Notes On "Final Cut"

Kazuya Kamenashi is Keisuke Nakayama, a man whose mother was accused of murder when he was still a high schooler 12 years ago. His mother was blamed for the murder of a young child at her daycare center, and though there was only circumstantial evidence, a popular “journalistic” TV Program PREMIERE WIDE sensationalizing the case by suggesting that his mother is guilty.

Though his mother swears innocence and speaks of a mysterious man who was at the daycare center earlier the day that the abduction took place, the TV show corrupted stance convinces the public that she is a murderer and shut her out. The stress on her mental well being takes its toll, and young Keisuke comes home one evening to find she has slashed her wrists and taken her life.

Keisuke blames  his mother’s death on the Premiere Wide show, in particular its oily producer, Masaya Ide (Tetta Sugimoto), who wormed his way into the Nakayamas' lives during the ordeal and was quick to turn on them for viewer ratings, as well as his fired up investigative team, Kumiko Masaki (Miki Kizuno), Yuto Koike (Kento Hayashi) and Yoshikazu Minegawa (Ichiro Yatsui).

Keisuke also points a heavy finger at the show’s hosts, Sae (Yuui Aoya) and especially the pompous and judgmental main host Rui Momose (Naohito Fujiki) who helped talk a neighborhood into turning on his mother.

 Together with his partner Daichi Noda (Yuya Takagi) , they scour the internet forums to find people who have similarly been wronged by the Premiere Wide producers. 

They meet up with a  woman (Akiko Yada) who has had her plight covered by Premiere Wide. The family needs funds to send their daughter to a specialist in the States, and had agreed to have their story told by the Program for monetary support.

The program was initially a success, with sympathy and donations coming in, but to “sensationalize” the story, Ide turned the story into a piece about slipshod services and dnagerous mistakes at the hospital, all with evidence that was twisted and edited from more routine practices.

 The backlash from the hospital is of the stance that they would prefer the family leave because of the controversy, and it was out of desperation that the family finally contacted Nakamura via the web. Nakamura evaluates the situation  and  promises he will work out a way to make the program retract their initial statement and apologize. 

Besides this, there is another puzzling side to Nakamura's life: He’s going out with a cute young thing named Wakaba (Kanna Hashimoto) who thinks her boyfriend is just too aloof for her likes. He never invited her back to his place and she never knows what he’s thinking. But  she feels he’s definitely the one!

She goes home and gushes to her bookish older sister Yukiko (Chiaki Kuriyama) about how great her boyfriend is and that she should be thinking seriously about meeting someone of her own...

We see her the next day at the Art Gallery she works at where she is met by a striking young man mulling over a painting. They make small talk and Yukiko feels a twang of interest in her heart. Unfortunately, the man is none other than Nakamura himself, and it’s clear that he’s playing both of the sisters for some part of his revenge plan. But how do they fit in?

Quite a convoluted story, with so many character introduced and ALL of them with some degree of ‘shadiness” about them that I already figure the characters are going to shift into backstabbers…When Kuranosuke Sasaki showed up as his usual cliched “shady figure” personality (as a police chief no less) I threw my hands in the air and said" Is there ANYONE I’m supposed to trust here??!"

A very WHACK show, and at this point I'm not sure how long I'm going to watch this one, but we'll see...shows like this have a tendency to become big faves after awhile....
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com