Keigo Higashino's "The Final Curtain~ The Crimes That Bind"

 Just finished the gripping and, at least so far, last book featuring Kyoichiro Kaga and the SHINZANMONO series by the incredible Keigo Higashino, THE FINAL CURTAIN this week! Concerning two seemingly unconnected murders which may have a link to Kaga’s past, this one was an emotional one which really had me on my toes guessing what would happen next!

Once finished, I wondered if they would be adapting the story into a special or movie, as most of Higashino’s works tend to do, (especially the Shinzanmono  and Galileo series, of which there have been many), and I didn’t have long to find out! 

I had forgotten that, while The Final Curtain had just come out in English this past December, the original novel of which it was translated from, “Inori no Maku ga Oriru Toki”, had come out way back in 2013… and a feature film had already been made and released under the English title of "The Crimes That Bind" in 2018!!! How fortuitous for ME, and I wasted NO TIME grabbing it!!! Watched it over the weekend and BOY did I LOVE it!!

Our story begins with detective Shuhei Matsumiya (Junpei Mizobata) working a case involving a strangled woman in a cold and sparse apartment. They have no leads, but a murder of a homeless man on the riverbanks nearby which occurred at the same time tugs at his policeman’s intuition. Investigating both crime scenes, he just feels they are connected.

With his partner Sakagami (Kunihiro Suda), they begin doing to legwork on the case, interviewing  the co-workers of the deceased woman, as well as trying to track down the man whom the apartment seemingly belongs to. 

Following the tracks given by friends of the deceased, the path leads to a theatre where a famous actress-turned-director named Hiromi Asai (Nanako Matsushima) is launching her first big stageplay. She is the last person who has seen the strangled woman alive, but as she was here working on her play at the time of the murder, she has a solid alibi.

She seems to be cleared of any suspicion, but when Matsumiya notices that she has a past with his cousin, the genius detective Kyoichiro Kaga (Hiroshi Abe), he feels that intuition tugging at him again, and makes plans to talk to him as soon as possible!

A few days later, Matsumiya and Kaga meet up for lunch, As they are both family AND policemen, they share information that wouldn't be discussed under regular procedural avenues. But when the subject of the framed photo of he and Asai comes up, Kaga insists that he only met her because he had to teach some young actors kendo for a play she was working on, and that he doesn't really know her and has never seen her since!

Well, such coincidences do happen, and they are about to part ways. But when Matsumiya talks about a calendar in the room of the strangled woman with names of Japan bridges scribbled on each month, Kaga’s blood turns cold. And we are to soon find out why...

 

Kaga has has a rough childhood with a mother whom, though she loved him dearly, would sometimes go off the deep end into dark, suicidal episodes. Today we can recognize it as clinical depression, but back then they did not know what to make of her disturbing outbursts.

One day she disappeared from young Kyoichiro’s life, leaving his father to raise the boy alone and growing up never knowing why his mother fled or where she had disappeared.

It is only years later as a grown man that he learns of the death of an old woman by natural causes found in a sparse rented room whom turns out to be his long lost mother (seen in flashback by Ran Ito).

Already a police detective by then, he exhausts all his powers to find out what his mother had been doing and what fate befell her, however, all leads turned up empty. The only evidence in her room at the time was a calendar. A calendar with the SAME notes about Japan bridges scribbled above each month!

With this strange coincidence in hand, Kaga asks to be formally brought into the investigative team of the strangled woman, and with his reputation preceding him, is put in immediately.

He has to start somewhere, and decides to begin by chatting with Hiromi Asai the stage director, visiting her at the theater where she is working.

The conversation starts out friendly, but as he talks to her, things begin to feel out of place for the sharp Kaga. And as he and the team dig deeper into the case, Kaga will feel that not only is the beautiful woman involved in the murder somehow…but may know information about his own MOTHER and the key to his own PAST!

Led by Hiroshi Abe, this is a veritable ALL-STAR cast, with not only Nanako Matsushima, and Junpei Mizobata, but appearances by Fumiyo Kohinata, Rena Tanaka, Mitsuhiro Oikawa, Tsutomu Yamazaki and others! They even got young actresses Marie Iitoyo and Hiyori Sakurada appearing in flashbacks as young versions of the Nanako character, a move that really tickled me!

MAN, this was a great adaptation to watch right after finishing the book- It’s one thing to read a novel and picture the images in your head, but when the story involves traveling to towns, cities and landmarks, it’s a wonderful thing to actually be able to SEE the places that Kaga and Matsumiya go to on their quest for the truth.

Very picturesque in nature, to see the surroundings helps immerse you in the story even more than just reading about it, and the visuals really knocked me out!

