Karei Naru Spy – Mid Series Thoughts

Kyousuke Yoroi is a condemned man, sentenced to 30 years in prison for the crimes he committed in his life as a genius con artist. But, now, he’s given an opportunity: Become a spy for the Japanese government and earn his freedom or spend the rest of sentence in the cold, miserable, Hokkaido prison.

What’s a convicted man to do?

Fair warning: Spoilers ahead.

Karei Naru Spy, or A Magnificent Spy, was glorified to be Nagase’s return television since the commercially successful 2005 NTV drama My Boss, My Hero (this is excluding the fact that he starred in the flop Utahime on TBS back in 2007). Everyone was so hyped for it, NTV geared up for it, and the first episode was a two hour premiere – the longest premiere for a Jdrama I’ve ever experienced.

I can’t come up with anything for this one

Karei Naru Spy wasn’t as “ Magnificent “ as the title had suggested. It opened up with modest ratings it’s first week and slowly began to down spiral as fast as Utahime before spiking tremendously in ratings for episode 4 (no doubt due to NEWS’ Takahisa Masuda’s cameo) and slowly tanking again – though briefly starting to rise again with last week’s episode (8).

I personally was a bit disappointed with the first few episodes of this drama. For some reason, a show so bent on being a parody of the spy/espionage genre of the 1970s, it came off signifigantly flat. It relied too much on Nagase giving of a performance of several “characters” under his sleeve of tricks as a con-artist, that it came off too forced and made every other cast member come off as weak in comparison. Which is sad considering that half of the cast of Karei Naru Spy are in fact well, established, comedians.

I also think that Kyoko Fukada’s portrayal of Dorothy annoying, flat, fake, and unconvincing. Watching Fukada act in this is like watching Megan Fox on screen: She’s a pretty face but that’s it, everything else is just pure torture. Kyoko is so bad she makes Sho Sakurai look like Johnny Depp. I’m now officially afraid of even attempting to watch Yatterman now.

ONORE YOSHIZAWA SOUUURRRIIIIIIII

Its with this poor acting and unconvincing characters that don’t make use of the potential this series has, Karei Naru Spy comes off as a show just trying too hard to get laughs and be funny with ridiculous, over the top, and obviously fake situations. The only cast members remotely putting any effort in their characters is Akira Emoto (Mr. Takumi) and the Hirahara family (Takada Junji, Anne, and Kazue Ito). Akira Emoto’s portrayl of a crazed, insane leader of a terrorist organization obviously modeled after the Nazi regime, is pretty down right scary; especially in episode 7 and 8 when we reach the climax of the series.

Now, not all is bad about Karei Naru Spy. It gradually begins to pick itself up after episode 5 when we start to focus more on Kyousuke, Prime Minister Yoshizawa, and Mr. Takumi. When we find out that Kyousuke is Mr. Takumi’s son in episode 4, the plot thickens when Yoshizawa contests Mr. Takumi’s claim in episode 7 stating that Kyousuke is in fact his son. With a questionable past of these two characters, Karei Naru Spy starts to become interesting as a plot finally surfaces from the shadows of the episodic train wreck it started off as.

The growing love triangle between Kyousuke, Dorothy, and Anne seems to be a complicated sub-plot that I rather do without. With the constant Love You/Hate You between all three it just deters away from whatever potential we could have with a growing plot. Also, with Dorothy once being a man – it just furthers add to a complication in a story that just baffles me. How will Kyousuke react to Dorothy being a man? What benefit is it to have Dorothy and Miku in love with Kyousuke? And why is Kyousuke giving mixed messages to both characters? Does he even understand what’s going on?

Karei Naru Spy has two more episodes to wrap up this series and it looks like Osamu, The Secret Intelligence Agency’s elite hacker is in fact a double agent for Mr. Takumi. Not only that, Kyousuke has found out Mr. Takumi is in fact his own father (or is he?). Then we have a spontaneous love triangle that appeared out of nowhere, The Prime Minister disbanding the SIA, and the case of Kyousuke’s own mother….

I don’t know what the writers have in store but I am highly interested in seeing how in the hell they’re gonna wrap this all up, and with that, have it make sense.

Fuck