Series / Galileo

Rookie detective Kaoru Utsumi (Kou Shibasaki) encounters a mysterious case of apparent spontaneous human combustion on her first assignment. Seeing her dedication, her about-to-be-transferred sempai Kusanagi suggests she meet with a friend of his, an associate professor at Teito University and the actual solver of the many strange cases he'd encountered: Manabu Yukawa (Masaharu Fukuyama), a genius but odd physicist, once nicknamed "Galileo the weirdo". The two don't really get along at first, but develop respect for each other as they go on to solve many seemingly inexplicable or supernatural cases.

Galileo (ガリレオ) is a Japanese Detective Drama based on the Detective Galileo book series by Keigo Higashino. Debuting in October of 2007, the series ran for two seasons, plus two TV specials and two movies. For the second season, the now experienced Kaoru is replaced by Misa Kishitani (Yuriko Yoshitaka) as a new rookie detective.

---

Tropes seen in Galileo TV series:

• Accidental Hero: Otagawa, of all people. In the season two finale, by taking care of the roses and replanting them when they mysteriously dried up, he unwittingly prevented Ayane from realizing that there's evidence of poison left, until Misa discovers it.
• A Day in the Limelight: Kuribayashi gets some focus time in episode seven, and Jounouchi in episode eight.
• Affably Evil: Kijima, apart from being somewhat condescending when Yukawa gets his deduction wrong, remains soft-spoken if stern throughout his appearances. He then plants a nuke in Yukawa's lab, set to go off in three hours.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Happens in-story, concerning the culprit of episode one. After his confession, Kaoru is inclined to think he's a timid person pushed too far, whose plan to scare the delinquents by making some trash burst into flames went horribly right. Yukawa later points out that a) the guy works with that laser cutter daily and knows damn well how powerful it is, and b) he made repeated attempts for over three months, when someone wanting to simply frighten would have long given up; rather than timid, he is obsessive and calculating. Yukawa is proven right.
• Always Murder: Generally played straight. Only one case per season does not involve anyone dying, but only because both cases were failed attempted murders.
• And the Adventure Continues: The end of the both seasons has Kaoru or Misa barge into Yukawa's lab yet again to drag him off on a case. Though for Kuribayashi, it may be closer to Here We Go Again!.
• Arcadia: KUAI's home village is intended to be this, with the followers living a simple, self-sufficient life closer to nature. Meanwhile, the scammers keep a hidden villa in the forest full of the latest tech and luxuries.
• Arms Dealer: The opening victim of the explosion in episode nine was actually this.
• Astral Projection: The focus phenomenon of episode two.
• Attack Reflector: Used in the first episode, to direct the laser cutter's beam. Played rather realistically, as specially-made mirrors are needed, and the whole setup is very, very finicky.
• Autopsy Snack Time: Discussed and averted. Misa is about to eat lunch in the office next to the autopsy room, and Isac comments that she's like a real detective now because of this trope. Except that Misa didn't know there was a burnt corpse next door, and promptly loses her appetite when she sees it.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: In season two episode four, Yukawa wants to prove this can be done by using physics and Motion Capture sensing to help baseball pitcher Yanagisawa get back to form.
• The Baby Trap: An inversion occurs in the background of season two's finale. Ayane's husband makes it explicitly clear that he is marrying to have children, and makes her a promise to divorce if they don't conceive within a year. So, instead of "we have a baby, so we must get married", it's "we don't have a baby, so we can no longer stay married".

• Badass Boast: Episode nine of season two opens with one, in the form of a letter from someone calling themselves the Devil's Hand claiming the power to kill anyone, anywhere. It doubles as a challenge to the police and Yukawa.

• Beleaguered Assistant: Kuribayashi for Yukawa. Unlike most cases, though, Yukawa is clearly the more competent of the two, and Kuribayashi's frustrations come from trying to keep him focused on his coursework instead of helping out the police.

• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
  • Shizuko, the real mastermind behind the events of episode seven, all for money.
  • Tomohiro Isoya is quickly shown to be this (without the manipulative part, he isn't competent enough for that).
• Bland-Name Product: Misa does a quick search on "Seargle".
• Break His Heart to Save Him: A non-romantic example in the season one finale. After being begged to by Kuribayashi, Kaoru finally tries to avoid involving Yukawa in the case, for the sake of himself and his career. Of course, by then Yukawa is already fully committed, and he is the one trying to contact her. Their conversation over this plays out very much like this trope.

