After watching the Strawberry Night SP and then the 10 episode drama,I finally watched the 2013 movie and have completed the series!
As I watched this, I marveled at the character of Reiko Himekawa, whom must be one of the greatest roles I've ever seen Yuko Takeuchi perform. So cool, focused and stone-cold, she reminded me more of hard-boiled characters like Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch or John Sandford's Lucas Davenport- no fancy j-drama gimmicks where the main detective is an oddball with one magical trait which helps him solve cases, just true, old-fashioned detective work, canvassing the crime scenes, interviewing witnesses and suspects, and going over the facts over and over and over again.
There was one scene where Himekawa is interviewing a witness (Takao Osawa) and she is relentless with her skills- with every word the guy says, she is there to question and probe every answer he gives, scribble down every fact he reveals so she can investigate those leads further, and I was like, WOW...this is a real detective working here!!!
And when it comes to standing her ground when faced with the superiors and colleagues who cloud the issue with their single mindedness (or even outright evil intent), Himekawa has NO PROBLEM barking BACK at those who try to silence her!
PS: The more I watch it, the more astounded I am that they'd ever dare to reboot this drama so SOON with an actress which, while I do like her, can't EVER hope to achieve the kind of intensity Yuko Takeuchi brought to the table. Just perfect.
PPS: I was going to name this blog post "Strawberry Night Saga" but I can't even do that since that's what they named the reboot, LOL.