Just wrapped up the 2022 Television Galileo SP “Kindan no Majutsu" (Forbidden Magic), based on the fourth full-novel in the Inspector Galileo series and eighth overall. This story is the only one of the Galileo full novels not translated into English and therefore one of which I had not read and had no inkling of the plot beforehand!
“Forbidden Magic” wrests with the quote “He who controls Science Controls the World”, and how the advancement of scientific technology is always aligned with war, whether for good or bad.
The Tokyo Police are called in when a journalist is murdered in his office and footage of a terrible new weapon being tested is found on his computer. There appears to be some kind of long-range device capable of delivering huge blasts of destruction from afar and the video shows how, in the wrong hands, it can be used for murder.
Because of the technical aspect of the video footage, detectives Kusanagi (Kitamura Kazuki) and Makimura (Yuko Araki) visit the eccentric genius Manabu Yukawa (Masaharu Fukuyama) to see what he thinks and if he can shed some light on what they are seeing.
As usual the impersonal Yukawa is resistant to assisting the police in their work and reveals little about what he knows, but with a little sweet persuasion from Makimura, grudgingly agrees to watch the msyterious footage.
To say he is surprised by what he sees may be an understatement, but he keeps his thoughts to himself...even as his mind is formulating theories of what may have caused it!
Asking to examine the site of the destruction, Yukawa becomes grimmer when he realizes to himself that the theoretical design of the weapon is one he knows…and that the culprit who manufactured it may be one of his old students!
The student in question is a guy named Shingo Koshiba (Nijiro Murakami), and at the time, he was one of Yukawa’s brightest students. A natural talent for science, he surprised Yukawa by suddenly changing his studies to the medical field. And shortly thereafter, has quit school completely and seemingly disappeared.
Manabu Yukawa and Tomoka Makimura investigate into the hidden paths that the missing student has taken, and after interviewing a girl named Kurasaka (Nana Mori) who worked alongside Koshiba at a factory, realize he has been wrestling with a troubled mind about past incidents involving his sister and a politician named Ohga Jinsaku (Kosuke Suzuki)…and that the plan may ultimately be to assassinate him! With the police on one side determined to track down Koshiba, Yukawa hopes to find Koshiba himself, steadfast in the belief that the genius student he once knew is still good and can be talked out of his horrible plans!
WELL, I enjoyed Kindan no Majutsu, even though I msut admit the vibe mostly underwhelming. Unlike some of the other movies like Devotion of Suspect X or the recent Silent Parade which were real cinematic projects that felt huge, Kindan No Majutsu seemed like a regular episode of the TV series, not that that's a bad thing. There were still lots to love here!
Yuko Araki plays the part of Tomoka Makimura, another character created to fill the place of the Utsumi Kaoru role when Kou Shibasaki doesn’t appear, much like the Yuriko Yoshitaka character of Misa Kishitani.
I mentioned before how the Utsumi role can be a thankless one and I don't blame either Shibasaki or Yoshitaka for not wanting to return for EVERY Movie or Special, nonetheless I was glad to see Araki "assuming" the part, and would love to see her turn into a recurring character further down the line!
As I've already posted, Shibasaki Kou DID return for the cinematic film "Silent Parade", and in fact, the Kindan no Majutsu broadcast was PEPPERED with advertisements hawking the upcoming movie!
When they inevitably make a movie or special out of Keigo Higashino's latest Inspector Galileo book "Invisible Helix", I'm very curious to see who will be co-starring in it alongside Fukuyama!
