This review may contain spoilers
Started slow but ended off really strong
Watched all 25 episodes on the website, so here's my review on it. I was about to drop this drama since the first 8 episodes were quite slow. We start off with this really interesting case about bullying and monopolization, but as soon as they introduced the Saturn1115 forums, then when it started to get boring.
Bowie Lam throughout this drama has been great as the chief inspector of the OCTB, it was awesome to see him return and after finishing this, made sense why he would return for this drama, will spoil it later in the review. Owen Cheung was also really great here as the chief inspector in the police officer but the twist is that he has D.I.D. and no one knows (which I found it dumb because there's no way they wouldn't suspect something's off) but Owen manages to control it and sees his second personality, played by James Ng, as a companion. He also has a much more darker personality, played by Ronny Lay. He has a great evil smile but whenever Owen tries to mimic it, I'm sorry but it was hard to take it seriously. Kelly Fu has HEAVILY improved for this performance. Her role here is much more memorable than No Room for Crime and Forensic Heroes 6.
Like I mentioned earlier, the first case was about bullying, but this shouldn't be classified as bullying. Wanna know why? Because it's about a grandson of a rich and wealthy family, Adrien Yau, kidnapping several people holding them as his own 'pets'. Why? Because they were actually part of a human trafficking ring that was about to be shipped, but he decided to keep them. Since his grandfather, Pat Poon, has a business that isn't so legit. However, after he was caught, he became a victim of the new seven deadly sins and the vigilantes killed him eventually. Same goes for the two victims of monopoly, animal abuse, 'pollution'. It's all ridiculous and felt like an after thought. Because the main plot that happens after Episode 14 felt like that was supposed to be the main focus and the seven deadly sins were just something they thought of to hide that twist.
Man, it felt like they did a complete 360. There was a track record in No Room for Crime and Darkside of the Moon where it starts off strong - incredibly mid in the middle - and then ends off extremely strong as well. But this time it starts off mid and doesn't hold back after it gets to that certain point. You're wondering, how did big stars like Bowie Lam, Monica Chan and Deon Cheung agreed to star in what it seemed to be a simple crime drama about a cult killing people for justice. Well, the twist is that there wasn't a cult, all of the people involved with the killings which was Monica Chan (Bowie's older sister that supposedly returned from the US in episode 4 who was revealed to be a hallucination in ep16), Deon Cheung, Bond Chan, Lucas Yiu, Amber Chan, Vincent Lam and John Chan, who were all revealed to be Bowie's personalities as he was suffering from D.I.D. as well. That is one hell of a twist that I'm surprised TVB managed to do well, especially after the abysmal twists they showed in Call of Destiny and Anonymous Signal. Ever since the twist was revealed after Episode 17, the show immediately hooks you up, every scene filled with tension. I was wondering in Episode 10 and 13, why they killed off Bowie and Owen's most trusted colleagues so early? Well, now it made sense that they wanted to make room for the development between Bowie's personalities. It was revealed later on that they were actually being manipulated by Deon Cheong, the most brutal personality of Bowie's who believed in justice over twisted values to kill the supposed sinners. So near the end, they helped Bowie stop Deon from killing more.
There is another twist though, originally, Deon was a personality created to resemble the person who killed his sister during the fire. The person who actually killed his sister was Raymond Cho's character. The fire was also instructed by Pat Poon. Originally I was wondering why were they even part of the show as they could've easily been removed after Adrien died. I feel like the most underutilized character was Jack Wu, the father of Adrien, who died from suicide. He didn't really do anything to progress the plot other than to be drunk every single time he appeared on screen after his son died.
So the final big battle was a wild one where Raymond and Bowie (controlled by Monica) was trying to set four people on fire in an abandoned building (forgot who they actually are sorry about that), among those four people includes Pat. After the fire started, the whole building collapsed. I'm ngl, the fire CGI wasn't the greatest but can we even expect great CGI from TVB nowadays? Among the people who were in the building includes Kelly, Owen, Bowie, Raymond and Yoyo Chen, Bowie's neighbor who he had a crush on. The final few scenes were actually really creepy and really diminishes Raymond as a twisted villain. They all managed to survive the building collapse except for Yoyo, where she gets stabbed by a piece of sharp concrete when trying to save Bowie. However, Raymond got up and took Bowie and Kelly to Germany, where Raymond hypnotized him into thinking he's his brother and that he was gonna get married to Yoyo, when in reality it was Kelly who appeared to be malnourished and unable to speak properly. That was such a fucked up twist and really establishes Raymond as an actual psycho. Owen managed to find their location, stop the wedding and finally convinced Bowie that Kelly was not Yoyo. I really love Bowie's acting in this drama, his emotional scenes actually felt genuine. Same goes for Owen when James was finally going to leave him in episode 22. Special mention to Gabriel Harrison who played a prisoner in this drama. Damn he lost a lot of weight for this role. Along with Benjamin Yuen who returned as his character from No Room For Crime who was actually the first victim of this seven deadly sins massacre. I felt that this connection was unnecessary but hey, at least we don't have to see a season 2 for that post credit scene to get clarified.
