Still Waters

「はい？」

 『相棒』

 "Excuse me?"

"Partners"

Yes, I know, it's not a bad book that usually results in a bland review. It's just a bland book. 

Aibou ("Partners") is an extremely succesful police drama in Japan that's been running since 2000 and by the time this post is published, Season 21 should be entering its final stage.The series is about Sugishita Ukyou and his partner in the two-man unit the Special Orders Unit within the Metropolitan Police Department. Sugishita is a brilliant police detective, but with very strong sense of justice and therefore not always willing to play along with political games within the police organization. Yet, he's too valuable to let go, which is why he is been assigned to the SOU, stuffed away in a small office in police headquarters. Technically, he shouldn't have anything to do unless there's a special order, but Sugishita likes to stick his nose in police investigations all the time nonetheless, unless there's a special order telling him not to. Over the course of the series, several younger detectives have been assigned as Sugishita's subordinate within the SOU, who often form a contrast with the cool-headed Sugishita but work well as a team, hence the title partners. But with a series as long as Aibou, it's of course only natural for cast changes to occur, and Sugishita has seen several 'partners' go throughout the series, starting with his first partner act-before-think Kameyama, followed by the dandy gentleman Kanbe, the hotheaded Kaito and the more conniving Kaburagi.

Sugishita also stars in a series of novels written by Ikari Uhito (a pen name of Torikai Hiu), where he isn't joined by these partners. The stories are usually set in the period between one partner leaving and the new one arriving in the show, or other moments within series continuity when the two aren't working together. Last year I read Sugishita Ukyou no Misshitsu (The Locked Room Mysteries of Ukyo Sugishita, 2013), the third book in this series and found it an entertaining novel for fans and even for newcomers to the series, it could still work as an entry point even if not the optimal choice. Anyway, I was curious to the rest of the series, so I decided to read the first book this time. Sugishita Ukyou no Jikenbo ("The Casebook of Sugishita Ukyou") was released in 2010 and consists of two novellas. Both are set in the time period with Sugishita's first partner Kameyama: the first story between season 1 and 2 during Sugishita's holiday, and the second story after Kameyama left the series in season 7 in 2008-2009. I read this book late 2022 by the way, and after reading the book, I decided to look up the timeline details of this book and I was utterly surprised to learn Kameyama had actually returned to the television series as Sugishita's partner in the currently running Aibou 21. I hadn't really been watching the series the last few years, so I had never expected Kameyama to really return to the main cast. As a reader, you don't really need to know about Kameyama of course, and he's only briefly mentioned in these stories, but I thought it was funny I read this book right around the time Kameyama returned to the series. 

The first story titled Kage to Taru ("Mist and Barrels") is set in Scotland: Sugishita is in the UK for a holiday and via his B&B, he learns that a small whiskey distillery is going to have a special event in a few days: that distillery has ten barrels of single malt whiskey aging for fifty years, and now they'll be opening the warehouse. Andy McMillan is the current owner of the distillery, but it was his grandfather Paul who came up with the plan to make super mature whiskey, creating five warehouses: one for ten years, one for twenty years, etc. Last year's barrels with whiskey aged forty years was a huge success, so everyone is looking forward to opening the last warehouse, though some are worried. Thirty years ago, Andy's grandfather Paul died in an accident in a warehouse and ten years ago, Andy's father Ian too died after opening the forty-year old warehouse, in a very enigmatic manner as it appeared like he had been stepped on by a giant. This is tied to a local belief that seeing the God of Scotch, a mythological giant, will lead to good whiskey, but will also bring misfortune. And now Andy's son says he saw the giant in the mist himself too recently. Sugishita is invited to witness the opening of the warehouse too, but when it is unlocked, they find one of the barrels has fallen off the rack, upside down. They lift the barrel up, only to find the head craftsman had been stuffed inside the barrel. The poor man is rushed to the hospital, but it is too late. But how did the head craftsman get inside the locked warehouse, inside a whiskey barrel, and what does his death have to do with the death forty years ago?

I don't know much about making whiskey, but I guess the author does, because a lot of the story is about the things that go on at a distillery and how whiskey is made. The story is quite long (much longer than the second story in the book) and deals with several semi-impossible situations, like the death of the head craftsman in a warehouse which has been locked for fifty years and which shouldn't have been opened, and the mysterious death of Ian ten years ago. Sugishita is a Japanese police officer on holiday, so he can't really butt in, but Sugishita wouldn't be himself if he actually cared about that, so naturally, he investigates this tragedy that happened to his hosts. I don't really like the truth behind the body-in-the-barrel death and the locked warehouse on their own to be honest, because it involves people just acting really stupidly multiple times for all of that to work, though I have to admit I am more impressed by the way Ikari (Torikai) manages to tie everything together: he comes up with a convincing reason for why certain things had to happen and is also good in leaving a variety of clues like Andy's young son's testimony about the God of Scotch and him playing with his cat, it's just that the actual "event of the death" isn't quite convincing to me. At least, not the way it is done (perhaps if it had been executed with different details, I would've liked it more). This is one story I'd have loved to see in television form though, as while the trick of the locked warehouse is a bit silly, I can imagine it would at least have been funny to see acted out on screen.

The second story, Kenmun no Mori ("The Forest of Kenmun") is one I really didn't like. It involves Sugishita travelling to Amami Oshima on the reqeust of Kakuta, his old friend and head of the division Organized Crime. A wanted criminal was recently involved in a boat accident on the island and is now being detained in a hospital there with his accomplices, and Sugishita is to escort this Yasuda back to Tokyo. Yasuda and his Chinese henchmen manage to escape the hospital just before Sugishita arrives though, and thus starts a manhunt for the dangerous criminals, who seem to be busy with a certain plan, but nobody knows what it is. In the meanwhile, Sugishita also hears about tourist sighting a kenmun, a local yokai, in the forest, but what does this have to do with the flight of Yasuda? It's one of those stories that's really just about working towards a punchline, which can work for a detective story, but this particular punchline just wasn't that impressive or surprising. I feel like that the idea behind the punchline could have been used as a "normal" focus for a mystery story pretty well, but by making it a punchline to the mystery of what Yasuda is trying to do while on the run from the police, it feels a bit underwhelming.

