Himitsu ~The Revelation that my brain is being picked at by the show I'm watching (shouldn't it be the other way round?)~

Oh yea, this show is all SRS BSNS

So I've finally caught up to the subs of Himitsu (a lowly 3 episodes anyways), and I suppose having the twist of the American President Assassination Arc (Okay, so I made that title up, but you can tell how important it was by how every first letter was capitalized!) spoiled by someone in the wide blogosphere (usagijen merely 'hinted' at it in her post, but what a big hint it turned out to be) somehow diminished the "ZOMG WTF YOU CAN'T BE SRS" factor and along with it the mystery of the arc. But my 'problem' with Himitsu really lies elsewhere...

Err, if by 'good-looking' you mean all girly and fish-lip-ey, then yea -_-"

I will agree on the most part that Himitsu is [meant to be] an emotionally deep show which in today's shallow pool of fanservice orientated and angsty teen dramas automatically gains this show a 'good if not great' status (assuming you're actually bothering to watch this besides your usual fanservice extravaganzas and teen angst). A show featuring a team of crime investigators literally picking through the brains of murder victims to solve crimes is just begging to be picked at and analyzed by, isn't it? It's the kind of show that's not only aimed at getting its viewers to start thinking by proposing your run-of-the-mill non-run-of-the-mill topics (*gasps siscon* *gasps BL... nyeh, wrong season to be surprised by that*) - plus it's a mystery show, so it has to be intelligent, amiright?

Sure, smart, intelligent, but not necessarily witty.

What these few episodes have shown me is that everything the show proposes, it proposes mostly through its main protagonist Aoki. Being a newcomer to his job and the 'sensitivities' that come with picking the secrets of the dead from their minds, he is often at odds with himself over the moral issues that come with the job, on several occasions being too quick to voice out these concerns to the chagrin of his co-workers. Of course, being viewers we also get a direct view of Aoki's monologues and thought processes as well, which combined with the brain picking element of the show, make this a thought-provoking show indeed.

But wait, isn't a thought-provoking show supposed to freely get the viewers to think for themselves on such issues that it proposes? Not that this is some definitive definition of what a 'deep' show should be like, but personally I am slightly disappointed that whatever 'revelations' that I feel I'm supposed to have when watching Himitsu aren't exactly revelations when they're been hand picked by the writers and fed to me via a somewhat morally confused protagonist and his often cheesy lines... Compare this to the train scene in Kure-nai where we're given a situation worth pondering about and both sides of the argument from Shinkurou and Murasaki, where we're neither told who is right or who is wrong and left to our own views on the situation. In Himitsu, we get a case and situation, and Aoki's thoughts of "This isn't right, this can't be right, can't we let the dead sleep in peace, can't we, can't we?" The result is a somewhat raw look at whatever issue we have at hand besides the usual brain picking morality ones that I somehow wish was displayed in a more refined manner (Hey, kind of reminds me of my blog posts OTL).

And yea, I have a low tolerance for cheesy lines unless it's in a show that I can't take seriously anyways in which case they're great fun to laugh at - only I'm pretty sure Himitsu wasn't made to make me laugh, and it would seem utterly disrespectful to try to cast this well-meaning show in that respect. Most of the lines so far have been blunt and unconvincing if not downright cheesily bad at some points, which make me grit my teeth in order to suppress them cynical remarks about the script.

Add to that the fact that despite Seki Tomokazu's presence in the cast I feel that his performance as Maki is somewhat flat and lacking that charisma I've grown to expect from him (but a facet of Maki's personality is to be silently strong so I'll excuse that for now) that I find watching Himitsu a bit of a 'chore'. Sure its a 'solid' show so far, but despite rants that this show is getting much less attention that it deserves, I can certainly see why Kaiba and Kure-nai steal the attention from it on the 'deeper' end of this season's scale (well, besides the fact that this show lacks funky art and lolis).

Despite all that, will Himitsu stay on my watchlist? Well if the subs come out at a competent enough pace, perhaps... I was quite nonplussed by the end of ep 3, but they just had to throw in that juicy little twist regarding Maki that practically guarantees me checking out episode 4 at least... Curiosity and the cat in me -_-" Hopefully the show works better when the mystery aspect is able to fully deliver the shocks, since the clumsy 'thought provoking' aspects are not working for me right now.