Million Yen Women drama: Episodes one and two recaps

 Air Dates: April 14 to June 30, 2017 on TV Tokyo, Fridays at 1:00 am

Main Cast:

Yojiro Noda as Shin Michima

Rena Matsui as Hitomi Tsukamoto

Rena Takeda as Midori Suzumura

Rila Fukushima as Minami Shirakawa

Yuko Araki as Nanaka Seki

Miwako Wagatsuma as Yuki Kobayashi

Lily Franky as Tatsuyuki Michima

Takashi Yamanaka as Seiji Sakurai

Tomoya Nakamura as Yuzu Hanaki

Tetsuhiro Ikeda as Ryuichi Moriguchi

 Mainly started this drama due to 'W-Rena' being in it. But like most of the major female stars their roles haven't been that big yet but sure that will be changing. The main star is Yojiro who plays Shin, if you didn't know it he's a member of the Radwimps rock group which are extremely popular and they are a decent band.
 The series is set in the present day but six months prior Shin was living by himself in an apartment. Seemed to be a run down place when for no reason five women, one at a time, show up at his place to rent out a room. Shin said yes to all of them as he's a somewhat struggling novelist, that was the description coming in but's he's had a little bit of success as he's had at least one book published in the past plus he another released in the second episode but think neither has sold that well.

 Don't think this will turn out to be in the usual style of a recap and hopefully it'll just be this way for these first two episodes. Will tell you as much as I know about the characters and when that's done almost everything that happened in the first two shows will be explained.
 On that day six months ago when the five women showed up to rent a room they had received an invitation for the rental opportunity. Shin wasn't the one who has sent it, for now it's a mystery on who sent them. They all showed up with one million yen in cash which covers a month's rent, that's about $9,280 in U.S. money.
 Here are the five who have entered Shin's life but we only learned about one of them in the first two shows who was Minami. She has a passion for walking around the apartment naked, naturally we didn't see anything as this wasn't aired on an adult channel but can't say she would make for a good looking gravure model. Minami is played by Rila Fukushima who in real life seems to be a popular model, she's 28 in real life.

 Midori we learn is a high school student and apparently a smart one. However she has a derelict brother who often harasses her as she's going to school and she always has to give him money. Hope that's not a big part of the storyline as it got tiring after two incidents.
 The other are Hitomi, Miwako and Nanaka and we learn exactly zero about them. Seems Nanaka may have a job but doing what we don't know yet, no clue if the other two are working, in college or do nothing all day long. Yuko Araki plays Nanaka and may have to check out more about her, she's also in the current season of 'Code Blue' and is a very popular model.
 It's only been two shows so no doubt we'll be learning more about the other four as time goes on, it's a twelve episode series. Minami's employment is as a pimp(!), not just an everyday one but she sells off young singing Idols to rich businessmen and the cost for one night can run as high as 10 million yen or over $92,000!!

 The show had started off with Shin and his five housemates having dinner. They had somehow found a stray cat, there was a long discussion on what to name it and none of them were good enough. The five appointed Shin to give the cat a name, he picked the original name of Neko. His novels are like that as the reviews about his works portray him as a very boring writer.
 For a down and out novelist Shin somehow has a huge apartment, wonder how he paid his bills before the five moved in? There's six bedrooms, living room, a large kitchen and perhaps even more rooms. Another question which hasn't been answered yet is what does he do with the rent money, to date the women have given him 30 million yen.
 When the women received their invitations to move in there was a set of rules and all six living there must abide by them which are these:

 The final rule was that the women had to give Shin one million a month for rent but he also has to buy their food and cook their dinner plus he has to do all of the cleaning. Few more things about Shin as he was in just about every scene. He's quite jealous of another novelist around his age of 31 who is Hanaki. He's a successful writer and his latest book sold one million copies in four days. We only met him briefly towards the end of the second episode and he's never heard of Shin.
 Have a feeling those two will be meeting up soon. One reason for Shin's mundane writing style is that he has no deaths in his stories. We learn why as seven years prior his father had committed three murders and is on death row. His name is Tatsuyuki and he had caught his wife having an affair. He murdered his wife and her lover, shortly after a police officer had entered the scene and by accident Tatsuyuki also killed him.
 He pleaded guilty at his trial, so far no date has been set for his execution and Shin still visits him on occasion. Shin feels so ashamed of what his father did so for all of these years he visits the widow of the officer who is named Mizuguchi. She has no hatred towards Shin and really feels bad for him as he's such a gloomy person, not sure if he was that way before his father murdered the three.

 That mainly covers almost everything that took place in the first two shows, they're only a little over 22 minutes long. Few other things we learned which were all about Shin, will have more details on him as the recaps go on plus hopefully many more pics of the Rena's.
 Hard to say if this is going to be a good series, it's really not what I expected as I thought it was going to be a much more quirky and off the wall drama. Didn't read the review but someone else did one for this show but quit after five episodes as it was so bad, hoping that's not the case for me. Watching two other dramas but for now only posting about one of them which is 'Reunited Worlds". Really enjoying that show and will have the recaps for episodes 7 and 8 next week so the review for episodes for three and four of this series will be the day after, probably next Thursday.