This is one of my personal favourites and honestly one of the most criminally underrated shows on this entire site.
I have spent probably entirely too much time watching, rewatching, and analysing this show and I have a frankly unreasonable amount of opinions about the entire thing, so let me try and explain why I feel so strongly about what, to most people, seems to be nothing more than a mid-tier drama.

Let's start with the characters:
Onoe is unfailingly honest and direct, and wants to believe the best in everyone, which are qualities that frequently land him in trouble. He is earnest and sweet and does his job because he wants to genuinely help people.
Kaburagi meanwhile is the opposite. He is very quiet and jaded and has lost faith in the purpose of his job. He initially takes the job because, like Onoe, he wants to do good in the world and to learn how to peel back people's layers and find good there. Except he gets unlucky with his scoops, doesn't find that hoped for kindness and love anywhere and gets even more closed off and cynical as a result to the point where he essentially abandons all his ethics in the pursuit of newsworthy stories.
Their relationship could easily have been nothing more than a typical "complete opposites" dynamic, but the show opts for a much subtler and more low-key approach to this than usual and the dynamic quickly changes to the two characters balancing each other out more and more and making each other better.

This compelling subtlety permeates through all aspects of the show; the story touches on a lot of fascinating, complex, and serious topics, sometimes more in depth sometimes a bit less, in a very quiet and understated, but very deft way and then neatly ties every theme back to the characters and their personal growth and development.
Most of the "villains" the characters expose with their stories are much more than two- dimensional antagonists.
The show makes a point of showing that there is no such thing as clear-cut morality, that the "villains" aren't monsters beyond human comprehension, they're just people. There's a running theme of "Just because you did something evil doesn't mean you're not sympathetic" as well as "Just because I can empathise with you and understand your reason, you still did horrible things and that's not an excuse". To quote another clever show: "Cool motive, still murder"
As the story progresses it explores these topics in increasing depth and with such nuanced complexity that I found myself genuinely slack-jawed and amazed at times.

A further strong point of the show is Onoe and Kaburagi's relationship.
From the very beginning they communicate so openly with each other. Onoe, for example. figures out his attraction to Kaburagi very quickly, goes to ask his friend for advice, gives himself a bit of time to figure out the differences between platonic and romantic affection and once he does, is pretty much entirely upfront with Kaburagi about how he feels for the rest of the show.
Meanwhile Kaburagi is having a bit of a harder time figuring out what he's feeling but rather than letting their relationship devolve into an endless, angst-filled back and forth, he just tells Onoe how he feels.
He specifically tells Onoe "I like you! Probably" and every subsequent time Onoe confronts him about sending mixed signals or misunderstanding something, Kaburagi just very openly tells him "I don't know how I feel, I don't know what you are to me". They keep giving each other time and space to figure things out, which is such an unusual and healthy portrayal of a budding new relationship. I genuinely have never seen a romance drama paced like this before, it is a truly unique approach and a much-needed breath of fresh air for the genre.

In conclusion: This is a truly masterfully written and acted show, with solid visuals, an amazing cast of supporting characters, and an understated, deadpan type of humour that suits the story perfectly and which I personally find incredibly charming.
I keep coming back to this show again and again and the simple reason for this is that, to me, this show has an intrinsic and fundamental understanding of what it means to be human, flawed and multi-faceted and endlessly joyful.
I highly recommend you watch it.






Post-script with content warnings and mild spoilers:

One thing I feel like I have to address is the show's one unfortunate flaw - the source material.
There are two scenes in the show that I strongly disliked:
First, one in which Onoe is almost sexually assaulted by someone during an undercover operation, and while the show does acknowledge how bad that situation was, they sort of gloss over how serious and traumatising the experience should have been to Onoe.
Second, a scene in which Kaburagi's main informer lets him choose whether to pay for the intel with money or with sex and while Kaburagi does turn her down and only ever pays her in cash from then on out, the show never explicitly states how problematic such an arrangement is, nor do they condemn the informant specifically.
So why, where did those scenes come from, why do they feel so tonally inconsistent and out of place compared to the rest of the show?
This is where the source material becomes relevant. I got my hands on the manga on which the story is based, only to realise, with no small amount of horror, that the source material barely resembles the clever, heartfelt sensitivity of the show and is instead an incredibly run-of-the-mill, rapey yaoi trash-fire. That may sound harsh, but it is unfortunately accurate.
Seemingly the scriptwriters for the show did their level best to take the compelling concept of the manga while removing its glaring flaws. In their attempts to still remain as true to the original as possible, as fans so often demand, they only sanitised the scenes in question, rather than removing them completely. This doesn't excuse the inclusion of said scenes whatsoever, but it does contextualize them, and make them slightly easier to bear in my opinion.