The wonderful world of Japanese television is scarcely understood overseas. While anime somehow managed to achieve mainstream popularity through a convoluted history of piracy and licensing, the rest of the domestic broadcasting sphere never got the same treatment, meaning that many beloved series with huge fan bases are entirely unknown outside of the country. One such example is Aibou: a police crime drama currently on its twenty-third season.

Following the adventures of the fictional police inspector Ukyo Sugishita and his titular partner, nothing demonstrates the sheer popularity of this long-running show than its recent New Year’s special. According to Video Research, around 11.5% of Japanese households tuned in to watch this one hour and 51 minute episode on January 1, constituting at least 14 million people. To put that into perspective, 32.7% of households watched the 75th annual Kohaku Uta Gassen the night before: consistently one of the most viewed broadcasts in Japan since its inception.

What makes this popularity even more surprising is the content of the special: a tense crime thriller with harrowing scenes that mirror recent tragedies and a political edge. Despite the New Year traditionally being seen as a time for relaxation with family, why is it that so many people chose to spend their time off watching something so intense? How has it managed to keep going for so long? And what on earth does Precure have to do with all of this?

A Meeting of the Minds

From the very beginning, Aibou has been helmed by an extremely experienced team both behind and in front of the camera. As series producer, Motohiro Matsumoto was already a veteran at TV Asahi, while lead actor Yutaka Mizutani had starred in hundreds of productions ranging from film to the stage. Even main director Akiyoshi Kimata had been active for close to 30 years when the first special began filming in 2000, but that doesn’t mean that the series came together easily.

In fact, the initial concept for Aibou was surprisingly nebulous. Matsumoto only had the vague idea to produce a mystery series starring Mizutani after he played a detective on a feature for the Saturday Night at the Mysteries programming block, but nothing concrete emerged until Yasuhiro Koshimizu came on board as screenwriter. Even the core concept of having two characters operate as titular partners didn’t come about until Matsumoto had a meeting with eventual co-star Yasufumi Terawaki, who expressed his admiration for Mizutani and desire to work on something together.

What’s more, Koshimizu himself was something of an odd choice to develop the project. Despite being picked to head up a mystery series, he was mainly known at that point for such slice of life romance stories as Kiseki no Romance and Koi no Vacance. The story goes that Matsumoto was sufficiently impressed by the latter series after happening to catch an episode that he reached out to Koshimizu directly with an offer, regardless of the fact that he hadn’t written anything similar before.

Nevertheless, Aibou was an instant success. While Mizutani and others on the production initially assumed that the series would simply be another recurring feature on Saturday Night at the Mysteries, its first special proved so popular when it aired in June 2000 that the offer immediately came from the higher ups to turn it into a regular series. Hiroshi Hayakawa, who would later go on to become the president of TV Asahi in 2009, is even said to have remarked that “The likelihood of Aibou becoming a national treasure is very high.” Three more specials aired in 2001, before season one finally began in 2002.

A Recipe for Success

Like all great long running series, the premise of Aibou is just simple enough to withstand constant reiterations, while also containing enough unique elements to make it stand out from the crowd. On the most basic level, it’s a mystery series centered around the character of Ukyo Sugishita (played by Mizutani) and his partner (initially played by Terafumi), but it’s also an oddball comedy with a comfy atmosphere and a penchant for political drama. The combination of all of these occasionally contradictory parts are what gives the show its special flavor and have, ultimately, allowed it to continue for all these years.

First of all, it would be unwise to disregard the strength of Aibou’s mystery storytelling simply because this is what makes it into a genre piece. The secret sauce comes in the fact that the two main characters play contrasting yet complementary roles in the vein of Sherlock Holmes and other classic detective stories: Sugishita is the master detective who uses his powerful intellect to pick up on clues that others miss, while his partner is the everyman who asks the obvious questions to make sure everyone is on the same page. As a result, even the most elementary of audiences can enjoy the thrill of unravelling the truth, while those more versed in the genre can even have a fair go at solving the riddles themselves.

As previously mentioned, Yasuhiro Koshimizu may have seemed like a strange choice to helm the series initially, but his experience with character dramas ended up giving Aibou an atmosphere akin to a long-running soap opera. In particular, the choice to set in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department meant that familiar faces from across the force could naturally reoccur in stories week to week: these include the curt but good-natured Kenichi Itami, his subordinate Keiji Serizawa, as well as Rokurou Kakuta with his famous catch phrase “Are you free?” Characters have also changed jobs, appearance, and even relationship status over the years, making the world feel lived in and familiar.

Of course, no two characters are more important than Sugishita and his partner. While Sugishita has played by Mizutani since the show’s inception in 2000, a rotating cast of actors have taken the supporting role over the years: Mitsuhiro Oikawa from 2009 to 2011, Hiroki Narimiya from 2012 to 2015, Takashi Sorimachi from 2015 to 2022, as well as Yasufumi Terawaki from both 2000 to 2008 and right now, having returned to the show after Sorimachi’s departure. In many ways, the bond between Mizutani and his partner is what provides the driving force of most narratives and allows us to see a more caring side to the usually eccentric Sugishita.

