toritani Hiroyuki), who blatantly admitted he was only interested in the media exposure it would get him. With the help of Haruo’s work partner and colleague Akazawa Tadashi (played by Fujimoto Takahiro), little Uta was saved from Tsujii (albeit through an illegal method), and adopted by Haruo and his wife Shizuka (Sendo Nobuko), who raised her as their own daughter, Yamashita Komugi.

Knowing this, it makes even more sense that the Akazawas were the first people to show up for Komugi after Haruo’s death. Besides their prior collaboration in getting Komugi adopted by the Yamashitas, it was clear that their families had been friends for a long time – one of Komugi’s most cherished childhood memories was of them going on a late-night picnic together.
Ironically, Akazawa becomes somewhat of a rival to Komugi and Matsukaze in their investigation. As he also worked with Haruo on the Higashikayama Incident 22 years ago, he is convinced that Endo Tomoya is guilty and strives to get him prosecuted as soon as possible. He is strengthened in his resolve by his director, Anan Yuki (played by Takiuchi Kumi). Akazawa has been known for using pretty intense methods of persuasion, even to the point of forcing innocent people to confess to something they didn’t do. Matsukaze’s father Kuze, who used to be Akazawa’s supervisor, repeatedly warned him about this approach as well. Anan, on the other hand, urges him to go as far as he can if it means getting Tomoya to break.
I have no other description for Akazawa than ‘a grumpy old bear’. Seriously, this guy pretty much had the same facial expression throughout the entire series, lol. He was a big guy with an angry face, but I was glad that there was at least a bit of a ‘teddybear’ underneath that. He genuinely cared about Komugi and everything he did was meant to protect her from getting hurt, even though keeping the truth from her probably wasn’t the best way to go. As much as the story hinted at the fact that he had been guilty of way more than just keeping secrets, in hindsight I actually don’t think he had that much to account for. His only ‘crime’ was a good deed: forging Hayashikawa Uta’s birth certificate and providing her with a new identity to protect her from being taken in by a shady relative. Sure, it was against the law, but I really couldn’t see that as a crime. He saved a baby’s life and allowed her to grow up in a loving home with the most loving parents. Was he the best father and husband in his own family? Probably not. But he wasn’t a bad person. I was really relieved that he survived that final confrontation, because it would’ve been a pretty pointless last death to add to the list.
I also want to give a shoutout to his two subordinates, Akisada Takao (Itose Soichi) and Nishijin Makoto (Saito Yu). There were a few instances where the camera lingered on Akisada just a tad bit longer than usual, which immediately made me suspicious, but in the end he was really just a loyal police officer. I appreciated that he was sharp enough to see that something was off about Akazawa’s behavior. The fact that he actually submitted that piece of dog fur for DNA, just because he knew Akazawa didn’t have a dog, lol. I would’ve called that quite circumstancial evidence, but hey, it actually ended up placing him on the Awayama crime scene. Nonetheless, I liked that Akisada went after him out of genuine worry and not because he started suspecting him of anything bad, per se.
Nishijin, on the other hand, was more of a comic relief character. I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy is a comedian in real life, lol. He actually cracked me up a couple of times, also because he performed it so sincerely. I cackled when that superior yelled at him to go find Akazawa and the first thing he did was look under the desk in front of him.😂😂 That was such a nice ‘boke’ moment. Also, when Akazawa was hospitalized and said something like: “Isn’t it pathetic that I barely even knew my own family?” and he just went: “Yes.” 😂 I loved that. This show had such unexpected humor, honestly.

