After 2 years of waiting, I finally watched Strawberry Night: Invisible Rain! And it totally got me, I was absorbed. I think the series really gets its footing in longform. The episodes in the original drama were a little hamfisted at times and unevenly paced (some episodes being drawn out to three episodes and others being limited to one), but I think the film format fully allowed the writers to explore all parts of the crime while developing character and exploring backstories. Strawberry Night still employs a lot of the conventions that the drama follows, but I was so hooked by the characterization (as usual) that I didn’t really mind that it felt like I was watching an extended Strawberry Night episode/SP.
We get to hang out with a bunch of characters we all know and love with varying amounts of screen time (Imaizumi! we hardly knew ya), but the best one we were introduced to was Makita Isao (Osawa Takao), the homme fatale.
At first Himekawa is only drawn to Makita because of his possible connection to Yanai Kento, and she is dogged in her search for the truth. The viewers know part of it; Makita’s answers are measured and quietly evasive. She does end up discovering his “darkness” in the most dramatic of fashions, and Kikuta is mildly threatened by his character. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s dangerous! One might want to call these two rivals, but I believe there was truly never any competition. When the two finally meet, he respectfully tries not to boil the conversation down to just Himekawa, but Makita sees through that act right away and he highlights one fundamental difference between the two: he doesn’t know her (her darkness).
He also says he’s killed a man, which does make Makita pretty gangster (hah!), but that’s not all he’s trying to say. While Kikuta is a nice guy (not a Nice Guy) whose respect and admiration for Himekawa is sprinkled with a good helping of affection, he doesn’t recognize that she’s more than just his steadfast shunin. He also hasn’t dealt with anything as tumultuous as what both Makita and Himekawa gone through.
Himekawa later remarks that it must have been easy for Makita to relate to Yanai Kento, as their families had both suffered greatly at the hands of the yakuza, and that he’d gotten emotionally involved.
“Couldn’t I say the same about you? Why would a woman like you become a cop? An invisible wound that keeps bleeding… what are you hiding?”
She denies that they aren’t the same, but when it boils down to it, they are quite similar. They “carry the scent of distress”, and earlier events in their lives have profoundly shaped where they find themselves today. The only difference is that Makita was actually able to get his “revenge”, and it is something that she is oddly drawn to. What later ensues was, in a word, wow.
(P.S. This time she kissed him first.)
Other little things:
- My favorite piece of dialogue ever came from Kusaka (here), so the fact that he and Himekawa are getting along somewhat really pleases me as a fan of this show.
- In a perfect world this film would have had less of Wata and more Himekawa and Makita getting to know each other.
- Takeuchi Yuko one of the best, end of. People might have been all about Ishihara Satomi last year, but I think she turned it out just as well.
- Yanai Kento (Sometani Souta) is definitely the person of interest in this film, but one character/story I thought to be completely unnecessary was the insertion of Wata! As far as I’m concerned, someone probably thought they needed to add a little more star power and paid Tomokazu Miura to do the absolute minimum. ??? k