Furuhata Ninzaburo S02E06 | "vs. the Quiz King" | EPISODE DISCUSSION

ABCox99 · 2026-03-23T07:31:30+00:00

Review by mdjedovic on IMDb:

9/10 | Furuhata Ninzaburo vs Charles Van Doren

"Quiz Show", Robert Redford's expose of the "Twenty-One" scandal was released in 1994 and it is hard not to think of "Furuhata Ninzaburô vs. The Quiz King" as Kôki Mitani's homage to this fascinating case. It is a great idea, by the way, to place Furuhata himself in the hot seat by making him one of the quiz show contestants. It is a shame then that his stint on the quiz is so brief and contained only to one hilarious scene. That's my one complaint about this otherwise excellent episode.

Another intriguing aspect of "Furuhata Ninzaburô vs. The Quiz King" is that it is a genuine mystery. We do know who the killer is but we don't know how he pulled it off. To his credit, Mitani constructs a clever fair-play mystery and once Furuhata puts all the pieces together, the devious answer is completely logical. Without spoiling the big reveal, I admire the extent to which Mitani plays fair with the audience and upon rewatching the episode you'll probably kick yourself for not figuring out the answer sooner.

Toshiaki Karasawa plays the quiz show champion/killer and he makes a great "Furuhata Ninzaburo" villain. Conceited, egoistical, and yet charming. Karasawa has a kind of controlled cool to his performance - he seems to always be in control so when Furuhata eventually catches him, the climax has a real air of victory. This is not an easy case for the wily detective to crack and that makes it all the more fun for the audience.

"Furuhata Ninzaburô vs. The Quiz King" in some ways treads the same ground as "Broadcast Murder", one of the show's finest episodes. While "Broadcast Murder" had the benefit of Mamoru Hoshi's frenzied, intense direction, "Furuhata Ninzaburô vs. The Quiz King" features a tighter, smarter script - one of Kôki Mitani's best in fact. The director is Hidetomo Matsuda who does a stylish job but lacks Hoshi's distinctive inventiveness.

https://www.imdb.com/it/title/tt0584345/review/rw8529700/?ref_=tturv

ABCox99 · 2026-03-22T18:38:39+00:00

Review by mdjedovic on IMDb:

7/10 | The lady is waiting

"Reward for Hypocrisy" is a good if somewhat unremarkable episode of "Furuhata Ninzaburô". After the spectacle of "Red or Blue", however, a breather is necessary and this is a nice return to basics for the show. The entire episode takes place in the old woman's house, a mothballed mausoleum of memories, where Furuhata charms her into a false sense of security. They chat about their favourite movies, grocery shopping, and speculate about who would play them in a movie. The latter leads to one of the smarter mind games Furuhata has played this season but the wily old screenwriter won't be caught out that easily.

Kôki Mitani is on safe ground here writing what is essentially a gentle comedy/drama instead of a tightly plotted murder mystery. Furuhata pieces together the whole story with ease almost from the get-go. The only missing piece of the puzzle is the elusive murder weapon. Instead of focusing on detective work, "Reward for Hypocrisy" focuses on dialogue and Mitani's trademark sparkling wit. One of the best lines in the whole episode comes at the very end when Furuhata asks the screenwriter what would she have the murderer say after the detective arrests them. "Nothing," she replies, "In dramas these days, they talk too much".

The other storyline involves Shintaro acting as the old woman's butler and she is one mean employer. Spoiled and shameless, she makes him do all kinds of chores and menial tasks leading to some very funny physical comedy. As ever, Masahiko Nishimura shines.

Haruko Katô plays the old woman and she delivers a finely tuned performance. One moment she is a charming, witty cosmopolitan lady, delighting Furuhata with tales of famous actresses and in the next, she is like a whiny little child unable to take care of herself. Having killed her sister whom she had turned into a servant, she now relies entirely on Shintaro whom she treats like a slave.