So on the whole, I didn't like Sugishita Ukyou no Jikenbo as much as I liked the third volume. I think the third volume can be enjoyed even without much knowledge of Aibou, but I think the stories in this first volume are rather bland, so if you don't have any connection with Aibou in the first place, there's very little here to warrant a recommndation. I'll probably still read the second volume, just to see if it's closer to this volume, or the third volume in terms of plotting, but this one is only for the fans.

Original Japanese title(s): 碇卯人『杉下右京の事件簿』：「霧と樽」/「ケンムンの森」

Ask a Policeman

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do 

"One" (Three Dog Night)

Aibou ("Partners") is a very succesful police drama in Japan that's been running since 2000, with season 20 probably nearing its end by the time this review is published. The series is about the Special Orders Unit, a two-man unit within the Metropolitan Police Department that is basically only there to keep Sugishita Ukyou there: while Sugishita is one of the most brilliant men to be found within the police force, his sense of justice often clashes with the decisions of administration. The people at the top know Sugishita is indispensible, that if they need him they really need him, but at the same time, they like to keep him locked up in a box until that time, and that's basically what the Special Orders Unit: he is to do nothing, unless there's a special order. Of course, Sugishita likes to poke into his business that aren't his, so more often than not, he decides to look into homicide cases, figuring that he's allowed to do this, unless there are special orders that tell him otherwise. In the series, Sugishita is always accompanied by a younger subordinate, his titular partner, who forms a contrast with the cool-minded Sugishita. While Sugishita has been a constant in the television show since it started in 2000 however, he has seen partners come and go, with his current partner in Season 21, Kaburagi, being his fourth formal partner in the SOU. I occassionally watch an episode or special of the show, but I haven't really been following this series lately, even though I did watch the whole run of Kaito (the third partner) in season 11 - 13, as well as the first seasons with Kaburagi. 

Like I said, Aibou is huge in Japan, with the franchise being much more than just the core television show. There have been theatrical releases, spin-off movies, video games, and of course novels. Most of the novels are, not surprisingly, simply novelizations of the episodes, but there is also a sub-series of novels that feature completely original adventures of Sugishita. The novel series is also referred to as the Sugishita Ukyou series, as it focuses on him alone, rather than on "partners." These books, written by Ikari Uhito (a pen name of Torikai Hiu), usually have Sugishita operating alone, for example during a holiday or are set in the periods between partners leaving and coming. Other familar faces in the series do appear in these stories, but these stories do feel a bit different from the television show because Sugishita acts alone here. Sugishita Ukyou no Misshitsu (2013), which also has the English title The Locked Room Mysteries of Ukyo Sugishita, is the third book in the series and consist of two novellas. I decided to read this one, because chronologically, it felt the most "familiar" to me: these stories are set in the period after Sugishita's second partner Kanbe left the show in season 10, but before he met his third parter Kaito in Hong Kong in the pilot special of season 11, which is when I started to really watch whole seasons, so starting with this book also felt the most natural to me. I don't think you need to have any prior knowledge to enjoy this book as a mystery book by the way, and it's written in a very simple manner so it might even be perfect for people starting to read mystery stories in Japanese, but it will probably feel a bit bland, because the stories do assume you know the recurring characters well enough and it barely bothers to explain anything about them.

The first story, Daifugou no Chousenjou ("A Challenge from a Billionaire") in the book opens with Sugishita receiving a letter from an old college friend. Takamatsu Hirofumi belonged to the contract bridge club at university, while Sugishita of course belonged to the chess club, and it's througn these games that the two first met. They had not kept in touch however, which is why Sugishita is quite surprised to receive this letter. After college, Takamatsu started a venture business in semiconductors, which eventually grew into the major company Semicon Z. Recently, he announced he'd retreat as the head of the company however. He plans to retreat to his new house on Kubura Island, an island in Okinawa he has bought for himself and his wife. In his letter, Takamatsu invites Sugishita to a small party to commemorate this new phase of his life, but in a special post-scriptum accompanying the invitation, he says he's planning to hold a special detective game during the party, and he hopes Sugishita will come. Intrigued by this letter, Sugishita decides to go to Kubura Island, where he learns the other guests are all people who work at Semicon Z, as well as the architect of the splendid house Takamatsu had built. The house is built against the cliff, and there's an elevator that goes down into the cliff, leading to a special room below sea level with a glass wall that serves as a private aquarium, looking out right into the sea!

Before the party starts, Takamatsu confides to his old friend that he fears someone's after his life, and that's why he gave up his position at Semicon Z: curious incidents that could've ended very differently for him have occured recently, and he doubts they were accidents Takamatsu suspects this is related to a case of a leak of confidential business information that happened at Semicon Z, and a bugging device he found in his office. The other guests at the party are in fact all suspects in the eyes of Takamatsu, and he has a "detective game" in mind during dinner to smoke out the spy. That evening, Takamatsu disappears during dinner, but is then shown on a television screen to his guests. Sitting in the aquarium room, he announces they are going to play a detective game. The "made-up" case is about a company spy, a bugging device, and the summing up of suspects who all have a reason to betray the company, and of course, the "story" told by Takamatsu basically applies to what really happened, and the persons present at the party. Takamatsu then says that he challenges his guests to guess who the spy is: they have twelve hours to figure out which of them is the traitor, with Takamatsu also claiming he has found a fingerprint on the bug he discovered in his office, and that combined with the fingerprints he will retrieve from the tableware used during dinner, they'll know for sure who the spy is (a bluff). Takamatsu even challenges the murderer to come to the aquarium room, as he and the evidence will be waiting there the coming twelve hours. Sugishita wants to stop this game and urges the spy to come clean, but is immediately knocked out by the servant. By the time he wakes up, it's basically twelve hours later, but there's no announcement by Takamatsu. When they go downstairs in the aquarium room, they find Takamatsu stabbed to death in the aquarium room, as well as one of the guests, but time-wise it doesn't seem he could've killed Takamatsu and what's even more puzzling: the door of the aquarium room can't be opened from the inside and Takamatsu had been acting as bait to trap the spy inside this room. But if so, how did the real murderer escape the room after killing Takamatsu?