My first impression of Akazawa’s wife Kyoko (played by Nishida Naomi) was that she seemed so ‘motherly’ towards Komugi – which is very ironic in hindsight, I know. She just seemed like such a warm and soft person next to her husband, and because she also had her son Mamoru (Nomura Kota) to care for, I never saw it as more than just motherly instincts. While they did let it seep through that their marriage left some things to be desired, starting with the fact that her husband often stayed out late, even to the point of missing Mamoru’s birthday dinner, I didn’t immediately catch on to the fact that things weren’t going well between them. Again, I think it was written very realistically how Akazawa was too consumed by his work to even notice that his wife kept such a big secret from him. It made his acknowledgement that he really didn’t know her that well, all the more valid.
It might just be my usual qualm with the way murder mysteries are often solved, but I can’t deny that I had mixed feelings about the revelation of Kyoko’s involvement with the Higashikayama Incident. I guess there were some very subtle hints, for example when Hiroshima Ikumi (Iketani Nobue) called Komugi ‘Oka-chan’ at the nursing home. At the time, I just assumed she meant her biological mother as in Mrs. Hayashikawa. I didn’t remember her first name being mentioned before, so I just assumed she was called ‘Oka’ – I also thought that would make sense since her two daughters were called ‘Oto’ and ‘Uta’ and it had a similar cadence. Little did I know that I was on to something: it was the name of Komugi’s biological mother, but not the one I had in mind.
In the very last episode it’s revealed that Kyoko, shortly after giving birth to Mamoru, took a break from her husband and secretly set up a company to support struggling housewives behind his back. She did this with her childhood friend Hiroshima Ikumi, another name on the list. The person who helped them fund the company was none other than Hayashikawa Yasunari (Nomaguchi Toru), the head of the Hayashikawa household. He and Kyoko started an affair, which resulted in her pregnancy with his child: Uta. As much as Yasunari loved Kyoko, the reputation of his family was very important to him, and he couldn’t just elope with her. In the end, his wife Satoko (Ando Wako) completely lost it and killed her own children and parents, after which Yasunari incidentally strangled her in an attempt to stop her from killing him as well. Seeing his whole family dead, he couldn’t bring himself to walk away with Kyoko and Uta, so he asked Kyoko to help him string everyone up, including himself, to make it look like a mass murder. Imagine being asked to aid the love of your life in doing that – that was incredibly forked up. I can imagine how that messed with Kyoko’s head, and also how anxious it made her when Haruo told her he was planning on reinvestigating the case. Everything she did, was to protect her family. Now that I think about it, she even went so far as to call her son ‘Mamoru’, which is written with the kanji 守, ‘to protect’. That naming choice just got a whole new meaning to it. With both her husband and son in the police force, she couldn’t bear the thought of this coming out and dragging them down with her. So she killed Haruo to silence him. She drugged him and set his house on fire, after calling Endo Tomoya to come meet her somewhere in the neighborhood, just so he would be in close proximity to the crime scene.
If I didn’t already find her audacious for offering Komugi money to keep the truth about her husband’s involvement in her adoption a secret from the police, the fact that she justified killing Haruo, aka ruining another family at the expense of ‘protecting’ her own, was pretty crazy. For both her and her accomplice, it really didn’t matter what happened to other people as long as they could protect their own reputations. This made them the polar opposites of Haruo, who was willing to put his own name on the line to admit he had convicted the wrong person. It was a despicable act by a very troubled woman. I do wish I could’ve gotten a better understanding of the whole ‘people getting in her way’ thing, though. We only get a very brief flashback of her growing up in a poor environment and losing her younger brother to starvation. She even says something like: “maybe that’s where it all started going wrong”, but then later she says that she returned to the Hayashikawa residence to kill herself because that was the place where “everything started going wrong”. I was at least glad to find out she never meant to stab Akazawa and that his injury was an accident – she wanted to take it onto herself, without harming her husband and son.
So yeah, I guess although it was clear that she was hiding more than she was letting on, I definitely didn’t expect this outcome, or that she would actually be involved in the Higashikayama Incident. Something this show did very well was continuously giving you little snippets of hints about people, but never enough to prove that they actually did something bad. For Kyoko as well, it’s not that she personally killed the Hayashikawas – that turned out to be a mass murder amongst the family itself. Waiting until the final moment for the very last piece of truth to be revealed definitely kept me on my toes, I’ll give it that.