Overall, an actual enjoyable drama. Surprisingly more better than Anonymous Signal and No Room for Crime. If it weren't for the Saturn1115 storyline with Joey Thye as a victim of PTSD from being sexually molested who created the forums in the first place, I probably would've liked this drama more. That's probably the bad part that made this not that good. The ending was also a bit rushed. Despite the big fire scene, they suddenly transition to Raymond seemingly go undetected to Germany with two kidnapped victims. Ig that's just the perk of being super rich. Also we never get to see what happens to Raymond afterwards, even Owen. They did a time gap to show that in classic TVB fashion, Kelly doesn't experience PTSD. Bowie ended up in a mental institution to not further hurt anyone else, but Owen is nowhere to be seen at all. I was expecting some post credit scene that can hopefully clear up the emptiness with Owen and even Raymond, but nope, it just ends like that which is strange. But I still like it for trying something new with D.I.D., still strange that both Bowie and Owen, victims of D.I.D. can somehow be one of the highest ranks in their respective divisions in the police force. Also for the title, I've always been wondering about the 12 in it, although Owen had 3 personalities, and Bowie had 8, that would've made it 11 personalities in total. But the final scene in the finale revealed Bowie has another personality. A wonderful cameo made by Flora Chan who is supposedly Bowie's guardian. Even if it wasn't explained much, she said she had been with him the longest, so she was probably the one who kept Bowie from knowing that he had multiple other personalities. It was nice to see her again since her last drama was in 2018's Watch Out Boss. With the track record lately, I thought that Kenneth Ma would make another cameo appearance. That would've been wild but thankfully that wasn't the case.
Bowie Lam throughout this drama has been great as the chief inspector of the OCTB, it was awesome to see him return and after finishing this, made sense why he would return for this drama, will spoil it later in the review. Owen Cheung was also really great here as the chief inspector in the police officer but the twist is that he has D.I.D. and no one knows (which I found it dumb because there's no way they wouldn't suspect something's off) but Owen manages to control it and sees his second personality, played by James Ng, as a companion. He also has a much more darker personality, played by Ronny Lay. He has a great evil smile but whenever Owen tries to mimic it, I'm sorry but it was hard to take it seriously. Kelly Fu has HEAVILY improved for this performance. Her role here is much more memorable than No Room for Crime and Forensic Heroes 6.
Like I mentioned earlier, the first case was about bullying, but this shouldn't be classified as bullying. Wanna know why? Because it's about a grandson of a rich and wealthy family, Adrien Yau, kidnapping several people holding them as his own 'pets'. Why? Because they were actually part of a human trafficking ring that was about to be shipped, but he decided to keep them. Since his grandfather, Pat Poon, has a business that isn't so legit. However, after he was caught, he became a victim of the new seven deadly sins and the vigilantes killed him eventually. Same goes for the two victims of monopoly, animal abuse, 'pollution'. It's all ridiculous and felt like an after thought. Because the main plot that happens after Episode 14 felt like that was supposed to be the main focus and the seven deadly sins were just something they thought of to hide that twist.