An interesting story, also because it doesn't feel at all like a story you'd see in the normal Aibou series, at least, not in this form. A closed circle mystery on a remote island in Okinawa, with an underwater room being the setting of a locked room murder mystery: while Aibou episodes do provide puzzle plot msyteries at time, they seldom have all these tropes in one single story! The mystery revolves around how the murderer could've commited the crime inside a room designed as a trap, as a space that would seal itself once they set foot inside. The trick behind how this was all done has elements that will feel familiar perhaps, but the manner in which the stories lays out its clues and leads the reader (and Sugishita) to the answer is pretty good. It's definitely a concept you will likely not see in the main Aibou television series and it clearly leans much more into the fantastical ideas and tricks you see in mystery novels, rather than on television. So it gets points for that. It's a simple concept that's easy to visualize, though I have an inkling that readers of mystery fiction will soon think of it, though regular viewers of Aibou might find this much more surprising. I do think the story does feature a lot of coincidences that are designed solely to act as misdirection, and a lot of the latter part of the story consists more of brushing away all these red herrings rather than focusing on the core mystery. Of course, most mysteries do feature a red herring or two, but a lot of the elements here feel like they feel added arbitrarily, functioning solely as a standalone red herring and it can feel tiring to constantly learn that something wasn't relevant to the actual murder anyway. 

The second story, Kabe ("Wall") starts with the discovery of the half-decayed body of Watari Junichirou, president of the outdoor sports equipment business Outdoor Dream by his secretary. Watari was believed to have left for the States a week ago and while he was gone, the vice-president wanted to try out the special climbing wall they had built on top of the building of Outdoor Dream. Watari had a special tower made on the roof of the building, with climbing walls on the inside. While "technically" it was for all employees, only the president used it regularly. But the vice-president wanted to have some exercise too, so he decided to ask Watari's secretary to unlock the tower, so he could try it out too during Watari's trip in the US. But it appears Watari never left for the US, and that he had been lying dead in the climbing tower since the day before he was supposed to go on his business trip. At first it's believed the man may have fallen to his death during climbing, but when Sugishita points out the man has no chalk in his hands, suspicion of murder arises, especially when the police learns the man was a notorious womanizer who had been harrassing women at work too. But the tower was locked until the secretary opened the tower eight days after his supposed death, and she saw nobody inside the tower, nor could anyone have escaped from the tower or roof during the time she got help and notified the police. So how was this murder committed?

A much shorter, and more simple story. The idea of a climbing tower as a locked room space is interesting: spatially speaking, it's actually very large (and high), with the extended roof being part of the setting too, but as the only two keys to the tower were either inside the tower, or kept by the secretary during those eight days, it's still a proper locked room mystery. The manner in which the story introduces the culprit and involves them in the core puzzle-solving plot feels a bit forced, but the clues that ultimately point out how the murderer did manage to escape the locked room are good, as are the clues indicating the identity of the murderer. The motive too feels closer to something you'd usually see in the series, which is also strengthened by the appearances of more familiar faces in the series, as we do see people like the forensic investigator Yonezawa despite Sugishita's partner Kanbe having left the series already at this point.

On the whole, I think Sugishita Ukyou no Misshitsu is a pretty decent read for fans of the series. The two stories featured here are definitely more focused on a fair play puzzle plot than the stories you usually see in the television series, which tend to focus more on social school themes, so especially those who do like the world of Aibou, who occassionally wants to see more "classic" mystery set-ups, this book is the way to go. There's nothing mind-blowing here, nor truly original ideas, but the stories are competently written and provide at least the level of entertainment I'd expect from an original Aibou story. I for one am definitely planning to read more of this series. But while these books are written in a very accessible way and take little time to get through them, I do hesitate a little to recommend them to people who don't know Aibou, as these stories do very little to actually introduce the reader to the world and characters. While the mystery plots do work as standalone stories, they do feel a bit underdeveloped without prior knowledge of the series. So this book is best read as a companion to the series, even if theoretically, you can read them without knowing the television show.

Original Japanese title(s): 碇卯人『杉下右京の密室』:「大富豪の挑戦状」/「壁」

Grand Deceptions

Life is a game

So take the chance

And play your hand

You might just win

You never know

『相棒 Season 7のテーマ』

 ("Theme of Partners Season 7")

I'm not a big binge-watcher in general, but I'm also very bad at watching the shows I watch each week/whatever schedule the follow. In short: I am just bad at watching TV shows...

Aibou ("Partners") series
Aibou Eleven
Aibou 12
Aibou 13
Aibou 14 
Aibou 15

In the fourteenth season of the long-running police procedural TV drama Aibou ("Partners"), we were introduced to Kaburagi Wataru, a bureaucrat with a golden future in the Ministry of Justice who got temporarily assigned to the Metropolitan Police Department. There he made acquaintance with Sugishita Ukyou and the Special Orders Unit. Sugishita is an eccentric, but brilliant policeman who believes in justice rather than in playing political games. The SOU, which technically can't do anything without a formal order, exists especially to keep Sugishita away from normal police business, but Sugishita will stick his nose in any case that interests him. Kaburagi supported Sugishita as his partner throughout the fourteenth season and made a career change in the season finale, so at the start of Aibou 15 ("Partners 15", 2016-2017), we find Kaburagi trying to adapt to his transformation from high-ranking government official to rookie police sergeant as he and Sugishita take on new cases to solve.

Being timely with an Aibou season review is a first for this blog! Usually I only watch a series once a new season has started (each October), but this season was the first time I actually watched it more-or-less real-time. The fifteenth season ran from October 2016 to March 2017, and was also accompanied by the fourth theatrical release of the series in February 2017 (which I haven't seen, though the two-parter of this season ties in lightly with the movie it appears).