Speaking of the beforementioned accomplice, I’ll have to go back and elaborate a bit more on Anan Yuki, the director of the police force that Akazawa is a part of. I wondered why we got a flashback about her youth before, it was all part of the bigger picture. Again, compliments to how it was written. It actually made me feel for Anan, seeing how her mother was only ever obsessed with the possibility that her husband would one day come back to them. Even after she finally got away from her and married, her husband was too insecure to appreciate her having a more successful career than him, and she was forced to go back to her mother. While vouching to never become like her mom, waiting for her husband to come home, she worked her way up and ultimately became the first female police director in the vicinity.
Throughout the story, she’s shown to be in contact through telephone by a mysterious man. We never see his face, only a specific keyring on his backpack. This man is seemingly connected to almost everyone, from Someda to the Awayama couple and even Tsujii, the guy who was supposed to take in Uta. The fact that his voice was muffled made me feel like he would be revealed as a character we’d already met, but when the moment of truth finally came around, I really didn’t see it coming.
Shortly after Someda’s death, Komugi and Matsukaze’s investigation team is strengthened by an unexpected addition: one Mr. Narukawa Tooru (played by Mamiya Hiroyuki). He used to be a prosecutor at the time of the Higashikayama Incident and was therefore also involved in convicting Rikiro. With his quirky demeanor and comical Osaka dialect, my first impression was that he was probably more of a liability than a threat, lol. He was introduced in such a jovial way that I instinctively thought: right, they’re making you sympathetic towards him. I’ve seen these shows before. Something might happen to him.
So when it was revealed that he was the mysterious man AND Anan’s father, I actually cried out: “WHAT?!” I really didn’t see that one coming, even though I was prepared for it to be a character we’d already been introduced to. So again, props to the writers (and the mangaka) for that twist. Having said that, I thought that his reason for doing what he did was quite shallow, in hindsight. On the one hand, his intention was really similar to Kyoko’s: he didn’t want his own mistake to come out and have a bad influence on his daughter’s future. Just like Kyoko, he wasn’t able to admit to the world that he’d made a mistake (convicting Rikiro) or try to make things right. He may not have killed Haruo, but he did coerce Someda into admitting that he forged his letter by exposing him to his main weakness – drugs – and later gave the order to kill him. He also set fire to the Awayama home, which was really uncalled for, those poor people who, again, really didn’t do anything wrong. He sniffed out every single trace that could lead back to the Higashikayama Incident, all in order to save his own skin and ‘protect’ his daughter’s reputation. As long as he could protect his own family, it didn’t matter what happened to others. Damn. At least he had the decency to admit that he was a coward himself.

I’d like to move on to the final couple of characters, people that were rightfully redeemed in my opinion.
First of all: Kamii. Kamii Takashi (played by Isomura Hayato) is a reporter who starts out on Komugi and Matsukaze’s bad side. I remember thinking to myself that I found it so typical that reporters in these kinds of stories are always depicted as really shady and sneaky people who only care about exposing others’ secrets. While Kamii initially starts out with a similar vibe – even to the point that I expected him to get into serious trouble for digging into things too deeply – I was pleasantly surprised about the way he came around. At first it seemed as if he was just confronting people with pieces of information that he’d dug up, purely to see their shocked reactions. He had ties EVERYWHERE, and I just couldn’t put my finger on how he managed to be so incredibly on top of things, being the sleazy reporter that he seemed to be. In the end, it’s revealed that he’s actually Tomoya’s childhood friend and that he became a reporter to find out the truth about the Higashikayama Incident himself, since he just couldn’t believe it was Rikiro, his friendly old neighbor that taught him how to play baseball. Against all expectations, he actually becomes a big ally to the team and even leads them to Hiroshima Ikumi, the last name on the list and their final lead. To think he actually spent 22 years building up to this, collecting pieces of evidence and everything, to find out more about the case his neighbor was arrested for… The reignition caused by Haruo’s death that led him to Komugi must’ve been the break he’d been so desperately waiting for. This would also explain his fired-up excitement at finding out whatever new things he could find. I did wonder how long he’d been sitting on the evidence that Komugi was Uta, because he’d never actually met her before. He literally hit her with that in episode 3, which was immediately a huge twist.
In hindsight, I actually think Kamii might’ve been my second favorite character. He was so well-written and the actor was amazing. I love it when a character initially seems kind of despicable but you just can’t hate them because the actor is doing such a great job. I was really happy when he came around at the end and offered to help out the team, even apologizing to Komugi for being such a jerk to her before. His intentions were good, he never lost his way and he continuously stayed his quirky self. I really liked him.

