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.
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