The Best Dynamic

Yugami and Hanyu are as different as chalk and cheese, and their dynamic is what lends the show its depth and its buoyancy, keeping the proceedings equal parts emotional and equal parts comical without one overbearing the other. Hanyu is the rookie detective, the stickler for the rules, and the emotional one of the two, while Yugami on the other hand, is the senior detective but acts like a buffoon, much to Hanyu’s annoyance. He has his own method of investigation, which largely doesn’t line up with police protocol, but all his playfulness is just a facade that he uses to observe and make notes of, most of which escape the other officers' eyes. And though Hanyu may not like his methods, he respects Yugami.
Each episode concentrates on a completely new case, and instead of highlighting one social issue per episode, the writers and directors, present the victim, the suspects and the culprit as complex beings, and the issues they face, could be an amalgamation of many problems at hand, some created by their circumstances and some by the society. Like for example, there is the running joke in the show that Kanno Rika (a delightful Inamori Izumi) is 40 years old yet unmarried. But later in one of the cases, Kanno’s own classmate is murdered, who was also unmarried. And while the case was more about people creating false personas of themselves on social media, it also comments on how hard it was on the victim’s mental health to constantly battle her decision to remain single, and not raise a family. On the same spectrum, you also have a retired banker, also unmarried, who finds his post-retirement life absolutely boring, as all he has ever done his whole life was work. This episode with a focus on Japan’s ageing population also concentrates like the aforementioned case, the loneliness permeating through people’s lives.
Consciously or unconsciously, many of the cases revolve around women but thankfully aren’t depicted as rah-rah feminist stories. The cases depict them as complicated beings, capable of being victims as well as perpetrators. A girl molested on the train. A daughter orphaned. A wife raped. A single mother. What keeps the show and it’s proceedings grounded is that none of the cases involve some big mastermind criminal. They are all normal people who felt trapped or felt desperate to act out in this way. Hence, it explains the need to give a significant portion of the episode to the perpetrators to explain their side of the story.

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The Kirishmia Thing is a film that I can definitely recommend.

The Kirishima Thing is at its strongest when portraying how the order and structure of Japanese society impacts the high school. The uniform clad students endure long days of arriving pre-sunrise to departing in the dark of night. The sports teams practice and play on both Saturday and Sunday determined to earn honour and recognition for their school. There is great respect for one’s elders as the students bow to their teachers when greeting and departing. Director Daihachi Yoshida astutely highlights how tradition still plays an important role even in the insular version of society that high school creates.

Yoshida constructs a film that is both visually appealing and very well written. The opening sequence, titled Friday, is shot from four different perspectives which helps to emphasize how each group interprets their place in the hierarchy. This allows Yoshida to use different camera angles, framing and even alter the content to accentuate the current perspective of a particular scene. Yoshida manages the drama by evoking a sense of a contained atmosphere. Many of the school arrivals are shot from above to make the school feel small and overcrowded.

The Kirishima Thing is a superior presentation of high school life that takes a different path from typical conventions. The characters move in and out of the preconceived notions that one would normally associate with their roles. As a result, Yoshida captures the structure of Japanese school life in a robust and enjoyable way. The Kirishmia Thing is a film that I can definitely recommend.

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