And then finally, I want to say something about the two people that I still believe to be the true victims of the entire story: Rikiro and Tomoya.
Meine Gute. I felt so sorry for these men. As if Tomoya’s childhood backstory wasn’t enough to get me choked up – seeing how he was just left to his own devices at freaking ten years old, being bullied relentlessly for ‘being the son of a murderer’ – the dawning revelation that both he AND his father were falsely accused hit really hard. How could anyone have let this happen, honestly? If anything, this just proved that Kyoko and Narukawa didn’t give a single flying flip about other people. The fact that they could look away and sleep peacefully at night, knowing that they accused a completely innocent man and even separated him from his child, was unbelievable.
As painful as that childhood flashback was to watch, it was again amazingly powerful. Tomoya’s character was so well-established, from his childhood to the point where he realized his father had been forced to confess under pressure and there was nothing for him to do but admit as well. Seriously, how did they do such a good job at fleshing out most of the supporting characters, yet leave Komugi so incredibly flat and one-dimensional? I really wonder what this is like in the manga now.
If there was any scene in this series that moved me to tears, it was the one in the final episode where Rikiro and Tomoya were reunited. Father and son, both condemned to rot away in a cell for something they didn’t do, finally acquitted and free. I loved how Rikiro gave Tomoya a baseball glove, and the fact that Kamii was there as well just recreated that whole flashback of the three of them playing baseball together. It was really nice to finally see Tomoya smile for the first time in the entire series.

Now that I’ve covered all the characters I wished to discuss, I want to go over some more opinions I have regarding the series in general, and some final things that I found a bit confusing, in hindsight. All in all, as I said, I was really impressed with how well everything fit together and fell into place in the end, but there were a few things that went over my head.

To start with the positives, I really appreciated how this series fleshed out as much as possible. Not just in terms of characters, as I’ve already discussed, but also in providing visual evidence for certain events and memories. For example, the family picture. Quite early on, I believe as soon as the Higashikayama Incident is mentioned, there’s this old picture that shows the entire Hayashikawa family of six, including baby Uta on Grandma’s lap. This picture comes back a number of times, but it’s only when we find out that Uta was born out of an affair that they show the scene in which the photo was taken. Seeing the actual moment in which this happened, knowing that Uta was being posed off as the newest addition to the Hayashikawa family, and seeing the other family members’ reactions to it was really cool. As soon as the picture was taken, Satoko stormed off and Grandma immediately pushed the baby back into Yasunari’s arms. Just getting that extra background information filled out for a picture that kept coming back added so much to the texture of everything.
I also loved the consistency and the attention to detail of certain things. Besides the trick for how to break chopsticks in half more easily, there was also a thing with pudding that kept coming back. In the beginning, when Matsukaze is still warning Komugi of the risks that this investigation might bring with it, he pours a cup of coffee over his favorite pudding. I don’t remember the reasoning exactly, but I think it was about having something you like and then finding out something about it that makes you see it differently. After which Komugi eats the pudding, coffee and all, and says: “It’s still pudding.” Going forward, Matsukaze keeps eating his pudding like that, drenched in coffee. I thought that was a really nice detail, and they actually kept it in until the very last episode.
I always love things like this because it shows just how much thought and attention went into the details and the consistency of the story. Like how Matsukaze became Komugi’s new ramen buddy and they kept searching for new places to eat ramen together. The recurring scene of characters stumbling into that forest and coming eye to eye with that mesmerizing peacock. The “a rumbling stomach is a sign you’re still alive!” quote. I love little things like that, it makes scene feel so much more alive and textured.

