Quartet

And I thought Halle Berry's wig in X-Men was bad...

Quartet is a crime/undercover dorama which unfortunately tends to veer towards the colourful anime side. When we first meet Shun (Fukuda Saki), she is cheering on her brother in some underground MMA fight. The fight goes on for way too long but there's blood and decent action and it looks gritty. Then we are introduced to this mysterious guy Takeru (Matsushita Yuya) who likes to beat druggies up for some reason.

If you want to hear Fukuda Saki say words like this, this dorama is for you.

Soon, Shun and Takeru are recruited by Kunichiwa (Kamikawa Takaya in a very fake grey/purple wig) to go undercover in this town called Midori, in order to find out information about this drug factory by the villain Tsukamoto. Midori is basically a town that does not exist on the map and is inhabited by illegal Chinese immigrants. In other words its an illegal chinatown where even the police dare not thread.

Quartet has got a more mature theme but some ports are so juvenile.

Midori is my favourite part of Quartet cause it reminds me very much of Little Asia in Ryu ga gotoku/Yakuza 4. Its also fun to hear so much Mandarin in a jdorama and to hear Fukuda Saki butcher it, lol. There they run into Kasumi (Watanabe Natsuna) who is the fourth member of the quartet and is undercover as Tsukamoto's lover. We get implied sex scenes but yes, she's fucking the villain for information.

I thought Watanabe Natsuna looked very familiar but I just could not put my finger on where I had seen her before. To my surprise, she was Kei from the Gantz movie. I didn't find her hot in Gantz but she looks pretty good here. Maybe its just that she never stood a chance to Kei from the manga.

For an undercover action dorama, there isn't much undercover stuff going on besides Kasumi's story. For Shun and Takeru its basically befriend the hostile locals and defeat the villain in the end. Utterly forgettable stuff and the one thing that gets on my nerves is the fact that they call this dorama Quartet when Kunichiwa doesn't really do anything besides issue orders. Its like saying Charlie is part of a quartet with his angels.

Speaking of Charlie's Angels, I've always thought that the formula for team stories was that each member was suppose to bring something to the team. Kasumi is the seductress/bombs girl and the only one who is doing real undercover work. Kunichiwa is the cop in charge of the group. Shun can fight, speak Mandarin and use her brain. Finally Takeru can fight and is an idiot. Hhmm, someone seems very expendable.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Actually there is one more thing that I really hated which was the Matsushita Yuya video during the credits and him doing some dance moves in the story. What a way to put a flashing neon sign saying the purpose of this dorama is to push this dude. I basically fast forwarded the last few episodes because there is nothing compelling about Quartet. Avoid.