What hasn't changed much however is the formula of the Aibou series. Once again, this 18-episode long season (of which three episodes are feature-length specials) presents a fairly diverse police procedural with a distinct tone of social ommentary. That means that the crimes in this series are almost always a result of some social injustice either happening in the 'normal' society, or in 'high' society, at the level of government organizations and the politics that drive them. As an result, the average Aibou episode is basically built around two 'cores': one is a personal crime, which in turn is then shown to be connected to some bigger social problem at hand. While crimes of the first part are of course always solved (it is a police procedural), often episodes end with a darker tone as we see how underlying social and political problems still go on as always. That said though, the episodes can be quite different in tone per episode: sometimes you get an old-fashioned locked room murder, and other times it's a straight thriller or even something cozy.

As always, I'll not do a write-up of each episode, but pick out the highlights. Aibou seasons don't really feature ongoing storylines (actual planning would've made Aibou 13 a lot better), and that's the same for this season, so that also makes it easier to zoom in on some episodes. Episode 7, Fake, is a tense thriller about the abduction and murder of two children. While the forces fight against the clock to save the kids, Sugishita and Kaburagi also poke around as they feel something is off about this case, especially as the mother of one of the children is behaving in a strange manner. The premise of the double child abductions reminds of Norizuki Rintarou's Ichi no Higeki, but the conclusion is very surprising. It's a bit cheating actually, but as a human drama story, this episode had me hooked from start to finish. Episode 8, The Woman of 100%, is about Kurata Eiko, a former collegue of Kaburagi who is now known and respected as one of the best female prosecutors in Tokyo. That is also the reason why Kaburagi and Sugishita are both very curious as to the reason why she doctored the evidence in the case of a murder on a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Kaburagi and Sugishita know the witness stated something different about witnessing the defendant in her original police statement compared to her testimony in court. The mix of classic courtroom drama mystery with police procedural and even political thriller modes is surprisingly strong for a show of just 45 minutes.

The mid-season special Return is about a town that is welcoming former convicts, offering them a place to start a new life. Sugishita and Kaburagi are given a special order to man the local police station, as for some reason several police constables have gone missing there. As a mystery story, this is a long, and rather predictable tale, but I have to say: the moment the Big Bad shows their true face, it doesn't really matter. We are seldom treated to an almost cartoon-like villain in this series, like a Joker, and to be honest, they felt a bit out of place, but man, this episode was memorable because of that person. I wonder whether they'll return in the future.

The internet plays a large role in the last two episodes. Episode 17, Last Work, is about a Youtuber who apparently has murdered someone to get more views: he is uploading his videos in parts and each parts shows more of his heinous crime of abducting and torturing a homeless man. At first, people all thought it was just a hoax, but slowly the police starts to suspect something might've really happened and things of course explode once the body of the victim is actually found. This was more a human drama-focused episode than one actually based on solving a mystery, but the use of Youtubers and the social commentary provided is quite interesting.

The final episode is a two-hour long special titled Proof of Evil. Yashiro Miwako, the calculating head of the Public Relations Section of the Metropolitan Police Department, has popped up now and then across the last few seasons, but takes center stage now the media has found out through a leak that she has a half-blood daughter she had kept hidden from the public. While normally this wouldn't be big news, suspicions are the father of the child might be a Russian spy, which would make her position in the MPD very difficult to maintain. Evidence is also found that her notebook was hacked through an e-mail sent from Kaburagi's e-mail, making him the prime suspect in the leaking scandal. The subject matter is without a doubt very timely, but as a season finale, this episode was also quite boring, especially after the bloody terrorist attack on a police academy in the previous season finale. Nobody dies here, we only see police officials trying to trace the leak and investigating the identity of the father of Yashiro's daughter and then stuff happens and it ends. The problem is there is no build in tension, nor story. The climax (which happens only after nintey minutes) is weak and over before you know it, while there are no build-up, nothing to keep your attention in the ninety minutes up to that point. It's just going on and on about the unknown father and the possibility Kaburagi leaked the information without reframing the problem in any way: it's just repeating the same point over and over. As a finale, this was a very disappointing episode, and doesn't really set-up things for the next finale in an alluring way, like previous finales did.

On the whole though, I have to say I thought Aibou 15 was a pretty weak season. Few episodes were truly entertaining, there also seemed to be fewer 'straight' mystery plot stories than previous seasons and even the three two-hour specials were much weaker than usual, either by a considerable scaling down of events, or just plain drawn-out plots. I don't expect masterpieces a whole season long, but in previous seasons, I'd usually come across one really entertaining episode every two, three episodes. This time it was more like once every five, six episodes.

Aibou hasn't really changed its formula in the fifteen seasons it has run, and that makes comparison rather easy. And that makes it painfully clear Aibou 15 is a rather weak season overall. Yes, there are a few good episodes, but way too little considering the ratio in previous episodes. Most of the season is filled with paint-by-numbers episodes, or even worse, boring, dragging two-hour specials that don't even come close to the usual spectacle and sensation we see in those episodes. Let's hope the next season (which will come without a doubt) can make up for this one.

Original Japanese title(s): 『相棒15』

Negative Reaction

混ぜるな。危険。

Danger. Do not mix.

As always, I only started watching the 2015-2016 season of Aibou after the 2016-2017 season started. I really always forget about this series until a new season starts...

Aibou ("Partners") series
Aibou Eleven
Aibou 12
Aibou 13
Aibou 14 

The long-running series Aibou ("Partners") has been the police procedural on Japanese television for over a decade now. The series started in 2000 and details the adventures of Sugishita Ukyou, an eccentric, but brilliant police inspector in charge of the Special Order Unit within the Metropolitan Police Department. This might sound like an important function within the police organization, but Sugishita has in fact been put there because the higher-ups deem him too troublesome: while everyone knows Sugishita is in possession of an amazing mind, they also know his sense of justice is unbendable, and that he will never play along with the political games going on within the police organization. The SOU exists solely to keep Sugishita close by in case they do need him. Management also sends troublesome officers to the SOU: the combination of the peculiar Sugishita, and the fact that the unit has no investigative authority whatsover and is very seldom given an assignment (usually in the spirit of 'Return evidence to next of kin'), is usually enough to make those unwanted officers quit the force on themselves. But once in a while, Sugishita finds an understanding partner (hence the title Partners). The official purpose of the Special Order Unit is to undertake special tasks, but Sugishita interprets the meaning of his two-man unit as 'Unless there is a special order not to, they're free to do whatever they want', and so Sugishita often invites himself, together with his partner, to investigations of interesting cases.