• Brown Note: The Devil's Hand's means of killing is revealed to be an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device). Fittingly, it's an already-existing technology rather than anything creatively improvised, matching Yukawa's dismissal of him as mediocre.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Atsuko Kanbara records most of her conversations with other people, ostensibly for acting reference.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: An instance from the good guy's perspective. Takato's Start of Darkness occurred at a conference where he presented what he thought was ground-breaking research, and Yukawa pointed out its flaws. Of course, Yukawa doesn't remember it at all.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Kuribayashi. Misa also skirts close to this, at least more so compared to Kaoru.
• California Doubling: Kyoto University stands in for the fictional Teito University where Yukawa teaches.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: While disarming the bomb in the season one finale. Mostly from Yukawa, though, since Kaoru is properly stressed out.
• Catchphrase: Yukawa has quite a few. "Every phenomenon has a cause", "not the slightest clue", "truly interesting", "truly illogical"...

• The Chikan: Not actually appearing in series, but Kaoru apparently caught sixty-five molesters during her time in the traffic department, with herself as bait, before becoming a detective.
• Child Hater: Yukawa, though a fairly mild case. He says he hates them because they're illogical, but acts more like he's uncomfortable with them.
• Childhood Friends: Kaoru and Hachi, the suspect in episode six, were friends in elementary school.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Kaoru seems to eventually view her cooperation with Yukawa like this. In season two, when she passes the torch to Misa, she says "You're in charge of him now."
• Coat Tail Riding Relative: A relatively mild example. The father in episode two takes advantage of his son's apparent out-of-body experience to appear on talk shows and get money. However, the son is willing to do it to help out his dad, and both are seen to enjoy actually having money for a change. When Yukawa finally proves the truth, and his son tearfully tries to repeat his fake story, the father looks properly guilty and calls off the act.
• Come Alone: In episode six, Kaoru promises to meet Hachi alone to hear his side of the story, but unbeknownst to her, Yukawa follows her there. Hachi thinks she broke her promise and locks them both in a barge.
• Comes Great Responsibility: An important theme in season one's finale, specifically as regards scientists and the new technologies they discover and how to responsibly deal with them.

• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Kaoru and Misa. On first appearance, the former is naive and earnest, the latter confident to the point of arrogance. They do have a strong sense of justice in common, though.
  • Also in their first autopsy scene together, Misa is visibly squeamish and hangs back as far as possible, where Kaoru is completely unfazed by now.

• The Coroner: One per season as major recurring characters, given that most cases involve strange deaths. Jounouchi in season one is classically dry and sardonic, though female. Isac in season two appears to have some African ancestry, which is rare on Japanese TV, but otherwise acts and is treated much the same as Jounouchi.
• Crazy-Prepared: Atsuko Kanbara, being one of the few killers to have more than one alibi trick in play.
  • Also, Ayane Mashiba. Not for the scope of her preparations, but the time and effort she invested into it.
• Cult: KUAI in the first episode of season two. It turns out to be a Scam Religion, but in this case its leader was duped as well.
• Dark Secret: In episode nine, when Teito's former Nuclear Engineering department and its professor come up, you can tell from Kuribayashi's unusually serious reaction that something important happened involving them. Kaoru eventually catches on that something's amiss, as well.
• Deadly Bath: The weapon in episode four works through water. While the opening kill happened in an indoor pool, it's later found that other kills were done at a public bath and a sauna, as well. Kaoru herself barely escaped being killed with the weapon while asleep in the bathtub.
• Determinator: This and her strong sense of justice are Kaoru's best points. Despite being inexperienced and somewhat naïve, she is determined to see a case through for the sake of the victims, even if she has to investigate by herself from scratch.
  • Yukawa is this in his own way. Genius or not, science and experimentation is repetitive and tedious, and he shows he is able to keep trying even after repeated failures.
  • The culprit of the first case is a darker version, as it's implied he'd been trying repeatedly to kill the victim for over three months.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Getting one's head burnt to ash for being noisy and disrupting someone's recording session.
• Dissonant Serenity: The last clue that convinces Kaoru that Yukawa is right regarding the suspect in the first episode is the recording the culprit made right after the murder. For being supposedly shaken to the core after "accidentally" burning a boy to death, he was able to record a perfectly serene reading so soon afterwards.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The actors for Yukawa and Kaoru, being singers as well, do the theme songs for both seasons and the movie.
• Do Wrong, Right: How Yukawa "defeats" Tagami. Perhaps knowing that an argument about morality wouldn't work on someone like that, he instead attacks his pride, telling him his weapon is flawed, and proceeds to show him plans for a better weapon, while smugly pointing out that he wouldn't have left any bruises. It works, as Tagami confessed afterwards.
• The Dog Bites Back: Literally. A burglar/killer poisoned their victim's dog so that they can come back later to search the house in peace. However, the dog wasn't quite dead yet, and bit them as they were leaving, eventually leading to their arrest.
• Don't Try This at Home: The TV broadcasts include a warning that the science experiments done on the show were supervised by experts, and not to try them at home.

