HERO 2

I think I might be a bit rusty with doing a drama overview - so please be patient.



I'm not sure that I've seen HERO season 1, but it came out in the early 2000's.  And so unlike so many others in 2014 that were the second season and with which I decided to start at the beginning - I just jumped into season 2 here.  

This is a story that falls into the legal/procedural bucket described in the 'Compartmentalizing' post. For some reason I thought that this was going to be a comedy (perhaps the first one was?), but watchers please do not be fooled.   This is neither comedy nor romance.   Each episode is stand alone except for the last two which make up a two-parter.  A very standard structure of a dorama of this type.

The primary character, Kuryu Kohei,  is coming back to his state law office after being away for the past 15 years.  Surprisingly some things have remained the same - I think there are 3 or 4 characters that were in the original show.  And Kohei - the overly casual prosecutor - seems to have remained the same.  He still wants to get to the bottom/truth of every case, even when it's easier to just process the criminal and send them to court.  This passion for doing a thorough job rubs off on his fellow state prosecutors and they all become more earnest, despite their initial frustration with his slow and methodical approach.

The primary subplot(s) are around the romantic entanglements the other prosecutors have with each other.   There's actually a cute - yet predictable - episode in which half of the team asks to be switched to work with different partners based on their romantic interests.  And of course when the changes are actually made, no one ends up with the person they had hoped to be paired with.  There is the old paralegal who likes the only female prosecutor, the young prosecutor who likes the only female paralegal and then two prosecutors who had an unfortunate break-up of their relationship a few years back. As subplots go, while predictable, it was sufficiently interesting - showcasing the depth of some of the characters.

And now for the most interesting part of this fairly routine drama - at least interesting to me as an American.  The legal system in Japan is structured somewhat differently than here in the States.  These state prosecutors (kenji) spend most of their time simply indicting people to go to court.  They are paired up with an "assistant" which I have to imagine is something akin to a paralegal - and who helps to handle the paperwork.   The kenji bring a suspect in and ask them a series of questions. Based on the answers to those questions, they decide whether or not to indict.   In the States indictments don't happen in a state attorney's office - they happen with a grand jury or in front of a judge - so this process was curious to me.   For most of the show I was unsure of whether or not the kenji were litigators - or if they were like the British where solicitors handle paperwork and another category of attorney (barristers) handle the litigation.  But, I learned in the last two episodes - when Kohei prosecutes a case - that they do indeed go into the courtroom.  But, in the all the weeks that elapse, it appears that they - as an entire office - has only had to go to trial once.   Very curious.....

All in, I wasn't too big of a fan of this drama.  I found only 1/2 of the cases to be interesting and the main character felt like he was phoning it in.  He was curious about his cases, but had little to no depth of interaction with his co-workers.  I was surprised by how bored I was considering the ratings for the first season were incredibly high.  Maybe I should go back to (re)watch that one instead.