riji | [First impression] ON - Ijou Hanzai Sousakan Todo Hinako (Reply)

So I watched the first episode of ON last night. This is the one I'm interested the most this season. So I was actually a little disappointed when I saw it got mixed reviews. But I gotta see it myself to judge it. And turns out... It was pretty good. I watched it till the end without feeling bored or waiting for it to end, even though it was 1.5 hour long. This is saying something because I usually can't handle anything more than an hour. You know, because usually shows are an hour long, so anything longer than that will seem like it's overstaying its welcome. I don't know. It feels like my brain kinda knows when it's been an hour, and my focus will shift from the show to the remaining time left, and I start to grumble about why it hasn't ended yet. So when I don't do those things, it means that the show is good enough to keep my attention. And since I knew this was gonna be 1.5 hour long premiere, I was actually prepared to be bored (and I also wasn't sure it'd be good because of the mixed reviews). So I was a little surprised that I could enjoy it till the end.

The plot is quite interesting. I like that the case is pretty complicated. There are a couple of past cases connected to the main case, and also some surprising and interesting facts behind the killing methods. It's a lot more graphic and gory than I expected. This might be because I'm more used to kdramas where even knives and blood get censored. In any case, I was really surprised (and a little scared) when I saw the second body. Thank god I could still sleep after seeing that.

The acting is pretty good overall, but I must say that the two leads (Haru and Yokoyama Yu) are weaker than the supporting ones. They're not bad tho. I think they're still okay. I like that there's no incompetent cops here (so far). Yokoyama Yu's character is like a rude irresponsible cop, but he's not incompetent. I don't know what's the deal with him and the homeless(?) guy, but I hope he's not a bad cop. Haru's character reminds me of Himura from Himura Hideo no suiri. I'm not sure yet if she'd like to kill, but it does seem like she enjoys murder. In the first episode only, she got called out twice for smiling while seeing/talking about murder. I think it was kinda unexpected because she looked like a good innocent girl before that happened. Another interesting things about her are her love for chili peppers and her amazing memory. She literally puts chili peppers on everything she eats and drinks. Even her hot chocolate. Seriously tho, why? And she can amazingly memorize the details of all the cases in the past 10 years. At first, I thought she had a photographic memory, but she said she just memorized them, so I was like "Is that even possible?" Anyway, she always draws in her notebook to help her remember things, so I guess that's possible?

Now, onto the not-so-good parts. I have a problem with the background music. At times, it feels like it doesn't match the situation, especially when Haru's character had just been informed about the death of her best friend. I was like "Who's the music director?" It really didn't suit the atmosphere. And I also feel like the background music is too loud. Sometimes it's louder than the actors' voices. The other problem is the way they talk about the case. It seems like they all talk about it too casually, like what they talk about is not a murder. I don't know. I just feel like it's supposed to be more a lot serious than that. I hope they fix this in the second episode.