The Big Race

Painting and Story by Lean Winifred Ramsay

Television that teaches us about Science

Mr Brain is a Japanese television drama that can teach us a lot about science. Not just ordinary science, but very difficult science and other challenging scientific theory and philosophy. Mr Brain is a Japanese drama from 2009 that is available with English Subtitles on Youtube and I recommend that you watch it for a profound insight into scientific things like neuroscience. Neuroscience has been around for more than a hundred years! But people didn’t know much about it.

An investigative team at the centre of criminal investigations? Already you might be thinking of Criminal Minds with its Science of thinking about crime. But Mr Brain works in a team, he never works alone. He works with the police, he works alongside the police, he works with a team of scientists with keen minds, and he does not work alone.

In a character widely attributed to world renowned scientists in brain science such as Dr Kenichi Mogi who works with Sony and other scientific research organisations, Mr Brain is an ex-bar host who wore very elegant clothes but suffered a catastrophic injury when the side of a building fell on him. Five years later he emerges as a star player in the Forensic Neurosciences. It’s all cutting edge, with robots roaming the corridors in search of cameras, and the cleaning is done by young women. Crimes are solved, problems are solved, sometimes through games, sometimes through insightful word play, but always satisfyingly.

Those of you who have become aware of Criminal Minds would by now be aware that staying ahead of the DSM is the name of the game. Mr Brain does not so much understand as embody it, and having one man in charge keeps it simple. American Procedural Dramas are in danger of becoming a little overwrought, such is the plethora of characters, motives, paybacks and crossovers, and loose threads. Mr Brain does not do this, and it’s good. Mr Brain is also a famous and handsome public figure called Mr Takuya Kimura, known throughout and in many other countries particularly for his hair and his charmingly eager way of speaking.

Unlike Criminal Minds Mr Brain never takes things too seriously, at times seems almost frivolously intent on making it seem simple. The science is diligent and yet offers a view into serious topics, thought provoking themes. Does what you have for breakfast really affect your decision-making? Yes, and that’s science at work. Will a hologram fill in the missing piece? You’ll have to watch it to find out. Nobody is left behind as the debate goes high and low and intuition and curiosity meld seamlessly with rigor and statistic. You can see Mr Brain on Youtube.