• Eating the Eye Candy: Kaoru has occasionally stopped to just stare at Yukawa when she catches him doing some physical activity, like rock climbing.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Misa picks up Occult-chan from her police colleagues.
• Establishing Character Moment: Misa arrives at work on her first day as a detective (and Kaoru's replacement) fashionably late, in stiletto heels, and brimming with confidence.
  • At the end of the episode, after having twisted her ankle, she's shown with much more sensible shoes.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Yukawa gets a particularly hammy one ''every'' case, involving him writing equations of uncertain relevance on the nearest available surface, while the show's guitar theme starts playing and snippets of previous scenes zoom past, and ending with him in a characteristic pose with his fingers over his face. At that point, we can be fairly certain he's figured out the case (or at least, the scientific part of it that he's interested in).
• Evolving Credits: The opening sequence for season two includes a small image next to the episode title, which change every episode. Sometimes they simply repeat the titles in picture form, but other times they instead provide a hint towards the solution of the episode's mystery.
• Fair Cop: Both Kaoru and Misa. Kusanagi would also count, given the number of fangirls he has.
• Fake Assisted Suicide: Inverted in episode seven. The mistress' suicide was supposed to be faked, but the setup was sabotaged by her accomplices to kill her for real.

• Feet-First Introduction: Misa, the female lead of the second season, is introduced this way.
• For Science!:
  • Yukawa's usual motivation, and he comes off as unexpectedly sincere in his love for science and solving challenging problems.
  • Kijima presents a much darker take on this.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Comes up in episode five. One of Yukawa's students is trying to do this as the B-plot, Yukawa and Kaoru discuss it (he's against, she's for), and it turns out the victim and his wife did this as well. Yukawa later reveals his own parents married young.
• Gold Digger: Shizuko in episode seven. Made really, really blatant when she falls for Sugawara's fake suicide.
  Shizuko: Mitsuru-san! Don't die! You're going to leave your fortune to me, right?

• Gut Feeling: Kaoru occasionally pulls "detective's intuition" as her basis for her beliefs concerning a case, and Yukawa will either call it illogical or outright say he doesn't care. She's usually proven right as well, but they still need to find concrete proof to actually solve a case.
  • Yukawa does concede later that intuition is different from groundless belief, and can be an acceptable starting point...as long as they thoroughly and properly investigate it, instead of just basing their conclusion on it.
• He Knows Too Much: What befalls the husband in episode three, when he comes upon an old woman who had just died of a heart attack after being threatened by her nephew's loan shark.
  • Kaoru herself almost falls victim to this in episode four.
  • As it turns out, this is again the impetus for episode six, and why Yumiko Morisaki tries to kill Hachi.

• Hired to Hunt Yourself: Episode four comes close to this trope, as Kaoru consults with Tagami during her investigations, not knowing Tagami himself is the killer in the case. It tips him off that Yukawa might be on to him.
• Hitodama Light: The subject phenomenon of episode five. Though they only call them "fireballs", the colour and association with a dead person evoke this trope.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Yumiko Morisaki in episode six. She tries to kill Hachi because he met her while she was having an affair with Kitano, but from all appearances Hachi doesn't remember her at all. All her actions did was get Kaoru and Yukawa involved, and tipped them off that she might have killed Kitano herself.

