Overview

A friend recommended this drama to me, so I watched it. Here's the official website:

I'll write a summary and share my thoughts.

Summary

  • Taku Nogi, an officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Public Security Bureau, travels to the Republic of Balka on a mission. He gets caught up in a civil war, is abandoned by his direct superior, loses his wife, and is separated from his son. After these experiences, he establishes an organization called "Tent," which carries out terrorist activities and runs orphanages.
  • One day, Tent discovers a deposit of fluorite. If they can gain exclusive control of the land containing the deposit, they can focus on running their orphanages. So now they need to work hard to raise the necessary funds.
  • Meanwhile, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces' secret intelligence unit "Beppan," the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Public Security Bureau, and the Balka police are all pursuing the terrorist organization Tent, unaware of what is really going on behind the scenes.
  • As Yusuke Nogi, a member of Beppan, continues his investigation, he begins to suspect that Tent may not be just a terrorist organization after all. To discover its true nature, he uses the fact that he is the son of Tent's leader to infiltrate the organization.
  • Yusuke wants Tent to stop its terrorist activities and focus on charity work instead, so he helps the organization raise funds.
  • Taku Nogi leaves the management of the fluorite deposit and Tent's original mission of charity work to his adopted son and successor, Nokoru, and surrenders to the Public Security Bureau.
  • ...Or so it seems. He actually attacks his former superior, who abandoned his family years ago, but Yusuke stops him by force.

Thoughts

  • It's been a long time since I last watched a TV drama, but spending more than ten hours on one is still tough. It makes the three-hour movie KOKUHO feel short.
  • I enjoyed seeing all the different landscapes: Japan, the grasslands of Mongolia, and the desert.
  • I found it interesting that the story included programming, bookkeeping, and investing. These are all things I'm familiar with, so I had fun reacting to the details every time they came up. "Oh, they're making an APK file for a hacking tool?! Not an SH script or something?!" "Yusuke wants to see the income statement! Well, of course you can't figure out where the money went just by looking at the P/L!" "Nokoru just said, 'There's such a thing as margin trading?' Wow! This guy became a senior member of a terrorist organization without even knowing what margin trading is!"
  • But I get it. If you want to explain margin trading to the audience in that situation, you pretty much have to make Nokoru ask, "What's that?" It would be way too ridiculous if any of the other characters didn't know.
  • I knew Hiroshi Abe and Masato Sakai, but I wasn't familiar with the other actors. That was nice because I could watch the drama without knowing which characters were supposed to be important.
  • I could easily imagine people criticizing the story for using violence to fund orphanages, but I thought it worked well because Yusuke's attitude was basically "achieving our ideals matters more than obeying the law." It made perfect sense that he quickly moved toward the idea of "If minimizing the number of victims is our priority, let's raise money through margin trading instead of terrorism!"
  • But come on, that's exactly why it bothered me that Tent never claimed responsibility for the mistaken money transfer. The other victims besides Yusuke probably had their careers ruined without anyone ever discovering that the whole thing was a terrorist operation. Tent should have at least sent out a statement saying, "Hey, that mistaken money transfer was our doing!" If your policy is to "minimize the damage," then follow it properly!