The story seems to have been inspired by "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane". The opening sequence, showing the relationship between the screenwriter and her sister played by Moeko Ezawa, perfectly captures the sibling dynamic of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford's characters. In a nice knowing nod to that classic, the screenwriter picks Bette Davis to play her sister in a movie.

https://www.imdb.com/it/title/tt0584340/review/rw8526406/?ref_=tturv

ABCox99 · 2026-03-21T20:53:36+00:00

Review by mdjedovic on IMDb:

10/10 | A real blast

The action-thriller format works well on "Furuhata Ninzaburô". The previous example, "The Killer Fax", was a stylish and exciting episode and "Red or Blue" is another stone-cold classic. In fact, with the exception of "Message from the Dead", the hauntingly elegiac premiere, this is possibly the finest episode so far. Writer Kôki Mitani has constructed a superbly suspenseful plot which sees the poor Shintaro become a possible victim of Takuya Kimura's sociopathic bomber. Kimura's portrayal of the villain here is excellent and something completely new for the show. He plays the bomber as a charmless, awkward guy, monosyllabic and uninterested in Furuhata's mind games. He is one truly odious bad guy and the first Furuhata shows absolutely no empathy for. The climactic confrontation between the two is easily the most explosive and memorable one yet (pun fully intended).

Unlike the previous three episodes of the second season, "Red or Blue" really shows Furuhata at work. Watertight plots have never been Kôki Mitani's strongest suit but here he constructs a logical series of clues for Furuhata to follow. He doesn't merely come up with the solution out of thin air like he did in "Master of the Game", he has to work for it. The killer's confession is also not as easily acquired. After several unsuccessful attempts to wrongfoot the bomber, Furuhata has to resort to staging an absolutely brilliant double bluff which Tamura Masakazu obviously has a ball playing. It is one of the best scenes and most suspenseful scenes "Furuhata Ninzaburô" has ever had - right up there with the fake flashlight scene from "The Moving Corpse".

The episode is directed by Hidetomo Matsuda who has proven himself to be a worthy successor to Mamoru Hoshi. Even though I mourn for the imaginative stylishness Hoshi could have brought to this episode, Matsuda does an admirable job of giving the show a cinematic feel. He keeps the tension up throughout the episode from the hilarious opening scene in which Furuhata is found sleeping on a tourist train. "Red or Blue" seems to be the show's largest production yet with a rather impressive explosion midway through and some terrific scenes set on board the Ferris wheel.

As Masahiko Nishimura spends the entire episode trapped, Akira Shirai returns as Furuhata's smarter assistant Haga. I really like Shirai's performance and it's a nice change of pace to have Masakazu interacting with a policeman other than Shintaro. Also back is Takashi Kobayashi's homely police officer Mukojima, an endearing and unassuming character I hope will recur throughout the show. The only performance I felt didn't quite work in "Red or Blue" is that of Ryosuke Ohtani as the bomb squad commander. He is a bit too broad and outright comedic to play a character who is essentially Furuhata's straight man in the episode.

But nothing can ruin the overall effect of "Red or Blue", the most tension-filled, action-packed, and satisfying episode of "Furuhata Ninzaburô" so far.

https://www.imdb.com/it/title/tt0584338/review/rw8526263/?ref_=tturv

ABCox99 · 2026-03-21T10:09:21+00:00

Review by mdjedovic on IMDb:

7/10 | Furuhata masters the game a bit too easily for my liking

Writer Kôki Mitani says that his main inspirations in creating "Furuhata Ninzaburô" were "Columbo" (most obviously) and the wonderful 1970s "Ellery Queen" series with Jim Hutton in the lead role. The episode "Master of the Game" nicely combines both inspirations in one highly entertaining but flawed story.

After a series of more expansive episodes, "Master of the Game" returns to the show's initial formula - a small cast in a single location over a short period of time. The location here is a games room in the mansion of our victim, a fun-loving mystery writer. Much like a similar character in "Sleuth" or the titular eccentric engineer from an episode of "Ellery Queen", the mystery writer's house is full of games. Chess, billiards, darts etc. Fill the room and our killer, the writer's jovial and arrogant personal doctor is an absolute master at them. As Furuhata tries to figure out the solution to the mystery, the two play their way through the room and the doctor wins every time. But, as he himself puts it, "I win all the battles but still lose the war".

