The Archive.org website is slow but it does have a lot of content — LOTS! A lot of it is unorganized. That was how I found episodes of this Japanese TV drama serial. Someone who had uploaded a lot of Japanese TV tapes and among them was TRICꓘ. [The k is flipped.]
TV Asahi began broadcasting Tricꓘ in 2000. The hero of the program is a plucky young girl who is down in the dumps financially. She can perform magic tricks that she learned from her father and had also built a repertoire of tricks of her own. Like Sherlock Holmes, she also tries to solve puzzles by her powers of observation and deduction. A university physics professor named Ueda offers money for her to go and expose a rural cult led by a godwoman. This takes us through over a dozen episodes of twists and turns. It was quite entertaining. There is plenty of humour.
There are three seasons, three specials and four movies in which the two main characters expose several cults and their leaders. They give considerable attention to how cult followers act when they become brainwashed. Even when their cult leaders are hauled away to jail, the followers continue to be mesmerized and wait for their return.
Yukie Nakama plays the magician named Yamada. She is very pretty. The professor makes a few verbal references to her flat chest. She also makes similar juvenile remarks in return. There are no adult scenes in the first season. (The end credits have some graphic content.) Yamada and Ueda provide most of the comedy. The humour is a little laidback in the first season but in later editions they do not hold back. There is a police detective and an assistant who are also funny. I think those two characters were spun off into another TV serial.
UPDATE: I have the first season, the specials and two movies. All of the tricky content have disappeared from Archive.org. Is there a English site that streams Japanese TV content? I prefer old movies and TV shows. I hate contemporary content with their reliance on mobile phones and social media.
- More info: https://www.yamada-ueda.com/ (if you can read Nihongo)
- Age rating: 18+