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Thrill ! The Black Chapter (黒の章) and The Red Chapter (赤の章) was an NHK drama broadcast in February and March 2017. Both ‘chapters’ are parallel stories with detective Togawa (Keisuke Koide) from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police as a central protagonist and two other characters who often interfere: Shinnosuke Shirai the lawyer (Koji Yamamoto) and Hitomi Nakano (Nana Komatsu) an accountant who works for the general affairs department of the Police.

Whereas The Black Chapter deals with the adventures of both Togawa and Shinnosuke with Hitomi in the background, The Red Chapter focuses on Togawa and Hitomi. Each chapter has 4 episodes with a runtime of approximately 48′ per episode.

Togawa: he is a determined detective, quick to act and he won’t back down when beating up criminals becomes necessary. Lawyer Shinnosuke often gets in the way and proves to be a hindrance more often than not. On the contrary, Hitomi is a helper and without her Togawa wouldn’t be able to solve difficult and sometimes mysterious cases.

Hitomi: she is not a detective, her job is to check if the members of the police, whatever their position, make proper use of public money. She’d love to be one though and she definitely could: smart and nosy she’s fast thinking and knows how criminals act and play to fool people as her own father was a conman.

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Shinnosuke: naïve, rather incompetent as a lawyer, yet a bit greedy for money and ambitious, he is the perfect candidate for a king of blunders contest if not the Darwin Awards as he often puts himself in danger. Other characters: Chikako (Hinako Sano) the somewhat frivolous secretary at Shinnosuke’s office and Sokichi (Houka Kinoshita) Togawa’s colleague and partner spice up the situations…

Thrill ! is an excellent drama which mixes action and suspense with a tremendous amount of comedy and humour. More than Kurosaki-kun or Maniac Hero, it clearly shows that Komatsu Nana could do wonders in a full fledged comedy. Hitomi is really funny and a truly offbeat character. Here’s a series of vidcaps to celebrate The Black Chapter with Episode 4 on SD (640×480). Links to The Red Chapter at the end of the post…

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The Black Chapter – EP01

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The Black Chapter – EP02

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The Black Chapter – EP03

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the Black Chapter – EP04

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The Red Chapter on this blog: Episode 1 – Episode 2 – Episode 3 – Episode 4