Hakozume – Kouban Joshi no Gyakushuu – 07

A Part

「尾行選手権」 (Bikō Senshuken)
“Tailing Championship”

B Part

「人たらし」 (Hito Tarashi)
“Smooth Talker”

Well Seiji is back being on the good list, he certainly has his own way of doing things, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad detective or anything lesser than that. This episode’s case was all about catching and trailing a meth dealer. Mai, Seiko, Seiji, and Takeshi get partnered up with the premise of pretending to be a couple so that they don’t arouse any type of suspicion. At least from the people, they were trailing. I found it funny, because, even though I’m not sure the show is blatantly aware of itself or just has the pairings completely wrong. Mai gets partnered with Seiji and Seiko gets partnered with Takeshi.

Personally, I think it should have been the other way around, but maybe the show knows this and decided to go with the unpopular pairing for this case. Seiko gets full into character, saying really hard stuff to Takeshi about work, but putting on her best face forward so that people around them think she’s saying sweet things to her pretend boyfriend. It would have been nice to see Seiko do that exact same thing but with Seiji, it certainly would have thrown Seiji for a loop or two. Meanwhile, when Seiji offers Mai to take his hand in order to sell the full effect, she blatantly comes out and say’s it’s sexual harassment (uhh… okay?). This puts Seiji in a difficult position because it instantly goes into a flashback of what happened in the last episode.

Seiji was left off the hook but was given an ultimatum if he didn’t bring results on this meth case, then he was going to kick the bucket, not much else is explained on how everyone else got off the hook, maybe the upper policemen decided to investigate who was doing what and who should get the blame and in the end, it all went to Seiji. I mean poor guy, but like I said last week, you just don’t do that, it’s honestly a rookie mistake. I would expect Mai to have such emotional hothead-ness, but even so, I bet she would doubt herself and question if what she was doing was the correct approach, or if Seiko would do something similar. She would put herself in the position of her superior and question if this is what they would do. Seiji had no such emotional inteligence. That’s one of the reasons I was so harsh on him. It’s really all about that, if Seiji had just paused and rationalized what he was doing, then things would have turned out different. Or even so, just listened to directions from the radio, or even had considered Mai in that situation, it really would have turned out a lot different. But this episode also made it clear that he’s used to getting results with a lecture from his superiors. I guess sometimes we do need detectives that do things their own way.

Anyway, it does seem that Seiko has a grudge against Seiji. As from my understanding, she orchestrated things with Takeshi so that he didn’t give Seiji the signal that the meth dealer being caught outside the hotel so that he would once again look bad with his superiors. So their previous fighting now seems more real than before. Before it felt like they were playing some type of haters-to-lovers situation. But now it’s just plain spite. They really seem to have it against one another. And Seiko will play her hand even if it means getting him fired. Hopefully, she doesn’t have any real bad intentions.

During the second part of the episode, Seiji spends his 48 hours at the precinct talking what seems like nonsense with the female assailant that was with the meth dealer, she spends their time talking about her kids and other things that seem rather irrelevant at first sight, but in reality, Seiji was building trust with this woman, so that when he played his Ace card, which was Mai in a way. The women would confess everything and cooperate with them, again it was his way of doing things and he did get a lot of earfuls from his superiors but I guess he’s accustomed to it by this point, he even mentions it at one point.

In the end, the woman reunites with her mother and her son, and this little bit made me tear up a little bit.

So in the end Seiji is not a bad guy, and I certainly wasn’t trying to make him one either, sometimes people need to be left alone to do their job, and find creative ways around a problem. So Seiji did nothing wrong, and also I believe he learned a valuable lesson that is sure to help him keep working at this job. I also like that he managed to acknowledge that if he ever had a daughter there was no way he would let her join the force. Because he experienced it first hand this episode, or I guess secondhand?

Nevertheless, Hakozume continues to be an engaging and interesting watch, that is sure to give us lot’s to talk about!

Full-length images: 36.