• I Got a Rock: A literal example, not Halloween-related. When Kaoru has to leave in season two, Yukawa gives her what looks like a ring box...and inside is a big hunk of germanium. After a bewildered look, she accepts it so he'll stop explaining its properties to her.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Episode seven. How would one know the room number in another building just by seeing the room from one's window?
  • Used more directly against Shizuko at the end of the episode, to confirm her involvement.
  • Also used more benignly in episode two of season two, cluing in Yukawa on the fact that Kanako already knew what happened to the dog before she found it.
• I Shall Taunt You: After figuring out the likely trick used by the Devil's Hand, Yukawa goes on television to publicly dismiss his crimes and call him a hack, to make sure he comes after Yukawa directly.
• Impressive Pyrotechnics: Episode nine opens with a small rowboat on a lake being engulfed in an incredibly large and fiery explosion.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode name (before translation) is a single verb in infinitive form, relevant to the episode's mystery. A more typically descriptive subtitle exists, but isn't shown in the episode title card. The finale of season two averts this, due to being adapted from a novel instead of a short story.
• Indian Burial Ground: Discussed. When Yukawa asks to look at old maps to see what was there before an apparently haunted house was built, Kaoru thinks he's checking for an old graveyard. He isn't, of course.
• Insufferable Genius: Yukawa, in spades, much to Kaoru's and Misa's annoyance.
  • Misa herself is quite smart, but just as or even more insufferably cocky than Yukawa.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Discussed in episode six. Yukawa believes this is part of being a scientist, since few others understand or share their interests, but that doesn't mean they want this isolation, or don't seek connection with others.
• Irony: In episode three, the old woman's fortune that the loan sharks are so desperate to find is in a safe deposit box, the key to which was entrusted to the very same guy they murdered and buried in cement. It's still in his suit pocket, right beneath the culprits as they search the house for money.
• Japanese Delinquents: The victim of the first case is one of a quartet of such delinquents, causing a ruckus in a quiet neighbourhood on a regular basis, smoking, playing with fireworks, and planning to break into school at night.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Yukawa.
  • The wife in episode three as well, being rather abrasive and openly dismissive of Kaoru at first, plus freely admitting that she tried to break into a house simply because she was suspicious. However, she is deeply in love with her husband, and sick with worry over his disappearance.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Jounouchi and Isac are actually the ones always in a labcoat, as we only tend to see them in the autopsy room or the adjoining office. Yukawa only wears his when in his lab.
• Lady Drunk: Jounouchi has a few hints of this.
• Lady Macbeth: Renzaki's wife Sayoko is the mastermind behind the shady, money-scamming side of KUAI, using Renzaki for his charisma. It's revealed she's the one who came up with the Sounen apparatus. She's even about to kill Renzaki herself when the trick is discovered.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Episode three. Old lady Takano already had a bad heart, and it would arguably have been possible to say her death was accidental, especially since her nephew was genuinely upset and Kanzaki is a trusting kind of guy. Killing and burying him instead is exactly what brought Kaoru and Yukawa into the case, caused the "poltergeist" phenomenon, and ultimately got the bad guys arrested. Not to mention the entry under Irony, above.
• Laser Sight: A justified use in the first episode. Given that the murder weapon is a remote-controlled industrial laser cutter reflected off several mirrors, a sight is required to aim it, and switching between a visible laser and the actual cutting laser makes the most sense. Even so, it's horribly inaccurate and requires dozens of tries.
• Little Miss Snarker: The daughter in episode five. Yukawa seems to approve.
• Loan Shark: A pair show up in episode three.
• Locked Room Mystery: Episode five...which turns out to be a disguised Suicide, Not Murder, for insurance money.
  • Episode eight of season two has one of these also.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: Misa acts more or less like this, minus having a clique to be the alpha of.
• Love Before First Sight: The apparent mystery of episode six, alongside precognition. The name Remi Morisaki had appeared in Hachi's writings even before the girl with said name was even born, and coincidence is dismissed due to the uncommonness of the name.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Discussed in episode five, and Yukawa certainly believes it. Also played straight by the victim's wife, who went against her husband's instructions to dispose of his suicide setup because they're her last mementos of him, but in doing so ruins the Insurance Fraud he killed himself for in the first place.