Something I also really liked about this series was the way it was filmed. The transitions and cinematography were really good. I remember actually voicing my appreciation for certain transitions out loud, like when you would look over someone’s shoulder and shift to the other shoulder to transition into a flashback. There was a really cool one with Someda as well, I believe it was like a one-shot that tied different scenes from his past together.
There’s one set of shots that I like so much that I actually want to capture it here. In the episode that focusses on Akazawa’s secret of forging Uta’s birth certificate, he and Haruo are talking outside of the police office during a smoke break, bathing in light. Shortly after that, we’re back in present-day and Akazawa is standing there looking at where Haruo once stood. Haruo from the flashback briefly reappears, basking in the light. Then the flashback fades and it’s just Akazawa standing there by himself in the shade. Look at this art.

I always try to look out for symbolic cinematography, like when there’s a reflection or a physical division between people.
Another example of a cool shot was when Matsukaze and Komugi came to talk to Kyoko after she was arrested, and their reflections through the glass made it look like the three of them were sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder.

So yeah, this show definitely gets points from me for cinematography. I love spotting cool transitions, even when they don’t have a meaning or purpose. It just adds to the visual quality of the series and makes it look good, which also contributes to the watching experience.

In terms of the music, there was one song that stood out to me by far. I can’t deny that I was a bit thrown off by the upbeat song that played during the first scene, which showed the hanging bodies of the Hayashikawas, that was kind of weird. But the ending song, “Erufu” by Ado is such a banger. It starts out as a typical-sounding Japanese drama song, but then it intensifies into that “🤟🏻KIECHIMAEEEE!!!🤟🏻” that just blows it out of the park. That song had me bopping my head with a stank face like:

To go back to the story for a moment, I just want to remark on how often the theme of neglectful parenting or the absence of a parent came back.
I’ve talked about the parallels between Kyoko and Narukawa before, and how they both did what they did to ‘protect’ their families, yet apparently didn’t care about the effects their actions would have on other families. Apart from that, I also found it interesting that they both kept using the “where did it start going wrong?” question, almost as a means to justify their deeds. It’s as if they both tried to pinpoint a moment where they took a wrong turn, or where they were forced into a specific situation that led them astray. Again, I feel like this was just a defense mechanism to justify their own actions to themselves. For Kyoko, her actions were ’caused’ by people ‘standing in her way’ which ‘left her no other choice’, and for Narukawa it was all meant to keep his daughter in a favorable light. I just keep thinking how interesting it is that they were the complete opposites of Haruo.
Speaking of this difference, is it just me or was almost every character in this series abandoned by a relative at one point? In almost every family setting we see, a parent leaves their child, disappears or passes away. Someda’s wife leaves with their son. Tomoya’s mother leaves him with his father. Anan grew up with an absent father and a neglectful mother. Komugi’s mother died, Matsukaze’s father disappeared. Even Kyoko left Akazawa for a while after giving birth to Mamoru. The theme of parents and relatives leaving was very apparent in this one. Specifically, parents running away from their mistakes instead of facing up to them. The only in-between case was Matsukaze’s father. He also left home out of embarassment for being accused of stealing. The reconciliation between Matsukaze and his father at least made up for that, as he got to express his regret with regards to the situation. Narukawa kept calling himself a coward and eventually turned himself in, but Kyoko only ever started apologizing in court, even though it never felt genuine from her side. It was an interesting pattern, and I’m glad at least all the kids turned out for the better because they all acknowledged that the way their parents had handled things wasn’t great, to say the least.