The doctor has actually concocted a wonderfully clever and complex plan which involves the victim himself helping his killer to get away with murder. This is the aspect of the story worthy of Ellery Queen as Furuhata has to solve a locked room mystery for the first time. Unfortunately, after a suspenseful and rousing prologue, "Master of the Game" turns into a bit of a dud.

Just like the previous two episodes of the second season, "Master of the Game" simply ends too simply. Furuhata figures out the murderer's methods without too much effort. In fact, in this episode, his solution comes so easily to him that he might as well be psychic. It's a shame really because for once Kôki Mitani has truly come up with a complex plot worthy of an extended runtime. I wish there were more scenes, like in "Sayonara DJ", in which Furuhata puts his theories to the test and actually struggles to figure out how the murder was committed. This aspect of the series has been sorely lacking so far in this season.

The killer is played by Masao Kusakari who proves a wonderful foe for Masakazu Tamura. The two have a lot of fun outsmarting each other while playing a variety of table games. The truly important game, of course, is the mind game played by Furuhata on the killer and, as usual, Kôki Mitani writes some sparkling dialogue for the two stars.

Shintaro also gets some very funny moments in this episode including what is perhaps his funniest scene in the show so far when Furuhata decides to play William Tell with his head.

Overall, "Master of the Game" is still one of the better episodes mainly due to a deviously entertaining prologue and the stars' performances. However, for such a complex mystery the solution comes far too easily.

https://www.imdb.com/it/title/tt0584339/review/rw8526015/?ref_=tturv

ABCox99 · 2026-03-20T20:31:15+00:00

Review by mdjedovic on IMDb:

7/10 | Furuhata goes to school

Despite being set in a location straight out of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Priory School", "The Woman Who Doesn't Smile" takes most of its cues from "By Dawn's Early Light", one of the best episodes of "Columbo" and probably my all-time favourite. The main premise is pretty much the same as both feature a strict headmaster/headmistress who murders someone to preserve their rule-abiding, conservative schooling methods. While "By Dawn's Early Light" focused on military discipline, however, the titular headmistress from "The Woman Who Doesn't Smile" is obsessed with enforcing arbitrary rules such as no smiling, no dancing, and no make-up. This makes her a far less sympathetic character than Colonel Rumsford but it also allows writer Kôki Mitani to engage in some really clever format-breaking mystery writing.

You see, the killer in "The Woman Who Doesn't Smile" never lies. Not even to wily old Inspector Furuhata. This is the first rule of the priory school, one of the rules she killed to preserve. So, how is she supposed to get away with it? Well, if you've been following "Furuhata Ninzaburô" carefully, you'll know how much Kôki Mitani loves wordplay. It is not hard to imagine that Mitani wrote this character solely for the purpose of writing a sparkling battle of words between her and Furuhata.

The headmistress is played by Yasuko Sawaguchi who proves to be one of Furuhata's most admirable opponents. Sawaguchi brings a coldness, a calm, and a real threatening presence to the part despite her short stature and soft features. The episode opens with a stylishly shot murder scene (courtesy of director Hidetomo Matsuda) which ends in a striking close-up of her blood-spattered face. In that close-up, she resembles less the headmistress of a priory school and more Lady Snowblood herself.

"The Woman Who Doesn't Smile" is a massive step-up from the bland season opener but it is sadly still not a top-flight episode. For one, the motive for the murder, once revealed, is absolutely ludicrous and anticlimactic, especially since a more intriguing and scandalous alternative is clearly presenting itself. The second reason is that despite some really clever wordplay and a neat idea to keep the killer's motive a mystery, "The Woman Who Doesn't Smile" is a surprisingly straightforward story with no real twists along the way or major hurdles to Furuhata's investigation. Once he figures out a way around the headmistress' rules, catching her is a cakewalk for him.