• Magic Feather: Kanako's pendulum. As Yukawa discovers, it's a perfectly ordinary crystal, and the swinging came from Kanoko herself in the form of involuntary muscle movements. In effect, all the pendulum did was confirm Kanoko's own subconscious thoughts that she was afraid to act on.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: The weapon in episode four.
  • The Devil's Hand's device in season two is actually the inversion. It can only cause disorientation and impairment, not death, and thus he can only kill by causing an accident from that disorientation.
• The McCoy: Kaoru leans towards this, especially as compared to Yukawa's The Spock. She is a police officer, but she does do more than her duty requires or even push the envelope of the law if her conscience tells her to. She also frequently calls out Yukawa on his apparent callousness and detachment, though he just as often has a strong and poignant rebuttal on hand.
• Method Acting: Atsuko Kanbara claims to use this for her acting.
• Miles Gloriosus: Kuribayashi tells his friend Sugawara that he is the "Galileo" of Teito University, and has solved many mysteries. It quickly bites him in the ass.
• Mistaken for Cheating: In season two episode four, Yanagisawa suspects his wife of cheating, because she dresses up nicely and goes out while he's training, and doesn't tell him why. It turns out she was building connections so that her husband might play in Taiwan if he couldn't do so in Japan.
• Mood Dissonance: Yukawa and Kaoru working to disarm a bomb is intercut with a montage of the other characters' activities on Christmas Eve.
• Murder-Suicide: The truth of season two episode seven.
• Mysterious Transfer Student: Discussed. Ayane recalls Yukawa as the "mysterious transfer student who loved science" from back in their middle school days.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: Attempted in episode eight. 268 stab wounds...in order to hide the only two that were actually fatal. Unlike usual, though, the medical examiner finds this out rather quickly.
• Never My Fault: Takato in episode nine of season two.
• Nice Guy: The husband in episode three.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Yukawa. He has no problems leaning in close to examine a person's face, or actually manhandling them to move them out of his way or point them in the direction he wants.
• Noodle Incident: A bunch of strange cases solved by Kusanagi (or more likely, Yukawa) are quickly listed, involving someone controlling rats, psychokinesis, and levitation, but sadly no specifics are mentioned.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Usually, Yukawa cooperates with the police only because some aspect of a case interests him as a scientist.
• Not Your Problem: Yuge uses this a lot on Kaoru. Sometimes it's justified as Kaoru is overstepping her bounds as a police officer, while other times he's just assuming the case is over and doesn't want to bother with it further. Either way he's always proven wrong.
• Oh, Crap!: Kaoru gets one of these when it's suggested that Yukawa might bill her for the very expensive experiment he's doing to prove his hypothesis on a murder.
  • Misa gets one when Yukawa starts writing equations on a table at an expensive furniture place.
  • Episode five of season two is a long string of this for the villain, following the botched murder attempt and Yukawa getting involved. Doesn't help that he's a half-assed planner who can't keep his cool in the first place.
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: Episode four has this kind of dynamic between Yukawa and Tagami, as well as them being Foils for each other. Both are gifted scientists, and have admired each other's work as such, but Tagami arouses Yukawa's suspicions early on with talk of his ambitions, causing him to take an active interest in Kaoru's case. Later, Yukawa admits disappointment in seeing a promising young scientist use his talents for the wrong ends.
• Only Smart People May Survive: The bomb Kijima sets up is explicitly a challenge for Yukawa to solve.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the season two finale, after even Yukawa admits defeat in that he can find no evidence to prove his hypothesis, a shocked Otagawa finds Misa crying in frustration...and then he's even more shocked when she speaks to him politely (for all of two minutes, anyway).
• Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: As Kaoru approaches Yukawa's lab, she hears a female student of his apparently confessing her love to him, and him brushing her off. She starts laying into him until it's clarified that the girl is in love with another student, not him. This isn't helped at all by the fact that Japanese conversations drop subjects and objects when the context is known, making such third-party misunderstandings very easy.
