The Murder in Kairoutei (2022)

A suspenseful romance that is short but intense.

The drama, in a nutshell: a love story between a businesswoman and an illegitimate son, inter-family power struggles and an arson case.

An excellent script, a crazy plot that's quite original in the way it unfolds, quality cinematography (so high quality that I felt like I was watching a movie), stunning actors and breathtaking chemistry: a most intense and beautiful romance. The plot is exceptional, as it swings between truth, lies, doubt and uncertainty. I haven't seen many chinese dramas, but this one is surely the shortest in the genre without being a mini drama (if you know the length of cdramas, you know what I mean), a perfect length that didn't leave me hungry after seeing the conclusion. Some of the scenes are absolutely magnificent, and you won't be disappointed until the very end (I hope...). For those of you who like to get chills while watching dramas, I've only got one thing to say: Go for it.

There's one thing I must mention: the dialogue. Some of the dialogue is so beautiful that sensitive people like me won't be able to hold back the tears.

Notes aside:
- I recommend reading the lyrics of the ending at least once as they are incredible.
- After the end of each episode, you'll be treated to just one line of dialogue as a preview, under a mysterious air with the coolest music and title screen. I think this kind of detail is important, it makes the whole thing even cooler. It lasts like 10 seconds, and that's enough to get you hyped.
- The presence of a voice-over narrator who intervenes from time to time in the course of the story, I can't say any more but that's another detail I found very cool and well done. It felt like watching a novel.

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The Murder in the writers' room

A murder has been committed. Victim? The show's script. The prime suspect? The writers. Accomplices? The director and editors of the show.
You come here, thinking it's a story about an arson/murder case only to find out it's another petty spat about rich people tearing each other's throats out for money. I went on and watched the Japanese adaptation of this story as well, just to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating the mystery aspect that I expected this show to have and while that movie wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination, it most definitely had the Agatha Christie style suspension that I had expected. So this show has no excuse for being such a bland and boring mess with an incohesive plot.

Summary: Rich dude is about to die when he finds out he has an illegitimate son. He asks this super successful assistant in his vaguely important and powerful company to find him (because it's not like she has an actual job to do). She succeeds so fast, you wonder why the dude didn't just make the call that she made himself to find the boy in two seconds...

Plot: I'm not even sure how I should properly nag about this. Do I complain about the setup? Because the setup is awful. I don't know about others but I'm personally over this trend in modern Cdramas where there's this super important and successful company (and you are never even told what the company does) and the protagonist is a 30-year-old who is extremely successful (without even once seeing them do their actual job) and then there are all these political dramas surrounding the company as if it's the parliament or something. This self-grandiosity in shows just makes me roll my eyes and I can't take anything that happens seriously. It's simply beyond stupid. Anyway, this show had that.
Do I complain about the characters? I know China has an allergy towards having antagonists as main characters and productions would rather have everyone walk on their hands and speak through drawn faces on their stomachs rather than having a grey character as MC but it was honestly ridiculous how far this show twisted itself around in order to not show any fault in their main character. She's a genius, gorgeous woman with a heart of gold who has never done anything wrong, she probably farts rainbows...I hated it. In addition, the show is made up of an entirely exhausting, incompetent, spoiled rich cast of villains that are all so bad at being bad that half the show is just watching them be petulant over not succeeding at anything. The romance is slightly better but it's not really that touching so I'm at best indifferent towards it.
What do I even say about the case? Because the real crime of this show is that it's supposed to be a freaking murder mystery and you literally get 10 minutes of detective work and everything else is explained in voiceover and monologued in the last episode! Just why?!
The suspense is maintained like a feather on a needlepoint (as in, it's not.) At every turn, instead of building suspense, the show just blows everything up like a balloon and spills everything then wastes more time on silly family drama. They don't even do a good job with that. The characters are as boring as can be and their personal drama is just as terrible.
The more I write, the angrier I get so I'll just settle by saying it was terribly written. The worst script I've seen so far this year. Possibly in the last 5 years! What even was this...

Acting: I kind of feel bad for Steven Zhang for being in this show. He's usually a good actor but acting is just not enough when the plot is this bad. The actress who plays the lead wasn't good in my opinion. She seemed more concerned with looking beautiful and barely had proper expressions throughout the show. She had moments but overall bad. The rest of the cast was just sufficient, not very impressive though.

Music and production: The music was alright, better than the rest of the show. The production looked cheap. It wasn't done with much thought, it looked like every other average show out there. The editing was terrible. Censorship or not, they really butchered the show. The voiceover (I'll never stop mentioning it) was just a slap to the face. Awful.
One good thing I can say is that the opening sequence was nice...that's it!

Rewatch value: NO!

Overall: This is not a good show. It's not absolutely terrible, so I gave it a 7 and not the 5 I personally felt it deserved. The name of the show, the trailer, and the synopsis all created this false expectation that this was a show in a similar tier as other short-form mystery dramas that China has been making lately but one episode was enough to realize this is merely a watery romance wrapped in petty, rich-people, family drama masquerading as a murder mystery. It was a failure. I don't recommend this to anyone. If you're really desperate to watch something about Kairoutei, just watch the Japanese one. At least it makes sense...

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