Mystery to Iu Nakare

 Masaki Sudo stars as Totono Kunou, a college student with a keen eye for observation and a flair for cooking. He is in the middle of making one of his favorite curry dishes, when he is unexpectedly visited by the police who are investigating a nearby murder- and witnesses say they saw HIM doing the killing!!!

Kunou insists he is innocent, but the Head Detective Yabu (Kenichi Endo) is convinced of his guilt and roughly interrogates him for over four days! Being a bright and concise fellow, he gives many reasons why the allegations against him are untrue, but Yabu intends to keep him there until he breaks.

While he is there, Kunou makes several observations about the other detectives working the case, including Seiko Furomitsu (Sairi Ito), whose cat just died, 

Yuto Ikemoto (Matsuya Onoe) who’s going through marital problems, 

and Narikai Aoto (Michitaka Tsutsui), a detective Kunou recognizes from a serial killer case years ago where he was in the news for putting up a false arrest charge against a suspect.

Kunou uses his logic and sensibilities to help the three with their problems and see things in a new light, and slowly they come to believe Kunou must be innocent, even as the evidence is piling up against him.

And so, despite their leader’s confidence that Kunou is guilty, Furomitsu, Ikemoto and  Aoto work around Yabu to dig up clues of a more unbiased nature to help get Kunou out of the hot seat so they can focus on uncovering the true murderer out there!

I know this sounds like a very basic plotline, but I have to tell you, this drama is SO DAMN WELL WRITTEN! The dialog is TOP NOTCH and while watching it, I even thought to myself, “I can’t remember the last time the first episode of a Detective Drama BLEW ME AWAY like this one! It’s SO GOOD!!!!

I think it’s funny that the first thing I really remember seeing Masaki Suda in was the Satomi Ishihara drama Jimi Ni Sugoi, and he was presented there as kind of a “pretty boy” if you will. But with the recent “Konto Ga Hajimaru” and now Mystery to Iu Nakare, he is proving himself to be SUCH a versatile actor. As someone who can seemingly fluctuate between the “kakkoi” guys and the “character” type roles, he reminds me of a young Tom Hanks. Yeah, that’s how much I dig him in this!

Mystery to iu Nakare could EASILY be my favorite drama of the season so far!!!