REEL JAPAN

Score: 1/10

There really are no words to express the disappointment I feel in viewing TAGUSARI BROTHERS, a misshapen monster of a detective series. The series begins with two grown-up brothers working together in law enforcement. The older brother, Makato (Okada Masaki), manages to get by as a junior detective and his younger brother, Minoru (Shota Sometani), is a promising forensic specialist. Minoru wears his commuting backpack in almost every scene, and I can’t decide if this strange choice was meant to evoke a schoolboy or suggest subliminally that he has some serious baggage, which he does. The brothers were orphaned at a young age when their parents were murdered. The government has decided to extend the statute of limitations on violent crimes, but the extension only begins the year after their parents were murdered, so they are out of luck seeking justice unless they want to take it into their own hands. First they have to find the culprit. Everything goes downhill from there. It is shocking that an actor of Shota Sometani would agree to co-star in this mess. In fact, the series is beneath all of its cast. The recent crop of detective dramas from Japan has been overall weak. WHO SAW THE PEACOCK DANCE IN THE JUNGLE? (TBS network, 2025)  started strong but finished with an insanely bad resolution. SILENT TRUTH (Asahi network, 2026) had a decent premise but excessive character-driven melodrama turned it into a soap opera painful to watch. However, TAGUSARI BROTHERS is far worse. It is both light hearted and heavy, both melodramatic and vapid. It has zero consistency of tone or atmosphere, but I wish that was all that was wrong with it. It should be used in film school to teach screenwriters how not to construct and resolve mysteries. The eight episode series was written by Watanabe Kei. It featured three directors. I will not embarrass them by mentioning them here. 

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