Hidetoshi Nishijima plays gifted doctor Tameyori, who has the special ability to know people's illness just by looking at them. Not only so, this ability also lets he see if someone is planning to kill someone else. One day walking down the street he sees a man with all the traits of a killer, so he calls the police, who appear and stop the man, but not before he has hurt some people. That the call was done before the man committed any crime and that Eisuke can see people's injuries and how to treat them just by look, makes detective Hayase (Atsushi Ito, having drank too much caffeine throughout the length of the series) curious about him. On top of that, doctor Shiragami (Hideaki Ito, as imposing as ever) is also surprised one he hears of someone with that capacity to diagnose people by a look, because he also has it. He decides to offer Tameyori a job at his hospital.
Mutsu (Painless) is a very interesting medical mystery drama, specially in its first episodes, but the story loses itself as it advances. It does a good job in making us accept that Tameyori can see people's illness and criminal intentions, and also on raising the tension and making us wonder what will happen next. But instead of going with a case of the week, with an underlying general story-line, where Tameyori helps Hayase find killers and stop bad people, the drama goes the route of a heavily serialized story, with the tale of the research of a drug to make people painless, a psychiatrist at the hospital that becomes friend with Tameyori, her patient, a mute girl who seems to have some relationship with the killing of a family that happened some time ago, and in which investigation Hayase was involved, and a guy who has no sense of pain and who seems to be some kind of guinea pig for doctor Shiragami. Kind of messy and complicated in a unnecessary way. If they had stayed with a more simple story, the result may had been better. As it stands, it is fun enough, and the actors do a good job, but the story doesn't fulfill its potential.