In the finale of the thirteenth season of Aibou, Sugishita's third partner Kaito had to leave the SOU, and Sugishita was forced to take extended time off. Aibou 14, which ran from October 2015 until March 2016, starts off with Sugishita's return to Japan. He's surprised to find a guest has been using the SOU office during his long absence: Kaburagi Wataru is a young bureaucrat in the Ministry of Justice, and protégé of the Administrative Vice-Minister of Justice. Kaburagi has chosen to pass some time at the Metropolitan Police Department as a step in his career. Police management sees Kaburagi as simply a guest from the Ministry of Justice (or even a spy), and as Kaburagi does not participate with police investigations in general, he usually spends his free time in the SOU office. While the two realize they have very little in common in terms of personality and habits, Sugishita and Kaburagi do work together to solve a murder case that happened within a prison, and as expected from this series, the reaction of the mix between these two men leads to surprising results.

This is the fourth time I've written an Aibou review, and I have to admit, it's getting more difficult. At the core, the series seldom really surprises in term of structure. As always, the series is a fairly diverse police procedural with a distinct social school background. Crimes in this series are almost always a result of some social injustice either happening in the 'normal' society, or in the society at the level of government organzations and the politics that drive them. Often, an Aibou episode has two 'levels': one is a personal crime, which is a result of some bigger social problem. While crimes of the first part are of course always solved (it is a police procedural), often episodes end with a darker tone as we see how underlying social and political problems still go on as always. That said though, Aibou can definitely do a lot with this formula. Some episodes will focus more on the human drama, while others are pure puzzle plot mysteries. Episodes with old-fashioned locked room murders are followed by episodes providing sharp commentary on the status of the foreign labor force. Every week is basically a surprise, as you never really know what's coming.

I am not going to discuss each of the twenty episodes in this season (of which three are feature-length specials), so like with the previous season reviews, I'll just briefly address some of the highlights. What stood out was that this season had quite a number of episodes with a supernatural hook. The first episode, Frankenstein's Confession, is about an urban legend going in a prison: a guard is killed by a prisoner, who claims he was told to do so by the voice of an infamous, but deceased previous inhabitant of the facility. Episode 7, A Strange Tale of a Kimono, is about a spooky message found written inside a second-hand kimono. While the mystery is rather easy, it's a good example of the type of mystery Aibou can also do, as it's not really a story about a crime (even though this is a police procedural). Episode 8, The Miracle of the Last Installment, starts with the murder on a publisher. However, at the same time the murder happened, a comic artist working for the publisher was working on the last installment of her series, and the panels she drew were exactly like the crime scene. Sugishita and Kaburagi investigation in this premonition comic is one of the more entertaining episodes. Other episodes with supernatural touch include the two-parter The Mountain That Spirits People Away. Episode 5, 2045, strangely enough deals with the opposite of the supernatural, as it's about a complex AI which can analyze crime scene data to arrive at a conclusion on its own.

The social school background of the series can be found in its portrayal of the theme of a current topic like terrorism in both the mid-season special (Heroes ~ Those With Sins) and the final episode (Last Case). The mid-season special focuses on a bomb terrorist who made a deal with the Ministry of Justice in the past, but has now started activities again, while the finale starts off with a class of cops-in-training being brutally shot by a fellow student during their shooting range at the academy, revealing himself to be part of a terrorist group targeting not the common people, but the authorities, specifically the ministers. The plot mixes up grand scale terrorism with a pretty neat puzzle plot.

The standout episode of this season is episode 17: A Physicist and his Cat. The episode starts simple enough, when Sugishita and Kaburagi visit a university to return the personal belongings of a professor who died during an experiment gone wrong, but the way the story develops is really a fantastic surprise.I'd say that the use of Schrödinger's cat in this episode was brilliant, resulting in a unique story that might not be overly complex in terms of a mystery plot, but incredibly memorable nonetheless.

Like in each season, regular and semi-regular characters also get a couple of character-focused episodes. Jinkawa, a police officer who has the habit of falling really easily in love with persons who usually turns out to be the murderer, for example usually shows up once every season. His episode was a very human-drama based episode and can be quite surprising. The forensic investigator Yonezawa on the other hand, a regular who was popular enough to get his own spin-off film, says goodbye in the final episode of this season, as he leaves the crime scene to educate a new generation at the police academy.

Overall though, I have to admit this season on the whole did not feel as strong as previous series. It fet like there were fewer traditional puzzle plot episodes this season, and the couple episodes that were featured, were not especially strong.

I did like the new partner Kaburagi though. Unlike the previous three partners, Kaburagi is not a policeman, so he falls outside the usual line of command. In fact, he is often very critical of how the police, and as a high-ranking beaurocrat, he actually has a fair amount of pull here and there through his many acquaintances. He might be the partner with the most authority until now. He is also portrayed as the opposite of Sugishita in many ways (Sugishita is a tea-drinker, while Kaburagi is a coffee expert. Both hate being passengers in the other's car, etc.) What makes Kaburagi especially interesting as a partner is that he visibly enjoys seeing Sugishita solving crimes in his own unique way, and even obstructs police investigation in order to clear the way for Sugishita.

But in short, Aibou 14 is basically same old, same old. The new partner does bring a new dynamic to the series (this season also featured more dealings with the Ministry of Justice than previous seasons), but at the core, Aibou remains an amusing police procedural that can surprise the reader each time by taking on a different form. This particular season does feel a bit weak in terms of really impressive episodes, but taken on the whole, I thought it was an entertaining series. Season 15 started last week by the way, which has Kaburagi joining the police force officially, so that could shake things up again. And it's very likely I'll be reviewing that series in about a year, when Aibou 16 starts.

