リジーです

This drama wasn't in my radar, but it turns out to be pretty interesting. Yeah, interesting, but not that good. It has so many flaws and questionable things, but I love mystery, and they succeeded in making me curious. So this drama stars Keyakizaka46. This is the first time I heard about them. I don't follow girl groups generally, so I only know very few of them. I didn't even know this was a girl group's drama project. But after a few minutes in, I had some suspicions that they were idols. They looked like ones and their acting was pretty bad. So I looked it up. And yeah, I was right.

Since I can't organize my thoughts into paragraphs, here are my scattered thoughts after watching the first episode.

• I can't believe their first reaction when they saw their sensei not moving at all was just staring at him. And after one girl checked if he was still breathing and confirmed he was dead, and everyone was like "Really?", "Isn't he just sleeping", and they all said this casually. Even when they were all convinced he was dead, they still talked like nothing happened. Really though? No one freaks out? This is an all-girl school and nobody screams?


• Why does nobody call 911? I mean, the equivalent of 911 in Japan, but I forget what it is. Or at least, they can tell the other teachers. Instead, they hide the body, even from the teachers. What are they thinking???


• Stop touching the body. Do not move the body. Do not pull the knife out and put it back in even deeper than before. Do not take selfies with the body. Do not do anything. Why can't they just stay still? When the police finally come, they're all gonna be in so much trouble.


• They concluded it was a murder, not suicide, and decided to hide the body until they found the murderer. Why do they think this is a good idea? They can just inform the teachers/police and then try to find the murderer.


• That one girl who keeps taking selfies with the body and almost blows up the cover multiple times is so damn frustrating. Can't she use her brain for once?


• Every time the locker door opens and reveals the body, it always creeps me out. He's supposed to be dead, but looks like alive. That makes it extra creepy.


• The background music is so spooky. Sometimes too spooky.


• There were two teachers coming to classroom. There were times when the body was in their sights (before the girls could hide it), but they didn't see it. It just doesn't make any sense. How can they not see it? They were clearly looking at the same direction as the body.


• Who's that girl looking from the other side of the classroom? Why is she doing that creepy thing? The background music gotta chill a bit tho.

That's it, I guess. This is shorter than I expected, but the drama is only 25 min long. And they keep repeating the same thing over and over, like doing something to the body. So most of the time, I was just like "Seriously tho. Leave the body alone." I think this is gonna be one of those dramas that I criticize a lot, but will still watch it till the end. Because I'm curious to see how they're gonna resolve this. And will they all go to jail for hiding the body and messing with it? Well, for now, I just hope they'll stop doing stupid things starting from ep 2.

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.