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Tantei Monogatari (in Japanese: 探偵物語), literally "Detective Story", is a Japanese television series broadcast from 1979 to 1980. It ran for twenty-seven episodes over one season. It stars Yusaku Matsuda as Shunsaku Kudo, a Vespa-riding, milk-drinking, chain-smoking private detective with a distinctive appearance.
The television channel, NTV, created the programme as a vehicle for Yusaku Matsuda, then known mostly as an action star. The channel intended it to be a "hard-boiled" detective series full of action scenes involving guns and car chases, similar to Matsuda's previous TV series Daitokai Part II. Yusaku Matsuda had a different notion of a more human detective, in Matsuda's own words "heart-boiled", a detective who did something other than simply shoot his way out of trouble, and he argued and battled the scriptwriters and producers, as well as ad-libbing large parts of the dialogue instead of using the script.
The stories were marked by an absurd mixture of comedy and action. Despite featuring violence, drug abuse and murder, the programme is often extremely silly. A highlight is the performance of Mikio Narita, who plays the corrupt police detective Hattori. The programme also often features unconvincing props, continuity errors, and unlikely fight scenes.
Perhaps because of the humour, even today, more than thirty years after the programme was broadcast, "Tantei Monogatari" is a cult television programme in Japan, with numerous web sites devoted to it. Some people think that it was Yusaku Matsuda's best work.
The opening theme music Bad City, and the closing theme Lonely Man were both written by Casey Rankin and performed in English by a rock band Shogun made up of musicians brought together to make TV theme music. They also did the background music for the programme.
The title "Tantei Monogatari" ("Detective Story") has also been used for other works. The first use was as the translated title of a 1951 film starring Kirk Douglas, called "Detective Story" in English. Most confusingly, Yusaku Matsuda also starred in a film called Tantei Monogatari with singing idol Hiroko Yakushimaru in 1983. However, this film is not related to the TV series. The theme song for this film was also called "Tantei Monogatari". For some reason, a 1984 album by British group "Matt Bianco" called "Whose side are you on?" was also entitled "Tantei Monogatari" in Japan. A 2007 film called "Tantei Monogatari" also appeared, again with absolutely no relation to this programme.
The fame of the programme lingers on in the influence on other shows. The father of the star of the comic and animated series "Detective Conan", Yusaku Kudo, is named after a combination of Yusaku Matsuda and Shunsaku Kudo from Tantei Monogatari.
Includes sub-pages on each episode, with a cast list including small screen shots.
This site goes into a lot of detail about each episode, but it doesn't give much information about the regular characters. The last update was in 2004, and some of the links and the "Gallery" pages have disappeared.
Ignore the website's design, this is a highly detailed fan site, with photos of the locations as they were in 1998, and even lists Kudo's clothing and the licence plate of his Vespa for each episode.
The times and chapters on this site refer to the Laser Disc (LD) editions of Tantei Monogatari.
In Japanese. Introduction to some of the characters in the series.
Note: Japanese people use the English word maniac to mean "enthusiast" or "over-enthusiastic fan".
Contains partial dialogue transcripts.
Plot outlines, cast, quotes for each episode, list of "actors with most appearances", "screenwriters/directors with most episodes", lyrics for opending and closing theme music.
Tantei Monogatari and other Yusaku Matsuda film locations "then and now".
Part of a bigger fan site on Yusaku Matsuda. Contains episode list, character list, Japanese text of all the "next week" introductions, and other stuff.