A Mystery Drama for Animal Lovers: "MPD: Animal Unit"

Synopsis

Tomozo Sudo was once a highly known investigator of the police force’s first unit. However, due to being shot in the head, he had ended up in rehabilitation and what’s more, lost his memories. Upon his return, due to changes in the unit, he ends up transferred to the general division, responsible for taking care of animals whose owners are suspects or missing.

Upon his transfer, he meets Keiko Usuki, a police constable and works in the same division and loves animals more than humans. As the two begin working together, however, they soon find that the animals they come to care for hold clues to cases that the first unit is handling. With Keiko’s animal expertise and Tomozo’s police instinct, the two soon begin to sole cases where the animals hold the truth.

The Good

This is as the title states, a series to watch if you are an animal lover. The fact that the series featured a different animal in each episode rather than go the simple route of a cat or dog or other is a delight for an animal lover like this writer. It was clever on how they worked both the mystery and the direction around the animal. One of the most prominent shows of this was with the owl episode and it’s flight movements. Another is with the monkey episode and its movement to different locations and people.

More than the workings of the animals and mysteries though, the characters also brings a lot to the story. With Tomozo and Keiko, they form a great dynamic and the way the series goes with Tomozo’s development was rather heartfelt, especially when the truth of his shooting was revealed. Really, the series does more than well in presenting emotional moments that really strikes the heartstrings.

The Bad

One of the main problems with the series is that it tends to drag out certain comedy shticks that it does. An example is with how Nitto seems to try and get Keiko to notice him and fails and then there is the thing with the old officer hanging around the museum and telling old stories, basically being a background comedy character who only helped at one point and nowhere else. Other than this, there was the whole cloak and dagger thing that the series was clearly building up for the ending. Honestly, the way that the series went about it was rather heavy-handed and didn’t really pan out well as foreshadowing to the final half of the series.

Conclusion

It’s a great series that mixes between caring for animals and mysteries involving them. The direction and the flow of the story were great even if the whole secrecy thing with the chief could have been done better. Tomozo and Keiko’s dynamic was nicely developed and the emotional scenes that the series dished out were well executed. Overall, this is a series that does well in featuring animals and friendship between work partners.

Rating: 8.5/10