Speaking of Sugishita’s eccentricity, I was actually first introduced to the show by a friend who showed me funny clips of Mizutani’s performance. These include classic moments such as Sugishita pouring tea from great height and losing his rag at the culprit at the end of an episode, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Mizutani is doing a bad job. In fact, his character is meant to be something of an oddball, while his unfiltered rage at the culprits informs a large part of the themes of the show.

A Political Edge

Given that my first exposure to Aibou was essentially through memes, it took me by surprise when I actually sat down to watch an episode and discovered that the show actually has a distinctly anti-establishment attitude. This is because the culprits behind each episode’s case are usually a victim in and of themselves, either of political corruption or state ineptitude, while the show also isn’t afraid to draw inspiration from recent scandals for its plots. What’s more, this even extends to mirroring certain real life events that some would consider too tragic or traumatic to portray on screen.

To illustrate this point, there’s actually no better example than the recent New Year’s special. Coming in at just under two hours without adverts, it’s a mammoth exploration of how political elites can manipulate the mainstream media and the ordinary people that get caught up in the middle. What’s interesting right off the bat is the fact that an organization known as “Joker” are suspected of kidnapping a famous newscaster's daughter in retaliation for his opposition to a plan to build a casino: a project that is actually underway in Osaka despite outspoken criticism.

Even so, as Sugishita and Kamiyama (played by Terawaki) investigate the case further, they discover that it’s not that simple. In fact, the Joker plot was nothing but a ploy by the true culprit to get the newscaster to reveal the location of a hidden USB drive that contains incriminating evidence on a politician who sexually abused a nurse many years in the past. Said nurse is then shown to have passed away in a natural disaster that bears a striking resemblance to the 2024 Noto earthquake: an event that not only still hasn’t been fully resolved, but also happened during the previous Aibou New Year’s special and interrupted the broadcast.

Putting aside any real world parallels, perhaps the most unusual thing here is that the true culprit gets away without so much as a slap on the wrist. Despite plotting to assassinate a public servant with a sniper rifle before being caught in the act, the perpetrator is not arrested for attempted murder and even gets to see his newborn baby in the hospital at the very end. This is because his motives are presented as morally justified: as the brother of the nurse who was abused, he was simply trying to bring his abuser to light, even if the methods he was using may be a little less than squeaky clean.

Instead of the assassin, Aibou aims its rage squarely at the elites who engineered this situation in the first place. Despite abusing the nurse and even potentially using the natural disaster as a cover-up for killing her, the politician never admitted to his crimes and instead pressured the newscaster into sitting on the incriminating evidence with the promise of future advancement. It’s only with the release of this information to the public that the politician is brought to justice and all of his victims can have peace, once and for all.

An Enduring Legacy

Considering that there are well over 200 individual episodes of Aibou across twenty-three seasons, limiting the scope of this article to just the latest New Year’s special was a necessary evil. Even so, it must be emphasised that the content of this special was anything but: aside from the longer runtime, it felt like just another episode in the best way possible. In fact, the very first episode of the twenty-third season also began with a bomb plot that mirrored the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2022 and the failed attempt by one male to do the same one year later to his successor, Fumio Kishida.

This consistency could be seen as one of the reasons why the show has remained so popular for so many years, but such consistency would be ineffective if the base elements were unappealing. You could also say the same thing about the mountain of related media that exists outside of the main show itself: these include several theatrical movies, a Nintendo DS game released in 2009, as well as many books discussing the production and philosophy behind the program. For this article, Mizutani’s tell-all biography proved especially useful.

While all of this related material is a product of the show’s popularity, it also has had a direct hand in producing a fanbase that is obsessed with information and cataloging everything related to the show. Another one of the sources consulted heavily when writing this article for background information was Inudenchi: a fan blog containing screenshots, synopsis and thoughts on every single episode, movie and special since 2000. In many ways, you won’t find a single piece of Japanese media that fits Hiroki Azuma’s definition of otaku as “database animals” any better.

The characters of Aibou have also spilled out beyond the world of the show and into wider pop culture. In 2018, Sugiyama featured as an animated guest character on Doraemon, while he also appeared in live-action on Crayon Shin-chan to promote the series’ second theatrical movie in 2010. Perhaps because of his unusual personality, Sugiyama is also often used as meme material on message boards and social media: one of the most bizarre fan accounts I found during my research was one that roleplayed as a version of Sugishita that got really into the long-running children's TV shows aimed at young girls, Precure and Aikatsu.

With all of this in mind, the legacy of Aibou is clear. Even after so many seasons, it continues to remain popular and beloved by fans for a variety of complex reasons, ranging from the profound to the semi-ironic. On a wider level, however, it is just another entry in the long list of broadcast institutions that remain virtually unknown outside of Japan: a shame, but one that could be remedied in the future if distributors are willing and able.

Aibou currently airs on TV Asahi every Wednesday in Japan.