Tamagawa Kuyakusho OF THE DEAD (2014)

Quality-wise, a real rollercoaster

Already halfway through this "Tamagawa Kuyakusho of the Dead", I started wondering how the heck I was gonna review it. Why? Well, because it is, quality-wise, a real rollercoaster: one moment you climb up high, the next you take a plunge into the abyss! Normally I am a dedicated advocate of comic relief (of course it depends on the genre, but let's simplify a bit for the sake of discussion), but here it is, for the most part, just idiotic (I'd say the decent part is, like, only 10% of it). On the other hand, the "serious" part of the story is where this dorama reaches its high points (take episode 6 as a perfect example of what I'm saying), but the fact that it is so constantly and obnoxiously intertwined with the aforementioned übersilly scenes just ends up stealing some of its value.
And that's a real pity, 'cause apart from that, the dorama is surprisingly better than expected. Indeed, by watching the opening credits one might expect one of those westernized dramas that I refer to as "Western TV series in disguise", but it doesn't take long to realize that, luckily, it isn't the case here; yes, the form might be a bit "westernized" sometimes, but the substance, the core, the values...oh, they're all Japanese, folks! Thus the deeply original (and so beautifully humane!) approach to the zombie genre...which, I repeat, without the too many silly scenes would've deserved this title a much higher grade.

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