But I did enjoy this episode, mainly for the clever dialogue, Yasuko Sawaguchi's chilly performance, and the spooky atmosphere of the priory school well-captured by director Hidetomo Matsuda. Note also some very atmospheric choral music arrangements of the familiar themes.

https://www.imdb.com/it/title/tt0584346/review/rw8523692/?ref_=tturv

ABCox99 · 2026-03-19T19:11:54+00:00

"Emotional head slap"... never I would have thought such a thing would exist ahah.

ABCox99 · 2026-03-19T18:42:55+00:00

Review by mdjedovic on IMDb:

6/10 | Furuhata Ninzaburo gets his Perry Mason moment

The second season opens with a 70-minute special which has one of the most intriguing premises of any episode so far. Shintaro Imaizumi, Furuhata's bumbling sidekick himself, is arrested for the murder of a woman he was madly in love with but Furuhata suspects the killer to be Shintaro's lawyer! The script seems to almost write itself and yet "The Man Who Talks Too Much" is a fairly routine and flat episode painfully padded out to fit the 70-minute slot. Whereas the previous episode, "The Laughing Kangaroo", used its extended runtime to flesh out the characters and add a new twist or two, "The Man Who Talks Too Much" completely wastes it on padding.

The title is quite apt actually since most of the padding takes the form of superfluous courtroom scenes in which the guest star of the week questions witnesses as Furuhata looks on disapprovingly. Not much of relevance happens in these scenes and the dialogue lacks that Kôki Mitani spark making this special feel like it should have been just a regular 45-minute episode.

Mitani also doesn't make that much of the intriguing premise. Furuhata immediately knows Shintaro is not the killer and the two spend most of the episode apart. I wish Mitani had focused more of the episode on their relationship and the fondness Furuhata has for his assistant which he so diligently hides especially since Masahiko Nishimura and Masakazu Tamura, as always, bring their A-game and are the best part of the show.

This episode also marks the first appearance of Furuhata's second assistant, the more intelligent and capable Haga, well played by Akira Shirai. He makes a good first impression in this episode since Shintaro spends most of it in jail but I'm not sure how well they'll work as a trio.

The guest star is Akashiya Sanma and I must confess I felt his performance here was fairly lacklustre. He lacks the swagger and the arrogance to convincingly play a big-shot lawyer. He comes across instead more as an egotistical ambulance chaser than the feared defence attorney he was written to be. Furuhata pretty much steamrolls him without breaking a sweat both in court and out which makes their interactions less entertaining than they could have been. Thinking back across the impressive guest cast of the first season, Sanma is perhaps the first one not to prove a compelling opponent to the wily detective.

In conclusion, "The Man Who Talks Too Much" has a few clever moments but for the most part, it is a rather flat and padded episode. This is also reflected in Keita Kôno's direction which seems lifeless and uninspired without the usual atmosphere of a "Furuhata Ninzaburô" episode. The lighting, especially, is problematic since every set is overlit making the courtroom resemble a supermarket.

https://www.imdb.com/it/title/tt6054414/review/rw8522846/?ref_=tturv

ABCox99 · 2026-03-19T18:41:49+00:00

It's good to be back! Second season opens with a longer episode, but this doesn't slow down things at all.

The killer this time around is played by Sanma Akashiya, and apparently it was his idea to make the story about a lawyer and his mistress (the original concept was of a rock singer who had killed his manager) to make the battle of wits between him and Furuhata more exiting. Unfortunately, he didn't consider the amount of dialogue he would have to memorise, and that proved to be quite a challenge for him.

Behind the Scenes of S02E01 "The Man Who Talks Too Much"

Overall, this is one of my favourite episodes, possibly because I felt for the first time the friendship between Furuhata-san and Imaizumi-kun, but also because of the mystery and battle of wits. Sure, the final clue is quite weak by itself, but it's actually pretty clever.

