Bullet Point Review: Thrill!: The Red & Black Chapter

Also known in romaji as ‘Aka no Shou — Keishicho Shomugakari Hitomi no Jikenbo’ and ‘Kuro no Shou — Bengoshi Shirai Shinnosuke no Daisainan’.

Mild Spoilers Ahead…

• I had referred to the ‘one-case-per-episode’ format as a bit-size consumable in my review for Strawberry Night Saga. Thrill!: The Red & Black Chapter, goes a step further, by completely stripping the drama of backstories (of the protagonists) and inter-woven social issues to present a simple, straightforward narrative, which is only concerned with the unravelling of the who and the how.
• The show consists of a total of eight episodes, but is divided into two chapters with respect to its two protagonists. The Red Chapter deals with Nakano Hitomi (a superb Komatsu Nana), an accountant at Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, who thanks to her swindler father (and the detailed diary he leaves behind) is able to understand how criminals work. She teams up with Togawa Takeru (Koide Keisuke), a detective at the department, to solve the mystery of the week.
  The Black Chapter deals with the mysteries from down on his luck lawyer Shirai Shinnosuke’s (a hilarious Yamamoto Koji) perspective (both characters feature as a supporting cast in each others chapters).
• The beats of all the episodes are near identical, often resembling an episode of Scooby Doo (or any cartoon for that matter), as the drama is rife with running gags, catchphrases and stock characterisation. But because this is a mini-series and because mystery is star of the show, it enhances the whimsical nature, the show is going for and also keeps the drama from becoming too morbid. It chooses to emphasize the ‘thrill’ of solving a mystery, over everything else.

• I personally liked the Red Chapter more (though the Black Chapter is more humorous) as I liked the character of Hitomi a lot. Her childlike wonder combined with her wit and confidence made it extremely fun to watch her solve the crimes (especially when you consider she isn’t doing it for any glory or to prove something to someone, but just because she likes to). The finale episode is the only episode which felt weirdly off, because of the show’s casual treatment clashing with the serious themes of the episode. Hitomi sees two people murdered in front of her eyes, yet somehow goes on unaffected. Also, I thought that the show was divided into two chapters, so that we could see both the police and a lawyer solving cases; that is Shirai Shinnosuke would get to defend his clients in the second half of the show and catch the culprit, but it is just his perspective of the events unfolding and Hitomi and Togawa are still the ones solving the case.