PS: One more thing the movie did that the book did not, was really give the series closure. At the end of the case, we find Kaga has decided to leave Nihonbashi, the town where he’s been stationed since the beginning, and during the end credits of the film, we see him visiting people from the original 2010 SHINZANMONO series, like Megumi Toshiaki, Anne Watanabe, Teruyuki Kagawa, etc, checking up on their well being! 

A really sweet touch and a nice send-off for the character, especially if this is, indeed, the final Kyoichiro Kaga book!

In the meantime, we've got the new Detective Galileo novel INVISIBLE HELIX coming out this December to wait for! Gee, will THIS book become a movie, as well? 

Only time will tell, but get Masaharu Fukuyama on standby just in case!!!

A Double Dose of Yoshida Yo

Regular readers of this blog know of my drooling attraction to svelte, sexy and stoic actress Yo Yoshida and it looks like the time has really come for her fans as we’ve got not one but TWO excellent dramas showcasing her awesome acting sensibilities!

First up we’ve got “Medical Team Lady Da Vinci No Shindan” which from the get go reminds me a lot of the Maki Horikita drama “Higanbana” with its’ crackerjack team of eccentric yet excelling women, only in this show it isn’t a police station where the girls do their detective work, but though the operating rooms of the Hospital.

Yoshida plays a neurosurgeon named Shiho Tachibana who withdraws from practice when she begins having fainting spells. She is then approached by an old colleague named Kitabatake Masayuki (Takahashi Katsunori) who says he is creating a super-team of doctors who can “Solve medical problems on one else can”.

She agrees to join up, but when she gets there, she finds that the rest of the team are cold and  unfriendly to this new outsider and it is only once she shows the others how capable she is do they grudgingly accept her.

The team is led by Yoko Iwakura (Ran Ito), a celebrity surgeon who even has her own television show who is used to being the center of the team, she and Tachibana will butt heads on more than one occasion!

We’ve got Aibu Saki in another one of her “Bitchy chick” roles (hmmm, seems she’s been playing a lot of these lately) as Yukino Nitta, a girl who is reserved and yet fascinated by Tachibana..

Pretty Yuko Fueki (whom you may recall stunned me with her looks way back in Otenki Oneesan) as Iwakura’s gushing second…

Satomi Ai (Kumiko Shirotori), a no-nonsense member who seems to ignore the power playing amongst the head doctors and just does what is need.

Saori Takizawa in yet ANOTHER one of her “man-hungry over 30 woman” roles, still looking as luscious as ever, as Yui Uematsu. Man, who would have thought Saori could make an entire career out of playing these desperate ladies? 

…and finally we have cute and cuddly Riho Yoshioka as Ayaka, the girl chosen to be Tachibana’s assistant and befuddled partner in crime.

Together these women team up to solve the hospital’s more bizarre cases, using their extensive knowledge of maladies, expert footwork and a whole lotta spirited speculation.

And then we’ve got a lot darker murder mystery type detective show featuring Yo as an able detective in the Japan remake of the successful American detective show COLD CASE.

As usual for WOWOW, this is a detective show that is a LOT darker than others, every scene seems to be drenched in this sickly greenish blue tint making everything seem bleak and dour, and from the get go things are grim, grim, grim.

In this show, Yoshida is once again heading a team of crackerjack agents, only this time they are gruff, seasoned detectives whom look upon this wisp of a woman as a curiosity more than a prime leader in her field, but they do work together to get things done.

First we have Tomokazu “Mr. Momoe” Miura as the head of the Cold Case department...

Mitsuishi “He Always plays the Dad” Ken:

Kenichi “That guy from Hanzawa Naoki” Takito...

..and Kento Nagayama as the young man assigned to the team who HATES having to work under a lady, LOL!

Like the CBS Cold Case series, this drama deals with a team assinged to solving old unsolved cases using modern CSI technology that didn’t exist back then to bring the criminals to light, and I was tickled when they showed a flashback to 20 years ago and the song they chose for the scene was “Namonaki Uta” by Mr. Children…GADS, has it been 20 YEARS already? LOL

So far I have to say I like Lady Da Vinci a bit more than Cold Case- not only is it a lot brighter in both tone and actual color, but Yoshida is allowed be goofy and cute, usually executing her detective work with a mischievous twinkle in her eye:

With Cold Case, it is so dense and so serrrrioooouuuusssssss.... I think y0u can easily see the "mood" of both shows by simply taking a look at these two screencaps!

Additionally, Cold Case is so similar to other generic Japanese Detective dramas, one wonders why they felt the need to secure the licensing for it. Wouldn’t it have been easy enough to create a cold case series of their own? I mean, it’s not like CBS has the lock on the cold case theme, even Aya Ueto’s Zettai Reido used the similar format of old unsolved cases resolved through modern means, right? 

Ah well, no matter what, i'm definitely gonna be watching both of these wholeheartedly, after all, more Yo Yoshida in my j-drama viewing life is ALWAYS a good thing!

Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com