jdrama: Koshonin eps 1-8 (complete first series)
Usagi Reiko is a Japanese police officer recently transferred to the negotiation team, SIT. SIT is male dominated, and her coworkers don’t take her seriously and disregard her ideas, despite her excellent abilities at profiling and her observational skills. She also has a strange relationship with a (possibly insane) young man in prison, who seems to simultaneously hate her and have an emotional dependence on her, and she seems to have a history with several of her superiors that they may not be aware of.
I first heard of this when I saw Reiko being compared to Erico from BOSS, and it’s a worthy comparison. Both are awesome, super competent, physically skilled and capable without falling into “Warrior Woman” clichés, extremely intelligent, consistently prove they’re excellent in their chosen fields, and deal with sexism in the workplace with their own special kind of class. Seriously, there should be a crossover where they team up and destroy all the lesser mortals in their paths. I think someone told me that Reiko is the most awesome jdrama heroine ever. While she’s certainly a contender, she has some pretty fierce competition. (There should be a poll? Maybe I should get on that.)
Unfortunately, the series as a whole doesn’t hold up to the BOSS comparison. While BOSS had an awesome supporting cast, both in actors in characters, the first episode of Koshonin had me hating pretty much every character other than Reiko, and while Yonekura Ryoko is amazing (I wish more of her dramas got subbed) most of the rest of the cast, while competent, is rather flat and unengaging, and I spent the entire series recasting most characters. Like, Reiko’s boss? Would have been awesome if played by Abe Hiroshi. I’m just saying. I kind of, uhm, ended up not paying attention the way I should have in scenes without Reiko. She’s in most scenes though?
But did I mention that Reiko is supremely awesome? Because she is, and that should be repeated. Does anyone know if the second season is still being subbed? Because it looks like subs stalled out at ep 4.
I first heard of this when I saw Reiko being compared to Erico from BOSS, and it’s a worthy comparison. Both are awesome, super competent, physically skilled and capable without falling into “Warrior Woman” clichés, extremely intelligent, consistently prove they’re excellent in their chosen fields, and deal with sexism in the workplace with their own special kind of class. Seriously, there should be a crossover where they team up and destroy all the lesser mortals in their paths. I think someone told me that Reiko is the most awesome jdrama heroine ever. While she’s certainly a contender, she has some pretty fierce competition. (There should be a poll? Maybe I should get on that.)
Unfortunately, the series as a whole doesn’t hold up to the BOSS comparison. While BOSS had an awesome supporting cast, both in actors in characters, the first episode of Koshonin had me hating pretty much every character other than Reiko, and while Yonekura Ryoko is amazing (I wish more of her dramas got subbed) most of the rest of the cast, while competent, is rather flat and unengaging, and I spent the entire series recasting most characters. Like, Reiko’s boss? Would have been awesome if played by Abe Hiroshi. I’m just saying. I kind of, uhm, ended up not paying attention the way I should have in scenes without Reiko. She’s in most scenes though?
But did I mention that Reiko is supremely awesome? Because she is, and that should be repeated. Does anyone know if the second season is still being subbed? Because it looks like subs stalled out at ep 4.