Hidarime Tantei EYE (The Left Eye Detective… Eye) – Thoughts and Quick Summary

Nearly blind in his left eye since birth, Ainosuke Tanaka has spent his entire life with his other brother, Yumehito. Yet, one day all that comes to an end when his other brother fatally dies in a lab explosion. Not believing it was an accident, Ainosuke is determined to find who killed his brother.

I’m only going to give a quick summary about this drama since its pretty rudimentary in the whole “Detective Genre” of Japanese dramas.

Basically, Yumehito (Yuu Yokoyama) and Ainosuke (Ryosuke Yamada) switch their left eyes with each other because Ainosuke is nearly blind in his left eye. As a gifted artist, this is a gift like none other for him. Soon after he receives a letter in the mail with a large sum of money and a letter from his brother basically saying how he was sorry he wasn’t able to always be with him but take this in case anything happens.

Yumehito dies in a lab explosion and Ainosuke finds out. Unable to accept the fact that his brother was murdered due to the letter he received in the mail, he does his own investigation against the findings of the police and coroner stating that Yumehito had died in an lab accident. Angry and disarrayed, he gains the attention of the school nurse, Hitomi, and the two set off to investigate the truth behind Yumehito’s death.

This should be enough to let you know how dumb she is.

Ainosuke soon discovers that whenever he’s knocked out he can see whatever his brother saw relating to his death. Drawing the scenes he saw, he inches closer and closer to the criminals. Believing that they’re staging bank robbers, he attains the next bank in his visions and observes the robbery. Once he receives another vision after purposely knocking himself out, he rushes to the safes to find one of the robbers grabbing a keycard. He gets knocked out again and the robbers escape with the keycard.

He gets arrested under the charges of robbery, but everything gets thrown aside when the criminals attack a virus lab. Threatening to release a virus on to the public, the city evacuates when the criminal throws the vial over the ledge. He then uses the opportunity to head over to the police station to retrieve lap top they had recovered from him in the first five minutes of the ep that they’re trying to crack. Ainosuke confronts him… and it’s revealed that it was Yumehito all along.

After explaining his intentions, Ainosuke askes him to stop but Yumehito refuses, ” Will you kill me?” Ainosuke doesn’t reply, so Yumehito threatens him with a gun, ” I won’t hesitate to kill you. ” and walks out on him. ” Lies. ”

Ainosuke chases after him and says,  ” I’ll stop you. No matter what, I’ll stop whatever you’re planning with my own hands.  With the left eye you gave me.”

” Stop me if you can, but remember, you never said that you could kill me. ”

This drama was boring up until the last ten minutes you find out that the real criminal was in fact Yumehito, Ainosuke’s older brother. The acting was terrible in this and Hitomi was flat out annoying, to the point that I wish she was never a character in the first place. Her dimwitted, shallow, money hungry, airhead characteristics come off more like a headache and eyesore than something that’s funny. Fortunately enough, I’m not alone on this — Half the Japanese drama review blogs agree as well.

This should not be the only reason why I watched this but it is.

The detectives weren’t that captivating either, and the lead detectives confidence issues were annoying the moment he got on screen.

Yamada is off mark in this drama and watching him in it doesn’t pull my attention at all. It doesn’t help that Yokoyama’s portrayl of the evil Yumehito just seems like Honma Toshio returning, except more-so as a passive aggressive than a mentally unbalanced director still caught in the past. I’m starting to get the jist that Yokoyama’s evil characters only have one mode and one mode only: Smooth, slow talking, with evil glares. The reveal is shocking but then it settles right back into a ” I’ve seen this character before. ”

NTV usually does this around this time of a year. Air a drama special that ends up being a renzoku the following year. Hissatsu Shigotonin got the same treatment and with the way this ended, I really do suspect that this will be a renzoku sometime in 2010 (There’s also no DVD for preorder on Amazon yet). Though, I’m not that excited for it. If I have to deal with this scale of acting for 10 – 11 episodes, I’d rather watch something else. Also, watching Hitomi is like watching Akiko from Kamen Rider W.

I don’t need two dumb bitches to deal with once a week.

But knowing me, I’ll watch it anyway just because Yoko’s in it.

I… wish I could quit you!