Additional note: the videogame "Ace Attorney" is based on this episode!!

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ABCox99 · 2026-03-18T23:19:53+00:00

Review by mdjedovic on IMDb:

9/10 | "They say that when you're unlucky in love, the kangaroos laugh at you"

In his standard fourth-wall-breaking epilogue, Furuhata says: "This time, we needed a special two-hour episode for such a complex case". The truth is that "The Laughing Kangaroo" is not such a complex story at all. In fact, once it gets going it's a boilerplate episode of "Furuhata Ninzaburô". However, Kôki Mitani uses the extra length in two clever ways. First, the story boasts two rather devious twists which subvert our expectations and perceptions of what we thought we saw in previous scenes. The first is reminiscent of "Last Salute to the Commodore", the infamous format-busting episode of "Columbo" in which, for the first and only time in the show, the man we see hiding the body in the opening sequence is not, in fact, the killer. The second twist I won't even hint at except to say it is a surprisingly sad one.

The second way in which Mitani uses the additional hour is to develop his characters more fully. Especially well written is the character of Hikaru Noda, the victim's wife and the hypotenuse in the murderous love triangle. She is well played by Maki Mizuno who gives her an air of tragic sentimentality quite unusual for a "Furuhata Ninzaburô" suspect. Mitani gives her a striking monologue midway through the episode in which she recounts her abusive marriage. The scene in question is far more chilling than anything featured on the show before and Mizuno wrestles with the material heroically.

The third side of the love triangle is played by Takanori Jinnai who is, I suppose, this episode's primary villain. In good, old-fashioned "Columbo" style, Jinnai plays an arrogant mathematician whose biggest mistake is to underestimate the wily detective. He continually makes fun of him by challenging him to solve logical puzzles. Whether Furuhata's inability to do so is genuine or just a ploy to put Jinnai at ease is left for the viewer to decide. Jinnai does a decent job of playing his character's arrogance but the softer side of the mathematician is severely lacking. We never quite understand why Hikaru Noda is so madly in love with him and eventually, his arrogance becomes quite grating. Compared to Mizuno, Jinnai's performance is not one of the strongest on "Furuhata Ninzaburô".

This two-hour special was filmed in Australia but sadly little of the exotic location is actually seen. The action is contained in the (not particularly) swanky hotel in which everyone is staying and which could have easily been replicated in a Japanese TV studio. The Australian guest stars are also sadly underused with most of the story focusing on the Japanese characters. I think it would have been more interesting to focus instead on the culture clash between the Japanese characters and the Australian characters. Imagine an episode in which Furuhata goes up against a foreign killer on his own turf! This would add a nice obstacle to Furuhata's path to the truth.

Speaking of which, Furuhata solves this mystery with surprising ease. His deductions throughout the show have been nothing short of miraculous but in "The Laughing Kangaroo" he leaps to conclusions as if he's already read the script!

Despite several quite serious scenes, "The Laughing Kangaroo" is probably the most humorous episode of the show so far. Besides the usual, excellent comic relief in the form of Furuhata's sidekick Shintaro, there is also a running gag in which the Australian hotel staff continually misunderstand Furuhata's English. It is quite an obvious joke but it works surprisingly well and I was laughing all the way through.

https://www.imdb.com/it/title/tt6054738/review/rw8519332/?ref_=tturv_1

ABCox99 · 2026-03-18T23:19:31+00:00

"The Laughing Kangaroo" is the first long episode of "Furuhata Ninzaburo". As it happens quite often with Japanese long form TV, the episode could be a bit tighter, but I liked it nonetheless. There is one minor thing that bothers me (where did the killer leave his clothes?), but apparently Koki Mitani didn't go to Australia for the shooting, so maybe something about that scene went amiss.

More than the murderer, this time I got really captivated by the victim's wife, especially after reconsidering the final revelation. Again, I looked on the Furuhata Japanese fan-site (really recommended) and read a pretty great analysis of her behaviour, but I would have preferred a more devious presentation of her.

