Kaibutsu

Kaibutsu is a very interesting thriller. Sato Koichi is a police detective dealing with two cases. First is a murder case where Mukai Osamu who works at a high-tech garbage disposal research facility is suspected of murder. The waste disposal tech is able to reduce rubbish and bodies into pure liquid, making it the perfect tool for getting rid of dead people.

The second case is a 15 year old case where Kaname Jun who  a political prince, is suspected to have murdered a 15 year old girl. Tabe Mikako was also a victim of Kaneme Jun turns up wanting to confront him. Needless to say the two cases somehow get connected and interesting things happen.

This is a show about monsters/kaibutsu and I'm happy that it doesn't take the black and white route. Its sad that all jdorama villains have to laugh like a maniac but I'll take that since the story is good. There a lot of twists and turns that I wish they could have done it in 5 episodes instead of a 2 hours special but I'll take grey area morality any way I can.

The one thing I was worried over was the ending and I was so glad when the karmic ending turned out to be a hallucination. The ending is really exciting, ends on a cliffhanger and I really want to see what happens next. I really want to give this a must watch but by the jdorama gods, the lighting in this is horrible. Lots of random light scources from who knows where litter this dorama SP and light glares. The lighting guy on this dorama uses glares like JJ Abrams uses lens flare. Overall, really fake mood lighting.

Highly recommended. They don't have enough time to sell some twists and turns and you'll probably be wishing someone from WOWOW directed this but any serious thriller dorama that manages to go to interesting places is not to be missed. If Sono Sion or Kurosawa Kiyoshi had directed this, it would have been a classic. I want to know whether the novel stops here or whether it has a sequel because the possibilities for part 2 are endless.