Lastly, I just want to mention a couple of things that I didn’t fully understand in the end, the only few ‘plotholes’ I could find.
First of all, when Mr. Awayama showed Komugi the video of when Haruo and Shizuka took her in, I found it hard to gauge how Komugi was feeling, exactly. Of course, she must have still been in shock from the confirmation that she really was Uta and that her whole identity had been a lie, but this video was nothing but love and warmth. If anything, it proved that her adoptive parents had always seen, accepted and treated her as their own daughter. Still, I couldn’t really see any kind of endearment or relief in Komugi’s tears, she was just sad-crying, it seemed. I guess this kind of fell together with what she described later in the café? When she saw a happy family eating together and got jealous, even though she knew she’d been loved and cherished just as much? I guess it was a mix of complicated emotions. This was one of those examples of what I mentioned before, that it felt like I was watching her from a distance, and also feeling an emotional distance as she processed this. From how I saw it, it didn’t matter that she was adopted. Haruo and Shizuka had always been her parents, blood-related or not, and this video only confirmed that. I just wondered what else was behind those tears, and what exactly about the video made her so sad?

Secondly, Kyoko’s testimony. She ultimately reveals that she contacted Narukawa to be her accomplice, and that she also was the one who ‘called’ Tomoya to meet near Haruo’s house in order to make him appear near the crime scene. How did she get in touch with them, though? I guess she was somehow tied to the Higashikayama case since her husband investigated it, and because Narukawa was one of the prosecutors she could’ve gotten his contact, but that still felt like kind of a long shot. I also couldn’t think of how she possibly managed to contact Tomoya and get him to meet her – a woman he didn’t even know – at a certain place near Haruo’s house. It would’ve made sense if they’d explained that she lured him there with some sort of message about knowing the truth about his father or something, but that wasn’t clarified. I couldn’t help but wonder how she managed to call Tomoya and get him to come to that place when they allegedly weren’t in contact at all.

Also, what the heck happened to Komugi’s ‘aunt’, Kimura Natsumi (Hara Hideko)? She only appeared in like two episodes, which also showed that she knew that Komugi was adopted and that she therefore didn’t have any right to Haruo’s money. She seemed like she’d play such a prominent role, also being in contact with Kamii and giving him information in return for money. But she just disappeared! I mean, one less person to worry about I guess, but I really expected her to become a regular character.

All in all, I really enjoyed watching this series. It’s been so long since I watched a Japanese show that managed to hold my attention until the end and never got tiring or tedious. The acting was great, the story and the characters were well-written and -established, and it had a couple of cool twists and turns. The climax was nicely contained within the characters we’d already been introduced to, yet it still managed to surprise me. I liked it.

Now, without further Ado (*badum tss*), let’s move on to the cast comments!

I’m always happy to see Hirose Suzu in a drama, because she’s such a beautifully and subtle actress. I’ve seen her in a bunch of things, starting from when she still played high school students, like Gakkou no Kaidan, Kaito Tantei Yamaneko, Yuugure ni, Te wo Tsunagu, and the movies Umimachi Diary and most recently, A Pale View of Hills, which I LOVED her in. I definitely prefer her in more quirky roles, but I still really liked her performance in this show. Even as Komugi, who didn’t emote very much, she just got this look in her eyes that pierced through. Her emotional acting was fantastic. The gradual transition to her outburst as she was watching that happy family in the café was so good I actually took a screenshot to use as a reference for a portrait drawing. Despite my qualms regarding the vanilla level of her character, she still did an amazing job. I wish we could’ve seen more footage of Komugi in her happy, carefree smiling days. Suzu-chan did a great job in this, honestly.

