Otaku court room TV drama Samayoi Zakura aired

31.05.2009 by Adrian A. Lozano

Tonight Fuji TV aired "Samayoi Zakura" a fictional one off television court room drama adapted from a weekly serialized manga of the same name. An otaku played by Takashi Tsukamoto is accused of murdering three ladies with a survival knife for harassing his family, and a jury is selected to decide if he is in fact the killer that will get the death penalty. The main character is a juror named Keiichi Aiba a fellow otaku who shares the same interested of the accused killer. Keiiichi is played by Atsushi Ito who played the down on his luck love struck otaku from Densha Otoko. It was like watching a Densha Otoko mirror universe episode, it even had a Getsumento Heiki Mina (月面兎兵器ミーナ) type character in the plot named Kyoukotan from a fictional anime series called "Forest Gal". Kyoukotan just seems thrown together over night she is badly designed and visually unappealing, looks like something I would have seen in the artist alley of Anime Expo back in 90's.

I couldn't believe Fuji TV would air a drama like this since we are about a week away from the first anniversary of the Akihabara stabbing that lead to seven deaths. I'm not saying it wasn't an interesting drama but come on this was just not the right time.