Puzzle - First Impression

It was never my intention to start this series.

Official Site
DramaWiki Article

Premise:
Ayukawa Misako (Ishihara Satomi) is an English teacher, but ironically she sucks in English. She looks at least 10 years younger than her actual age, and she is well received by most people because she is very polite, speaks with an extremely sweet voice, is so demure, kind, considerate, great, sweet…

I really like Ishihara Satomi’s smile (:

Traits mentioned above are only applicable when she’s in public. She’s basically a devil when she’s alone with her students. 3 naive students from her new class, Imamura (Yamamoto Yusuke), Tsukamoto (Nagayama Kento) and Kansaki (Kimura Ryo) became the victims. She screams at them, bosses them around, freaks them out and sabotages them to get herself out of trouble.

And that’s only part of the list.

Ayukawa’s good in solving puzzles and mysteries, but she utitlises it for herself and for money. Coincidentally they embarked on a journey to solve the hints to a treasure hunt, which would lead them to a priceless pot left as part of a will of an old man.

Meet the 3 victims students: (from left) Kansaki, Imamura, Tsukamoto. Good luck.

I’ll leave you to find out how serious her spilt personality is.

Why did I watch this?
I wasn’t intending to watch this at all. But I’m glad I did.

Impression:
Although this episode reminds me of the Trick series quite a bit, I would say its premise is still quite unique. Puzzle is a mystery comedy based on treasure hunting, and combined with crime. Personally I feel the crime was weaker than the treasure hunting aspect. It was too simplistic (I know I’m hard to please but the criminal was way too obvious -_-;;), but perhaps the crime wasn’t the focus to begin with.

What I noticed 10 minutes after I started watching was the use random humor.

This is still amusing (and random)

It makes me wonder if random humor has become an essential for mystery comedies. We saw it in Kimi Hannin janai yo ne, and we see it here as well. Yes random humor is fun to watch, and was precisely the reason why I love Trick and Jikou Keisatsu so much, but I don’t like the idea of it becoming an element. If all mystery dramas use random humor,it wouldn’t be that random anymore would it :\. Like you would expect it coming before you actually see it.

That’s just my own opinion.

I like the cast combination a lot, and I think they are the biggest contributor to the fun of this episode. Ayukawa is definitely one of the most hypocritical roles I’ve ever seen, but she is still pretty likable. I was awed by how hypocritical she can be. However, I am still trying to convince myself that her role is someone who’s 10 years older than she looks (she’s the same age as me omg!). The three boys are really fun to watch as well, and they make a great team with Ayukawa.

I’ll frown too if I have to spend at least 9 more episodes with Ayukawa.

I am really surprised that Yamamoto Yusuke is not a Johnny’s boy though. (that actually means ‘he’s very cute’. XD)

Next episode:
It looks like the format of the show has been fixed. Apparent treasure, hunting, crime, solving mysteries. I am not so sure if the crime is a fixed factor or not at this point.