Thought going in this was going to be perhaps the best episode so far of this drama, watched a bit unsubbed and it was very good, subs for it came out and watched the whole show, for 2/3 of it was really an interesting mystery as you really didn't know who did what and what was going to happen next but sad to say the last bit of the show nosedived and wasn't a satisfactory ending, a decent watch but a show that should have been so much better, but anything with Ryoko is a worthwhile view.
Ryoko plays the part of Tomomi, an unemployed editor living in Tokyo and is having a difficult job finding a job in her field but after the first 5 minutes that was never discussed again. Besides not working she had also just hit her 30th birthday and was having some problems facing up to that as she was still single with nary a prospect too. One day she receives a letter from an old college friend who she hadn't seen in years, Noriko, who told Tomomi she had just got married, a photo of the happy couple was with the letter but to Tomomi's bewilderment it wasn't Noriko in the picture, who was it? That's the real basis for much of the show as she travels to visit Noriko but is unable to find her or contact her by phone, seems as though unknown to everyone she had for some reason traveled to Tokyo to meet Tomomi, while unable to find her friend she did meet her husband and that was not a pleasure for her. His name was Massaki and he was a very rude and mysterious person when she first talked to him on the phone, this led her to think of all kinds of terrible things he did to Noriko as Tomomi still didn't know she had actually gone to visit her. Tomomi agreed to meet Massaki for some reason at night in some secluded woods but while waiting for him was pushed off a small cliff but managed to keep herself from falling and was saved with only some minor bruises.
Masaaki if course was the number one suspect but he had a perfect alibi, though he did his actions and responses to the questioning still led the police to think he was involved in the attempted murder. Right after this Noriko returned and was able to be reunited with Tomomi, the answer to who the other woman in the photo then came out as it was Massaki's ex girlfriend who he had kept on seeing after his marriage, quickly she became the prime suspect as she was also stalking him and spying on their apartment every day. Two other things that need to be mentioned here is that Masaaki was an avid butterfly collector, their apartment was like a museum for them as he had so many of them stored there, many rare and expensive ones too. Also their neighbor was a man named Sakurai who was a teacher, we only meet him twice briefly before the climax to this episode.... hmmmm, this is getting much longer than planned, probably too many spoilers so will wrap this up quickly. Returning to Noriko's place Tomomi is knocked out by a stun gun, coming to she also notices Noriko and Masaaki are tied up like her, she still thinks it's the ex girlfriend but it's not, it's the nice teacher from next door Sakurai who has tied them up and is about to kill them, but why? Seems as though he is also an avid butterfly collector and wanted one of Masaaki's valuable ones but upon learning that it had been sold he was about to set them on fire but Tomomi tricks him into turning his back and though tied up the three of them somehow are able to subdue him and the mystery ends just like that, once again this drama does well until the very end then wraps up it seems in a blink of an eye.
Besides Ryoko the other main characters in the show were Sayaka Yamaguchi, Koji Okura and Takehiro Hira, they were all solid as really the casts from every episode has been. While this is a recommended episode was a bit disappointing, so good for the first 35 minutes as there was more of a mystery than most of the other shows but fell off so much at the end as these episodes tend to wrap up too quickly and neatly, sort of leaves you perplexed as why is almost every show usually a good watch until the last 10 minutes and then falls apart, really think if the episodes were another 10+ minutes this would have solved that but too late for that now. Many others have been disappointed in this series too as it started out around a 12% rating and for the last episode, #11, rating had fallen to just a bit above 8%. Still every show has been an okay watch, nothing great in the least but think they're worth a watch, just should have been such a better drama. And for any Ryoko fans there's many screenshots of her in the next post, also looking at them helps you follow the story a but better.
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