• Paper Talisman: The Takano house in episode three has these plastered all over the walls inside, due to the apparent poltergeist.
• Paranormal Investigation: The series has the feel of this, with many episodes centered around an apparently supernatural/impossible occurrence. However, given that the male lead is a genius physicist, it's more or less expected that some kind of mundane explanation exists. What the trick is and how it is actually discovered (with science!) are part of the series' appeal.
• Phony Psychic: Hachi in episode six is one of these. He admits it himself.
• Phrase Catcher: Kuribayashi gets "Be quiet, Assistant!" a few times from Kaoru, and constantly from Misa.
• Police Are Useless: Not in general, since the female protagonist of both seasons is a police detective, but Yuge in Season One tends to be played as an incompetent/lazy jerk as a foil to Kaoru.
  • Yuge's season two Spiritual Successor, Otagawa, fares a little better, partly because Misa herself acts pretty jerkish towards him.
• Poltergeist: The phenomenon to be investigated in episode three.
• Posthumous Character: The husband in episode three, initially thought to be just missing or in trouble, was actually killed and buried before the beginning of the episode.
• Psychic Powers: The guru of KUAI apparently has them, and they become the focus for Yukawa's investigation. Oh, and it's Nen (thoughts), not Nenriki (psychokinesis). Because Nenriki sounds shady.
• Put on a Bus: At the start of season two, Kaoru is heading to America for a year of training, with Misa as her replacement.
• Rail Enthusiast: Sugawara seems to be one, drinking at a bar with a running model train and later giving Yukawa a train magazine.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: While not directly commented on, the little boy in episode two tells his story in unusually complete sentences and repeats it consistently. Coupled with his body language, there's a clear hint that his lines were rehearsed.
• Real Joke Name: Kaoru's grandma is apparently named Chabashira Tatsuko (Tea-Stalk Floating Upright Girl).
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Pops up here and there. A rare, particularly passionate one coming from Yukawa is directed at Kijima in the season one finale, just before he sits down to disarm the freakin' nuke the latter set up in his lab.
• Renaissance Man: Fitting to his nickname, Yukawa appears to be this. In addition to his specialty being physics (which is already a broad field), he is knowledgeable about other fields, including biology, mathematics, engineering, and electronics. He is physically fit, and shown to be capable at squash, boxing, archery, baseball, and badminton. He does wood sculpting, and cooks. Also, despite acting like he doesn't care, he does have a good insight into human psychology and knows when to keep his mouth tactfully shut. Sometimes.
• Replacement Goldfish: Kaoru herself became this for Souhei Kitano when she was a kid, after Yumiko left him while pregnant with their illegitimate daughter. She doesn't remember, though.
• School Festival: Kaoru and Yuge are doing crime prevention at one when they encounter that episode's mystery.
• Science Hero: Yukawa.
• Secret Test of Character: The one-year reprieve Ayane gave her husband to see if he would change his mind. When he didn't, they simply let the plan run its course.
• Shared Family Quirks: From episode six, painter Kitano signs his art in a distinctive manner, and Hachi signs his drawings the same way, since he spent a lot of time with Kitano as a kid. After The Reveal, Remi Morisaki is shown signing her art with the same distinctive flourish, implicitly confirming that she is Kitano's child.
• Shock and Awe: A lightning bolt discharging into a lake created a shockwave that slammed an aluminum board against a corpse so hard that it created a perfect mask, down to the bullet hole in the forehead.
• Shot in the Ass: Well, stabbed. In an uncommon female example, Misa gets stabbed in the butt with a boxcutter while wrestling a panicking guy. She gets humorously teased about it for the rest of the episode.
• Shower Scene: Tagami gets one out of nowhere in episode four, and a rather daring one to boot. Considering he's played by Shingo Katori of SMAP, it's definitely Fanservice for the ladies. Kaoru's Bathtub Scene in the same episode is comparatively tame.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Kuribayashi and Misa quickly begin to act like this to each other.
• Strapped to a Bomb: Well, to a chair next to a bomb. A nuclear bomb.
• The Sociopath: Tagami in episode four fits here quite well.
  • Probably Atsuko Kanbara as well, based on how she acts during The Reveal.