Although I know who Matsuyama Kenichi is, I actually haven’t seen much of his acting yet, so it was cool to see him in this drama. There’s still a couple of things (both series and movies) with him on my list, so I hope to get to those soon. It was really fun to see him as Matsukaze. I’m not sure if he’s used to playing funny roles, but the way he switched between serious and ‘tsukkomi’ was really good. I’m glad he also got to shed some tears in this story. I think overall he had the most character development, albeit still quite subtle. I loved to see how he slowly but surely softened towards Komugi and her situation, yet never started acting like her protector. He just watched her resilience grow in silence and was always there to stand at her side when she decided to face another harsh truth. They had a really nice, natural banter dynamic going on. I really liked him in this.

If you’re as big of a Koreeda Hirokazu fan as I am, there’s no way you haven’t seen Lily Franky yet. I’ve seen him in Like Father, Like Son, Umimachi Diary, Manbiki Kazoku, and I also saw him in Call Me Chihiro not too long ago. He appeared in The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (also a Koreeda). He’s such a familiar face. I’m kind of used to him playing lazy, sleazy men, but the heart that he put into his character in this series was amazing. He really impressed me. I loved that he still got to play such a big part in the show, even when his character died so early on. As I said, he was my favorite character because he was just so GOOD. He was the only adult, it seemed, who couldn’t sit still after learning they made a mistake that badly impacted an innocent person’s life. This is how we should all be. Be like Yamashita Haruo. Nothing but praise for Lily Franky. His father-daughter chemistry with Suzu-chan was also incredibly endearing to see. I’m glad I got to see him in this. Bless him.

Narita Ryo looks and sounds so familiar to me, but I’ve only seen him in a couple of things, most of which I don’t even remember much. He was also in Gakkou no Kaidan, which has kind of eluded me completely as I found it kind of boring. He appeared in NigeHaji and Romantics Anonymous, which I watched not too long ago. Anyways, I barely even recognized him at first. Something about the look in his eye just transformed him into a completely different person, which was cool to see. I’m glad he didn’t portray Tomoya as one of those typical psychos that acted all crazy about whether they did or didn’t do it. He only put on the maniacal act when he confessed to being guilty, because to him that was just the cruel joke of his situation. He would only ever be forced into confessing, even when he was innocent, just like his dad. So even when he did get that crazy glint in his eye, it made total sense and it wasn’t just to make him appear like a psychopath. I felt so freaking bad for his character, I can’t even put it into words.
Additionally, a huge shoutout to Yuda Kouki, who played his child version. Holy shit, that kid could act. I’m always so impressed by Japanese and Korean child actors that can convey such depth in their emotional acting at such a young age. He blew me away, honestly.

I’d never seen Fujimoto Takahiro in anything before. He was the only actor that sometimes made me go: ‘Can you not look so angry all the time?’, lol. As I mentioned before, to me he was the literal embodiment of a big, grumpy bear, and his face was always like this: 😠. They made it quite easy to believe that he would blow a gasket and accidentally hurt someone, but I kept feeling like that would be too obvious. In the end, I was glad that he really wasn’t involved too deeply, and that he really only went against the law when he saved Uta from that awful relative. That in itself redeemed him for me completely. For someone as passionate as him to go against the law like that to protect a child, that said everything about his good nature. He really was just looking out for his family, including Komugi, the entire time. It was cool to see his portrayal of this character, and nice to see a new face as well.

The award for my favorite acting job in this series undeniably goes to Isomura Hayato. I don’t know why, but he looks so familiar to me, even though MDL tells me I haven’t seen him in anything before. The energy and verve with which he portrayed Kamii was unequaled. It’s been a long time since I was able to look at someone’s smug smiling face for longer than a couple of seconds and not cringe, but rather enjoy how much the actor immersed himself in his role. I loved what he did with it, wandering around in his long black coat and little round sunglasses. I’m really glad he turned out to be an ally, because no one else knew as much about anything as he did when it came to the case. It’s almost a bummer that we didn’t get more backstory from him except that one flashback that showed him as Tomoya’s childhood friend. I guess they couldn’t give too much about him away until later, which I get. I can’t express how happy I was that they made him more than just a sneaky reporter, and that he too had a proper motive to find out the truth, rather than just shock people with it. I’m really glad I was introduced to this actor through this show. Hope to see more of him!