Original Japanese title(s): 『相棒14』

Dark Detective II

「あっ、最後にもう一つだけ。チョコレートの箱を・・・」

「行っちゃいましたね」

「最後ではく、最初に聞きたい事を聞くべきでした」

『苦い水』

"One more last thing. A box of chocolate..."

'And there she went."

"I should ask the things I want to ask first, not last"

"Bitter Water"

One of the biggest surprises I came across while playing Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (Nintendo 3DS) was an office that was decorated as the set of the TV-series Aibou. It was a brilliant reproduction of the Special Order Unit office and the office of forensics, complete with room for the cameras to actually shoot a scene. Happy Home Designer is great fun, by the way.  

Aibou ("Partners") series
Aibou Eleven
Aibou 12
Aibou 13

Tucked away in the corner of the Organized Crime Department of the Metropolitan Police Department, is the tiny office of the Special Order Unit, with room for two. The head of the Special Order Unit is Sugishita Ukyou, a gifted police inspector with a great sense of justice, but deemed dangerous by the people in the upper ranks because he doesn't play the political game along. Yet, they recognize his brain and talent to turn poltical bureaucracy to his own advantage, which is why they decided to put him close by in the SOU, but still faraway from the everyday goings of the MPO. The Special Order Unit has no investigative authority and it is rare for special orders to come, so Sugishita has now defined his unit as follows: if there is a special order, they will follow it. And unless there is a special order, the unit is free to do whatever it wants. The adventures of Sugishita and his subordinate have been a favorite on Japanese television ever since the TV series Aibou ("Partners") started in 2000, and by now it has become a big franchise that consists of 13 seasons (the 14th is being broadcast right now), three theatrical films and a lot of spin-off material like mini-series, novels and games.

I started watching the series with Aibou Eleven, the eleventh season which introduced Sugishita's third partner in the history of the series: Kai Tooru, estranged son of the current Assistant Director-General of the National Police Agency. Like with Doctor Who, I figured it'd be best to jump in with a change in the main cast and I enjoyed the series a lot. Today's review is about Aibou 13, the 13th season of the series and also the last season to feature Kai Tooru (the currently running Aibou 14 features a new partner). And yes, I know I'm about a half year late with this review. The same thing happened with Aibou 12 actually: I forget to watch the series and just when a new season starts, I remember I have to watch the previous season. Anyway, Aibou 13 ran from October 2014 until March 2015 and consists of 19 episodes, three of them being film-length TV specials.

It's always difficult to think of what to write with reviews for a whole Aibou season. It's not really practical, nor interesting if I write something short on all 19 episodes, but there's also little I can say about the series in general I haven't done already. Looking at the series broadly, one should classify it as a police procedural in the social school of mystery fiction. Many of the episodes are socially conscious and focus on problems in both 'the normal' society as well in large (government) organizations and the underlying politics. Season 13 is definitely a bit tamer than the previous two seasons, which featured stories on the international implications of a hostage situation in an embassy, protocol in hostage situations in general, and a story asking why Japan has no real witness protection program. But despite being a bit 'lighter' than the previous two seasons, the series is still firmly based on the social school. Side Story (episode 9) for example looks at the influence of mass media in portraying people: a nurse has been killed and the mass media basically attack her for working in the "entertainment" sector to pay for her studies and imply she had it coming. The Last Confession (episode 5) in turn looks at the deals police/prosecution are allowed to make with suspects.

Yet, Aibou also has enough room for other types of mystery. The 'beauty' of the concept of the Special Order Unit is that Sugishita and Tooru can appear in different kinds of story each episode. Those Who Can't Be Forgiven (episode 3) definitely has a social school angle, but is also a kind of a locked room mystery, as no camera managed to capture the murderer entering the victim's apartment building.  Best Day of My Life (episode 13) has Sugishita meet with a suspicious woman completely coincidentally and the episode brings a heartwarming, and often hilarious story in the spirit of an everyday life mystery, something a real, serious police drama could never present. There are also episodes that focus on the extended main cast, like Yonezawa Mamoru's Final Farewell (episode 11), that focuses on the forensic investigator who appears in pretty much every episode.

A lot of Aibou episodes consist of two interrelated 'levels' in crime. Usually there is a big, social problem that lies at the heart of the mystery which involves 'big' organizations or other groups. And this is usually tied to a smaller story: partly to make the 'large' problem more accessible, partly because at the end of the story, Sugishita needs to arrest somebody to end the episode and while he is a gifted policeman, he can't solve a large scale social problem in one episode, only a smaller-scale crime that is born from the bigger problem.

It's a bit of a shame Aibou seasons aren't conceived with some sort of running storyline or theme, because often a season feels like a random collection of stories. I have a feeling that season 13 does feature a lot of stories about the parent-child bond: I already mentioned The Last Confession (episode 5), Side Story (episode 9) and  Yonezawa Mamoru's Final Farewell (episode 11), but Learning Class (episode 12, about a murder on a professor), Thistle (episode 14, on a murder in the past and present) and Professor Ayukawa's Final Lesson (episodes 15-16, on an old professor of Sugishita's who wants to know why it's wrong to murder) all also focus a lot on parent-child relations. I don't remember the specifics of the episodes in earlier episodes, but I wonder if it's been like that ever since Kai Tooru became Sugishita's partner, as the series also looks a lot at Toorus' relation with his father.

Aibou 13 ends with Dark Knight, which is also the end of the cooperation between Sugishita and Kai Tooru as the titular partners, which lasted for three years / seasons. I have to say I was kinda surprised when I heard the news that the character would leave the series, but I gather that even the production team was surprised by the news. I'm pretty sure that it was only decided at a very late stage of filming the season that the character of Kai Tooru would be written out of the series, because this episode came out of nowhere. I won't go into details, but it basically portrays Kai Tooru quite differently from how he's acted in all the episodes before, all to justify his character leaving Sugishita's side. The concept of the episode might've worked if they had at least used the entire season to build to this conclusion, but now I could do was wondering why nobody noticed how out of character Tooru was compared to everything up to this point.