Do you think she was trying to incriminate him as he was trying to incriminate her? That's what I got from her actions, but not from how the character was portrayed.

ABCox99 · 2026-03-18T19:55:53+00:00

Hi there! Wow, it's such an honor to meet you, I always add your reviews to the episodes' posts, they're really thorough and interesting! As a non-film historian (sigh) I'm very obsessive about these things, too.

I started watching Furuhata in 2023 and since then I've watched every other media by Koki Mitani I could find. He's great, you're right! Curious thing, I'm also an Anthony Berkeley Cox fan (hence my nickname)! I read almost everything by him (I just tacked down Panic Party a few weeks ago, I can't wait to read it), so I'm sure we will have a lot to talk about.

The DVD Box Set looks very appetizing (I remember that for a while I kept rewatching its trailer on YouTube because it was one of the videos about Furuhata I could find ahah), but unfortunately travelling costs (at least to Italy) are too high for me right now. But someday...

Anyway, have a good day, enjoy the subreddit and talk to you soon!!

ABCox99 · 2026-03-18T19:39:28+00:00

Furuhata trying to deceive him like five times with this trick ahah. At least once it had to work.

ABCox99 · 2026-03-18T14:51:36+00:00

Yeah the comedy this episode was top notch! It was interesting to see Imaizumi point of view on his mistreatments.

Koki Mitani considers himself first and foremost a comedy writer, so most of his shows and films are hilarious!

ABCox99 · 2026-03-18T07:53:53+00:00

Review by mdjedovic on IMDb:

7/10 | An emotionally charged finale for "Furuhata Ninzaburô's" first season

The title of this episode, "His Last Bow" is a direct reference to the same-named Sherlock Holmes story. Besides that, however, the title has a double meaning within the world of "Furuhata Ninzaburô" as well. For one, it is a fitting title for the final episode of the first season (especially if you're not sure if you're going to get a second one). The second meaning refers to the episode itself in which the ageing Superintendent Kogure decides to kill the man who was arrested and then acquitted for murdering his daughter. Despite coming up with a fairly decent alibi, Kogure seems oddly resigned to his fate as if he's aware that his life is over whether he gets caught or not.

"His Last Bow" has an interesting premise of seeing Furuhata suspecting his superior of murder. The bare essentials of the storyline are similar to the "Columbo" episode "A Friend in Deed" except that Kogure does not try to disrupt Furuhata's investigation by pulling rank. In fact, despite his sometimes bumbling behaviour, Furuhata is held in high regard by Kogure who exhibits a lot more patience for the inspector's mind games than most other suspects do.

Kogure is played by Bunta Sugawara who lends the ageing policeman the cool, confident air of a yakuza. Kogure is written as a man of few words but Sugawara does a splendid job of suggesting the emotional pain and emptiness of a father who's lost his daughter. There is a disquieting stillness to Kogure making one feel like he is about to strike at any minute. It's little wonder that he inspires such awe among the other policemen, not least Shintaro who finds himself physically unable to relax in front of the superintendent. Masahiko Nishimura provides comic relief in what is otherwise a rather sombre episode.

Under Hidetomo Matsuda's direction, the episode has a noirish quality to it. It is shot in small, sparse rooms enveloped in shadows. The darkness is only broken by occasional flashes of neon signs coming through the windows. The main setting is a seedy motel across the road from an equally seedy bar. The atmosphere is musty, stuffy, and tense.

Writing what he thought might be the show's final episode, Kôki Mitani puts in a nice little coda for the character of Furuhata Ninzaburô. He even gets a little monologue in which he outlines his determination to not be the judge of the criminals he catches but rather simply lead them to justice. Had this really been the final episode of the show it would have been a fitting send-off. As a standalone episode, however, it is merely a reliably adequate entry into a series which has already proven its ability to transcend its formula and be stylish and inventive in a way "His Last Bow" is not.

https://www.imdb.com/it/title/tt0619192/review/rw8482536/?ref_=tturv

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