I actually yelped when I realized that Takiuchi Kumi also played Kozue in Koi wa Tsuzuku yo, Dokomademo! I remember her being one of my favorite supporting characters there. It was really cool to see her in such a different role, as the stoic police director Anan. I thought she was a very intriguing character. I didn’t actually expect to become sympathetic towards her, so when they showed that flashback of her childhood I was very curious to find out what the purpose of it was, if not to just give her some backstory. To actually come back to that with the reveal that Narukawa was that absent father that her mother kept rambling on about, was pretty clever. I definitely didn’t see it coming. As stoic and merciless as she seemed, I still couldn’t really blame her for what she had become after seeing how her mother and ex-husband had treated her. She’d had to rely on herself and nobody else for most of her life, and that had hardened her. I really enjoyed seeing this side of her acting in this show, it was cool to see her in this!

Nishida Naomi is another actress that looks super familiar to me even though I haven’t actually seen her in much. Judging from MDL, I’ve only seen her in Stand Up!! and Higashino Keigo Mysteries, which I both watched AGES ago. I’d say that my only qualm with her was that she did become kind of a typical ‘crazy’ person in the end. Despite keeping the truth hidden for so long, she actually snapped. Still, her emotional acting was really good and I specifically loved her interactions with Komugi, when everything was still good between them. She really felt like a mother to her, and I appreciated that she strengthened Komugi in her belief that she had “really started to look like Shizuka”. The motherly scenes just came so natural to her that I actually would’ve liked to see more scenes of her with Akazawa and Mamoru. Anyways, she did a great job.

I’ve seen Sakai Toshiya before in Stand Up!!, Gokusen Season 2, Tokujo Kabachi!!, Kizoku Tantei, Repeat and Watashi, Teiji de Kaerimasu. Just from his appearance alone, I would’ve guessed that he may have been a comedian or other sort of tarento, but he delivered a really sincere portrayal of Someda in this series. Seeing him go through those scenes of drug addiction and everything made a pretty big impact on me. His story was so sad, honestly. I wish he could’ve gotten out of it unscathed. I mentioned it before, but his death just felt a little too on the nose for me, especially considering he didn’t actually have anything to do with the big secret that was being kept from Komugi. I really liked how much heart he poured into Someda. He did a really good job.

Again, an actor who looks familiar, even though he’s apparently only done three (?!) drama roles so far. I really enjoyed Mamiya Hiroyuki’s performance as Narukawa. I loved the energy he brought with him – it immediately made me feel protective of him, for some reason. The revelation that he was the mysterious man and Anan’s father was a very big surprise, and it took another while for me to acknowledge he’d actually done something bad. I think it was Kamii who told him that this reasons for doing all that were shallow, and I agreed with that. I guess that’s what bothered me a bit about the ending, with both him and Kyoko. The actions of killing Haruo and all those other people that were even the tiniest bit tied to the case, just seemed excessive. Most of these people, like the Awayamas, had been keeping quiet about it for years, but now suddenly they had to die, even if that wouldn’t solve anything because they’d already told someone. So yeah, as soon as the whole ‘accomplice’ arc came into play, I kind of tapped out with his character, although I still appreciated that he turned himself in at the end. Nonetheless, he performed his role very well and I liked getting to know him through this.

I’ll keep it at that for my cast comments. It’s taken me a bit longer than expected to finish this review, but I think I managed to get in everything that I wanted to discuss. To sum it up: I had a really good time watching this. It was well-written, it looked good, the acting was great and the ending wasn’t completely disappointing. The supporting characters definitely grabbed me more than the main ones, although the latter still managed to convey the emotions and messages very convincingly. I’m glad I finally got to watch this show. This is one of those series that I’d be able to rewatch in order to catch all the foreshadowing from the start.

Well then, that’ll be it for this review! I’m curious to see what I’ll be watching next.
Stay tuned, and until then! Bye-bee! x