The series ends with Sugishita leaving Japan for a forced vacation, and it's kinda weird to see him alone. The series isn't titled "partners" for nothing. As a character, Sugishita is basically the great detective merged with the perfect policeman. Like Sherlock Holmes, Sugishita has a great mind that can uncover the most vile of machinations, but unlike Holmes, Sugishita will always work within the law and while he knows the law, and the bureaucracy needed to uphold the law, isn't perfect, he will do everything to keep justice in a lawful manner. But like many great detectives, he does need a 'normal' partner with him to really shine. As a character on his own, he's just too far away for the 'normal' viewer.

Overall, I think Aibou 13 was a fairly okay season, though it lacks the politically heavy stories that were (surprisingly) the highlights in the previous two seasons I watched. And as I usually prefer 'simple' puzzle plots, that says a lot about the quality of that sort of stories in Aibou. I do have the feeling that the latter half of the series was a bit weaker (Professor Ayukawa's Final Lesson and especially Dark Knight) and it results in a bad aftertaste of the series. Of the three seasons starring Kai Tooru as the partner, this may be the least impressive overall. And I have no idea when/if I'll review Aibou 14. I'll probably forget about watching the series and now binge-watch it next year, when Aibou 15 has started

Original Japanese title(s): 『相棒１３』

The Conspirators

「一つ、よろしいでしょうか？」 

『相棒』

"Just one more thing please"
"Partners"

I just decided that no Aibou review will go without a mention of the awesome theme song. Sure, this time was not as awesome as last year's version, but certainly not bad!

Aibou ("Partners") series
Aibou Eleven
Aibou 12

Sugishita Ukyou is an extremely effective police detective, but deemed a bit too dangerous by his superiors because he isn't willing 'to play the game'. So in order to keep him away from ordinary business, but still to keep him close at hand, the higher-ups gave Sugishita command over the Special Order Unit. The title of the unit, which consists just out of Sugishita and his subordinate, can be interpreted in two ways: 1) This unit is to comply to any special order from above. 2) This unit is free to investigate whatever it wants unless there is any special order from above. Because Sugishita isn't the easiest person to work with, many of his subordinates have quit the force, but occasionally, he finds the right partner. Sugishita and his partner's adventures in the TV series Aibou ("Partners") have been a staple of Japanese TV for years. In last year's Aibou Eleven (season 11) Sugishita gained a new partner with Kaito, a young, passionate detective and estranged son of the current Assistant Director-General of the National Police Agency. Aibou 12, which ran from October last year until early this year, brings us more adventures of Sugishita and Kaito.

And for those with an OCD: I'm sorry, but the Japanese denotation of the eleventh season of Aibou really uses the English word "Eleven", even though the twelfth season uses the number...

Aibou Eleven was the first time I caught a complete Aibou season, as I figured that the introduction of a new partner would serve as a good entry point, similar to how people start watching Doctor Who whenever there's a new Doctor. I enjoyed Aibou's ecclectic mix of police procedural, puzzle plots and complex political thriller a lot, something I also appreciated in Detective Conan - Private Eye in the Distant Sea (which was written by a veteran Aibou scriptwriter).

Aibou 12 is in principle the same as the previous season. I guess that after twelve seasons, three theatrical releases and tons of spin-off productions, Aibou has found its niche within the rather flooded world of Japanese mystery dramas and that it will therefore always be sorta the same. But then again, every episode is quite different from the other, because the Special Order Unit can pretty much do whatever it wants. Sometimes we have a deep, dark political thriller that involves all layers of the police force, sometimes it's a very cozy, personal mystery story. Some stories might feature heavy social commentary, while other stories leave a warm fuzzy feeling. I do think it's a missed chance that Aibou seasons are not conceived as one production, i.e. there is no running storyline or theme. Of course, not all series would work with running storylines (I suspect such a plot device would result in overcomplicated plots with Aibou), but I would have loved an overall theme for the season. The estranged relation between Kaito and his father occasionally comes up, and very prominently in the season finale, but I wish it could have been elevated to a bigger theme for the complete season.

Aibou 12 consists of twenty episodes, three of which film-length TV specials, so this review would turn into something unreadable if I commented on all episodes. Instead, some of my favorite moments of this season: the first episode starts off with a bang, as the Assistant Director-General of the National Police Agency is kidnapped, at the same time as the Special Order Unit is investigating a shady online 'expert' on contact with extraterrestrials. Aibou is usually at its best when it can make social commentary on the politics of the police force and other government organizations through fair puzzle plots: this episode is no exception, as it makes some sharp observations about protocol in hostage situations, but still presents an engaging story that delivers the goods to the mystery fan. Similar is the tenth episode, where Kaito is held hostage by a bomb-terrorist to help him smoke out a murdering government agent. The final episode in turn places less emphasis on a puzzle plot, but is a captivating political thriller that asks sharp questions about the lack of a witness protection program in the country.

But there are also lighter episodes that are great. Surprising was the one about an online mystery critic (!), or the episode where a free day of the Special Order Unit conceals a surprising truth. And while some of the 'lighter' episodes also feature social commentary (for example about food safety or the power of mass media), they often go combined with good whodunnit plots and / or an enjoyable police procedural structure. Occassionally, you're even given a (semi) impossible murder!

I loved how each episode could turn out to be completely different from the other episode, but it does make the series feel slightly chaotic. And as I said before, a season is really nothing more than a collection of random cases of the Special Order Unit and I would have appreciated a binding factor, a theme, for each season. Season twelve was fun, but there was nothing fundamentally different from season eleven, even though a season theme would work so well with Aibou. 

But I was very content with Aibou 12 in general and I can't wait for Aibou 13 to start (which, by the time this review is actually published, should already by running for a month or so).