Man, it felt like they did a complete 360. There was a track record in No Room for Crime and Darkside of the Moon where it starts off strong - incredibly mid in the middle - and then ends off extremely strong as well. But this time it starts off mid and doesn't hold back after it gets to that certain point. You're wondering, how did big stars like Bowie Lam, Monica Chan and Deon Cheung agreed to star in what it seemed to be a simple crime drama about a cult killing people for justice. Well, the twist is that there wasn't a cult, all of the people involved with the killings which was Monica Chan (Bowie's older sister that supposedly returned from the US in episode 4 who was revealed to be a hallucination in ep16), Deon Cheung, Bond Chan, Lucas Yiu, Amber Chan, Vincent Lam and John Chan, who were all revealed to be Bowie's personalities as he was suffering from D.I.D. as well. That is one hell of a twist that I'm surprised TVB managed to do well, especially after the abysmal twists they showed in Call of Destiny and Anonymous Signal. Ever since the twist was revealed after Episode 17, the show immediately hooks you up, every scene filled with tension. I was wondering in Episode 10 and 13, why they killed off Bowie and Owen's most trusted colleagues so early? Well, now it made sense that they wanted to make room for the development between Bowie's personalities. It was revealed later on that they were actually being manipulated by Deon Cheong, the most brutal personality of Bowie's who believed in justice over twisted values to kill the supposed sinners. So near the end, they helped Bowie stop Deon from killing more.
There is another twist though, originally, Deon was a personality created to resemble the person who killed his sister during the fire. The person who actually killed his sister was Raymond Cho's character. The fire was also instructed by Pat Poon. Originally I was wondering why were they even part of the show as they could've easily been removed after Adrien died. I feel like the most underutilized character was Jack Wu, the father of Adrien, who died from suicide. He didn't really do anything to progress the plot other than to be drunk every single time he appeared on screen after his son died.
So the final big battle was a wild one where Raymond and Bowie (controlled by Monica) was trying to set four people on fire in an abandoned building (forgot who they actually are sorry about that), among those four people includes Pat. After the fire started, the whole building collapsed. I'm ngl, the fire CGI wasn't the greatest but can we even expect great CGI from TVB nowadays? Among the people who were in the building includes Kelly, Owen, Bowie, Raymond and Yoyo Chen, Bowie's neighbor who he had a crush on. The final few scenes were actually really creepy and really diminishes Raymond as a twisted villain. They all managed to survive the building collapse except for Yoyo, where she gets stabbed by a piece of sharp concrete when trying to save Bowie. However, Raymond got up and took Bowie and Kelly to Germany, where Raymond hypnotized him into thinking he's his brother and that he was gonna get married to Yoyo, when in reality it was Kelly who appeared to be malnourished and unable to speak properly. That was such a fucked up twist and really establishes Raymond as an actual psycho. Owen managed to find their location, stop the wedding and finally convinced Bowie that Kelly was not Yoyo. I really love Bowie's acting in this drama, his emotional scenes actually felt genuine. Same goes for Owen when James was finally going to leave him in episode 22. Special mention to Gabriel Harrison who played a prisoner in this drama. Damn he lost a lot of weight for this role. Along with Benjamin Yuen who returned as his character from No Room For Crime who was actually the first victim of this seven deadly sins massacre. I felt that this connection was unnecessary but hey, at least we don't have to see a season 2 for that post credit scene to get clarified.
Overall, an actual enjoyable drama. Surprisingly more better than Anonymous Signal and No Room for Crime. If it weren't for the Saturn1115 storyline with Joey Thye as a victim of PTSD from being sexually molested who created the forums in the first place, I probably would've liked this drama more. That's probably the bad part that made this not that good. The ending was also a bit rushed. Despite the big fire scene, they suddenly transition to Raymond seemingly go undetected to Germany with two kidnapped victims. Ig that's just the perk of being super rich. Also we never get to see what happens to Raymond afterwards, even Owen. They did a time gap to show that in classic TVB fashion, Kelly doesn't experience PTSD. Bowie ended up in a mental institution to not further hurt anyone else, but Owen is nowhere to be seen at all. I was expecting some post credit scene that can hopefully clear up the emptiness with Owen and even Raymond, but nope, it just ends like that which is strange. But I still like it for trying something new with D.I.D., still strange that both Bowie and Owen, victims of D.I.D. can somehow be one of the highest ranks in their respective divisions in the police force. Also for the title, I've always been wondering about the 12 in it, although Owen had 3 personalities, and Bowie had 8, that would've made it 11 personalities in total. But the final scene in the finale revealed Bowie has another personality. A wonderful cameo made by Flora Chan who is supposedly Bowie's guardian. Even if it wasn't explained much, she said she had been with him the longest, so she was probably the one who kept Bowie from knowing that he had multiple other personalities. It was nice to see her again since her last drama was in 2018's Watch Out Boss. With the track record lately, I thought that Kenneth Ma would make another cameo appearance. That would've been wild but thankfully that wasn't the case.
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