Drama: Meitantei Conan ep01

Plot:
High school detective Kudo Shinichi and his childhood friend, Mori Ran, hear a male voice shout right after coming out of a nail salon on the first floor of an apartment building. When they rush over to the scene at the entrance of an apartment, cameraman Tsuboichi Yuhei is bleeding from his forehead and his assistant Kishi has collapsed. Shinichi and Ran burst into the apartment to discover that Aida Momoko, the model who lives there, has died. An investigation is conducted. Kishi gives evidence that he had been hit with what seemed like an iron bar by a man who darted out of the room. Tsubouchi says he would like to have the murderer arrested. He is the dead Momoko’s brother-in-law. Shinichi feels something is wrong with Tsubouchi and Kishi’s statements. If the attacker was the same person, he should have struck Momoko with the bar too, but Momoko was strangled by a pair of hands. This makes Shinichi turn his suspicion toward Tsubouchi. Will he be able to expose the murderer’s secret trick and arrive at the truth?
Credit: DramaWiki

Cast: Mizobata Junpei, Kutsuna Shiori, Otsuka Nene, Akimoto Sayaka, Ibu Masato, Jinnai Takanori

Official Site: YTV - Meitantei Conan

Comments:
I had no idea this was a half hour drama.  I should have figured since its a midnight drama.  But the ratings were significantly high for a drama that airs around midnight with a 5.7%.

The episode starts off with Kudo Shinichi (Mizobata) waking up in a dark room, he realizes he's handcuffed to his childhood friend Mori Ran (Kutsuna) and wakes her up.  A spotlight flashes behind them in the corner of the room revealing Mori Kogoro (Jinnai), Mori's father.  The three of them get up and the lights turn on completely revealing a sealed white room with no windows or doors.  Shinichi finds a letter taped to the one of the tiles on the wall.  A "fan" praises the work he's done and claims the white room is a present for him.  Trying to think of a way out, a podium with a screen on it appears out of no where showing a date.  Shinichi remembered the date and crime that happened that day immediately and on goes the story..

The case that happened that day was a photographer that had killed his wife's sister, who happened to be his lover.  Now I know It sounds weird for me to spoil the story immediately, but the fact is, I didn't spoil it, they mentioned it even before the story begun.  We're basically just watching a flashback and im pretty sure this is going to be the trend for the rest of the season.

 We see the photographer murder his lover because she broke up with him.  He ransacks the place to try to cover up the murder.  That day, he was supposed to hold a photography session with her, so he leaves and comes back to her place later on, meeting up with a colleague of his.  When the colleague opens the door, he gets attacked.

It just so happens that Shinichi and Ran are over in that area.  They hear something as theyre about to leave the nail place and find Tsuboichi and Kishi on the floor.  Tsuboichi tells Shinichi that Momoko is inside still and finds her dead.  While Kishi is unable to identify a suspect, Tsuboichi has a description of this guy and it resembles the face of a serial robber.  Shinichi just so happened to have a picture of the wanted poster on his cellphone.  This kid is seriously in the right place at the right times for some reason.

Shinichi isn't easy to fool.  he immediately knows that this crime wasn't done by a serial robber.  If it were a robber, this person would have been an amateur as the room was completely cluttered and wrecked and even have locked the front door.

 Ran unknowingly helped Shinichi figure out who the culprit is by checking herself out in a full-length mirror that was set up near the front door.  With the warm "strobe" light that Shinichi found in the closet, he figures that the culprit blinded Kishi as he opened the unlocked door with a camera flash using the mirror to reflect it towards the door.  The culprit must have hit Kishi in the head with a tripod (not a lead pipe that he thought hit him).  All these to be handled by a professional photographer.  Shinichi accuses Tsuboichi as the culprit, and while he acts offended, he gets a bit hesitant as Shinichi asks him if he can borrow his camera knowing that the camera he had stolen from the room was actually key to proving he was guilty.

While the pictures don't prove to him being guilty, it wasn't the pictures that Shinichi was after, but testing the camera itself.  It appears that flowers that had been bought that day by Momoko had been spreading pollen throughout the house, which also appears on the camera in possession of Tsuboichi.  Pollen should not have been on the camera if in fact he had been carrying it before he showed up to Momoko's.

The pictures in the camera show Momoko mouthing the word "Aishiteru" (Love) when you flip through the pictures.  What I don't get is, how can a standard film camera produce that many pictures, and how did they dry them so fast?  I worked in a photo lab before and there was no way that can legit happen, though I know that even as a drama, it can't always be accurate with time.  In the end, it is presumed that Momoko loved Tsuboichi despite breaking up with him and that's for her sister's sake.  Tsuboichi breaks down and they flash back towards the present day, typing in the "password" on the screen "A-I-SHI-TE-RU", unlocking a door which lead back to another white room.

I wasn't expecting this drama to turn out the way it did.  I thought it was going to be just like any other detective show where you see the murder or crime, but you're trying to figure out who did it, with what and how.  But with this, it's already revealed what the crime was about, and they're showing it as a flashback.  That's a little disappointing to me because you already know what's going to happen.  The acting was just, OK, to me.  I like Mizobata Junpei, but I wasn't really feeling his acting in this drama.  It seems a little fake when he's in the white room, but when they do the actual crime stuff, it goes along smoother.  I can't really say if I like this drama or not since it wasn't what I was expecting, but it wasn't bad or anything.  After this episode, I wont be reviewing it anymore as I'll be pushing this drama back within my priority.  I will continue watching it, but I won't be doing it on a weekly basis.