Original Japanese title(s): 『相棒12』

Partners in Crime

Life is a game, so take your chance

And play your hand, you just might win

You never know

"Aibou - Season 7 Opening"

Reviews of novels will probably resume this week... as soon as I manage to finish the one I'm reading now. 

Aibou ("Partners") is a popular police TV drama which has been running for over ten years. What started as a series of special episodes in 2000, has now grown out to be multimedia franchise, with 11 seasons (the 12th season is to start in October), several films, videogames and spin-off series. And yet, to me it was for a long time just 'the series with the awesome theme song'. It was just too long and while I occassionally watched an episode, I never really felt the need to really follow the show because of its length. But last year's Aibou Eleven offered a nice entry point, so I finally got to see what made this show so popular.

Within the depths of the Metropolitan Police Department (Tokyo), situated in a little office, is the Special Order Unit (tokumeikakari), headed by police inspector Sugishita Ukyou. Sugishita is a highly intelligent and competent detective, but because he 'doesn't play the game right', the higher-ups have basically placed him somewhere away from the action. Management also uses the Special Order Unit as a place to banish unwanted police officers to: with Sugishita not always the easiest man to work with, and hardly anything to do for the Special Order Unit, they figure that anyone placed there will quit the job on their own. At the start of the series, six people have been known to have quit the force because they were placed in "The Lone Isle of the Police Department", with 'loose cannon' Kameyama Kaoru the first 'partner' to have been able to work with Sugishita for a long time (hence the title Aibou ("Partners")). Kameyama worked for many seasons with Sugishita and was replaced with the career policeman Kanbe Takeru as the 'second partner'. Kanbe was eventually placed back in the National Police Agency, leaving Sugishita without a partner.

Which made Aibou Eleven a good time to step into the series, as it introduces the world to Sugishita Ukyou's new partner in the Special Order Unit. Kai Tooru (nickname Kaito) is a newly promoted detective who gets picked by Sugishita as his new subordinate, after they manage to solve a hostage crisis in the embassy of Japan in Hong Kong together. Kai's estranged father happens to be the newly appointed Assistant Director-General of the National Police Agency, who tries his best at getting his son out of the force; he figures that his son won't last long in the Special Order Unit anyway. And indeed, Kaito at first cheated for being placed in the Special Order Unit, as he wanted to go to the Homicide Division. But he soon finds out what Sugishita does here, and why it's called the Special Order Unit. As Sugishita interprets his own unit: 'if there's a special order, the unit will do it', and more importantly, 'unless there's a special order, the unit is free to investigate whatever it wants'. And so we follow Sugishita and Kaito as they stick their noses in a variety of criminal cases and solve them.

And I have to say, I regret I haven't followed this series before, because it was surprisingly fun. At it's core, Aibou Eleven is a buddy-cop drama mixed with puzzle plots, with gentleman detective Sugishita as our masterdetective and Kaito as the viewer-proxy. But it is the variety of plots that made Aibou Eleven really worth watching and I feel tempted now to look for the previous ten seasons now.

As you can probably figure from the introduction above, Aibou in general is a police drama that focuses a lot on the functioning of the police. Like with series as Odoru Daisousasen, you'll learn a lot about the organizational structure of the Japanese police and the internal politics. A lot of the stories are tied to both local and national politics, and in general feels close to the shakai-ha (socially concious mysteries) promoted by Matsumoto Seichou, because they function as a critique on the workings (and resulting corruption) or large-scale organizations. The pilot episode of  Aibou Eleven for example, deals with international politics and diplomatics, as the National Police Agency isn't sure how to react to a hostage situation in the Embassy of Japan in Hong Kong, while other stories deal with the illegal act of amakudari ("descent from the heaven", high government officals quitting their job to work at a company in the sector they governed). Other contemporary social problems, like the sale of identities or the use social media are addressed in this season.

But it's the way these 'grand schemes' are used as a background for more traditional, puzzle plots that make a lot of Aibou Eleven's episodes great to watch. A lot of the problems described above might seem faraway from home, but the way these plots manage to make this social problems relevant, and yet not overshadow the importance of a puzzle plot is, at the best of times, fantastic. The first episode, the hostage sitation in the embassy for example, is in its core actually a 'normal' whodunnit murder mystery. I have to admit that sometimes it feels a bit forced, but overall this is a format I have learned to enjoy.

And not all stories are related to politics anyway. There are some 'normal' murder cases that Sugishita and Kaito get involved with. Because of Sugishita's rank, reputation and the free time the Special Order Unit has, the duo can basically investigate a lot freely, which leads to a variety of cases introduced in the series, from the above mentioned large plots to small-scale murder mysteries. As such, the series probably has something to offer to most mystery fans.

And Sugishita Ukyou himself is an interesting character. He's basically the opposite of Columbo, always dressed as a gentleman, knowledgeable about basically everything, head of his own (very, very small) unit. And whereas police detective like Columbo and Furuhata Ninzaburou work by haunting the suspect and catching them on little slips of the tongue, Sugishita works much more like a 'conventional' police detective. He is basically what happens when you put the archetype of a great detective in the police. It's a bit strange, as I am more used to the 'hard-working' type of police detective in this kind of mystery fiction, but it works and coupled with a partner, very fun to watch. He does share a 'Oh, one more thing please' as a catchphrase with Columbo though!

Oh, and the fact that Kaito's father as Assistant Director-General of the National Police Agency is actually behind a lot of the high-class plots and schemes is interesting for the drama (as it puts the Special Order Unit against Kaito's father), but the fact that Ishikawa Kouji is playing him is pretty funny, as he himself played great detective Kindaichi Kousuke in the Ichikawa Kon movies. 

Anyway, Aibou Eleven was a fun series and made me much more curious to the rest of the series, as well as the upcoming Aibou Twelve. And strangely enough, this year's Detective Conan movie, Private Eye in the Distant Sea. The scriptwriter of that movie is actually mostly known for his work on Aibou and it would be interesting to see how the Aibou flavor works in conjuction with Conan!

Original Japanese title(s): 『相棒 Eleven』