• The Spock: Yukawa is this, clearly stating his preference for logic and reason over emotions, and able to rationally think through his options even in the face of an armed nuclear bomb. It's not so extreme that he can't occasionally show sympathy for others, but good luck getting him to admit that.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion: The apparent phenomenon in play in the first episode.
• Stalker with a Crush: Hachi towards Remi Morisaki in episode six. Though as it turns out, the crush part is actually misplaced.
  • Konaka in season two's episode three.
• Starving Artist: The father in episode two is a struggling magazine writer.
• Still Got It: Kaoru happily declares this to herself after a couple of university students invite her to a group date.
• Subliminal Seduction: What Konaka was attempting to do to Wakisaka, even though the concept is later acknowledged as completely discredited.
• The Summation: Another Once an Episode occurence. If nothing else, Yukawa usually has to explain the scientific aspect of the crime to Kaoru or Misa. On those occasions where he gets his students to help reproduce the scene, he even seems to make it part of their lab work.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: Sugawara in episode seven. While the actual cheating is condemned by Kaoru and Sugawara himself, he is otherwise portrayed as a deeply regretful guy who made a mistake. He becomes even more sympathetic after The Reveal that his wife Shizuko orchestrated everything right from the beginning.
• Synthetic Voice Actor: A killer uses a program of this kind and samples of the victim's voice in order to leave a voicemail. Kijima later uses the same trick, with recordings of Yukawa's voice, to lure Kaoru into his trap.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Yukawa.
• Techno Babble: Yukawa and Jounouchi discussing a victim's radiation exposure sounds pretty much like this to Kaoru. They are using real terms, though, and Jounouchi is thrilled, saying she's never had such an interesting conversation with a man before.
  • Almost the exact same situation plays out in season two when Yukawa speaks with Yuko Nogi about her research, and Misa stands there baffled.
• Teleportation: The phenomenon investigated in episode eight.
• Tengu: The subject of season two's episode seven. The version in the local legends can pass through walls, which, of course, comes up as a plot point.
• Terrible Artist: Haruna in episode five of season two.
• That Poor Plant: The roses that Ayane disposed of the arsenic-laced water into.
• Time Skip: There is about six years between the start of the first season and the start of the second, which also corresponds with the real time gap between the broadcasts.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Yukawa loves instant coffee. Possibly also natto, which he's usually seen having whenever he's in the cafeteria.
• Twin Telepathy: The subject phenomenon for season two's episode five.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: In episode seven. Things quickly go wrong.
• Undying Loyalty: Kijima's secretary...right up to committing suicide while attempting to prevent further investigation that could compromise his work.
• Unknown Rival: Takato (i.e. the Devil's Hand) to Yukawa, complete with Dartboard of Hate.
• Unobtainium: Season one's finale mentions red mercury, a scientific Urban Legend. Kijima has apparently succeeded in developing it.
  • To a lesser extent, the Super Na-K used to cause episode nine's explosion. Na-K is a real substance, and already highly reactive with water, so presumably Super Na-K is just a more powerful/better variant of it.
• Uptown Girl: The couple in episode three. The wife is from a rich family, and it shows somewhat from her attitude, but she married her husband despite her family's disapproval, because of his good heart.
• Vomiting Cop: Used as a bit of an Establishing Character Moment for Kaoru. When they first see the burnt corpse in episode one, Yuge, the ostensibly more experienced cop, runs for the bathroom, while rookie Kaoru just barely holds it down and stays where she is. Both her sempai and the coroner notice.
  • And then the same situation happens again in the next episode.
• The Watson: Kaoru and Misa, most of the time.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In the very first episode, Kaoru calls out Yukawa on how he is fascinated and even enthusiastic about the scientific aspect of the case, despite the fact that a teenager was horrifically burnt to death. It does get through to him somewhat.
  • Misa makes a similar speech in her debut episode as well, though couched in her own personality.
• Wire Dilemma: Sure enough, Kijima's bomb boils down to this classic scenario.
  • Take a Third Option: There's a hidden third wire.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In the first episode, Kaoru invents a background sob story for herself, complete with crying, to get Yukawa to tell her his findings. It works, though he catches on at the end of the episode, when he sees the TV series commercial she stole that story from.

---