"Giver" drama: Episode one recap

 Air Dates: July 13th to September 28, 2018 on TV Tokyo, Friday nights at 12:12 am

Ratings are unknown, total of twelve episodes that ran about 28 minutes

Main Cast:

Ryo Yoshizawa as Giba(Giver)

Aoi Morikawa as Teika(Taker)

Ryosei Tayama as Shio

Kenji Mizuhashi as Machida

Yuriko Ono as Asami

Natsuna Watanabe as Kanako

Sakiko Bokumoto as Yasuda

Guest star.... Kaito Yoshimura as Fushimi

Episode title.... BABEL

 Didn't realize that there was an event for the show so may have pics from it in a post. That post will be for Aoi who is close to being my #1 current actress, she is just so talented and haven't done a post for her in ages. She was one of the reasons for watching this series but her role after two shows has been way too small even though she's the co-star, hopefully it'll get bigger.
 Don't think I'll be recapping the entire drama but was looking for a show that I didn't know much about and settled on this one. Have to say after two shows it's been only so-so at best though the second episode was a bit better than this first one which was kind of bad, perhaps it'll seem better doing the recap. Unsure if there will be posts for the first two or four shows, we'll see what happens.

 Hope I can make it through this first recap without making the show sound too bad. This first episode did have some potential but it kind of fell flat as the plot didn't make too much sense though the show did start off with a bang as you can see in the first two screenshots. For two episodes the drama has revolved around the character of Giba, that's how Giver sounds in Japanese. He works for an agency that helps victims get revenge for misdeeds done against them, there's a team of five or so led by Teika which means Taker in Japanese but Giba gets most of the screen time.
 The location for the entire show was the Ascension Marina Tower which is a fictional name. The place is a gathering spot for families, friends and students though it didn't appear there was much to do there for the twenty or so people milling about. That is until there was an explosion at the doorway that was much more severe than it looked. The cause of the blast was from a bomb set off by a young madman named Fushimi who was really off the wall but did remain somewhat sane throughout the show.
 No person was injured but the crowd wants to know what's going on, who is this Fushimi character running around with a shotgun? It being a shotgun meant that it only held a few rounds of ammo which Fushimi quickly went through shooting at basically nothing. With the gun empty an employee dressed in a lion's suit attempted to subdue Fushimi but he was no match for the madman. Actually that man worked with Giba but we didn't learn that until the end. 'No more tricks' screamed Fushimi 'or else' he warned them. That warning was of five more bombs he's set around the floor they're on which appears to be about the fifth one, one more attempt to subdue him and he'll begin setting them off.

 The one and only purpose for Fushimi's acts was to draw out one particular person in the small crowd. That person you can see just above whose name was Okamoto, an ex-classmate of Fushimi. Before he got into the gist of why he wanted to see his old acquaintance Fushimi told Okamoto one of the bombs had been hidden in a nearby toilet. To prove he wasn't fooling around Fushimi set that one off to sending the crowd into an even further panic. Seems the police were aware of the bombs going off but made no move to enter the building and didn't by the episode's end.
 We're about a third of the way through, kind of hard to make this show sound interesting when it was a bit of a garbled mess and the events somehow even went more downhill after this. Fushimi picked the Ascension Marina Tower location for one reason for it was where he had once gone on a school outing. Also on the outing was Okamoto but the pair were never friends and Fushimi was from a poor family while it appeared Okamoto was from a wealthy one. Back at the outing Fushimi was so poor he could only afford to purchase a small container of bread sticks while the rest of the students were able to partake in much better food.
 But to Fushimi's surprise Okamoto had given him what he had bought but it later came out it was only because Okamoto had bought the wrong item. It had made Fushimi a bit of as laughingstock to the other students which Fushimi had never forgotten until this day, for what Okamoto had done Fushimi put the lives of twenty people in danger? Fushimi went on a spiel which most madmen tend to do and blamed his upbringing and people like Okamoto for the misfortune that had befallen him since leaving school. He especially hated Okamoto these days because of the success he's had and of him bragging about it on his web page.

 Poor Fushimi had been wrong on almost all of thoughts and accusations, the key one being what Okamoto said above which is that he didn't even remember what his old classmate looked like. That's because the person Fushimi had wanted to hurt badly wasn't Okamoto but a man named Giba whose job in life was to avenge. For now we learned Giba worked for an organization that a person could hire to get revenge for them which is what Okamoto had done. Fushimi should have done his homework a bit better as he knew nothing about Okamoto's tragic life. While he was a junior in college Okamoto had suffered a severe attack, one that's left him paralyzed and since then has been living in a hospital.
 Okamoto had no use of his hands and to write on his site he needed an instrument that he controlled with his mouth. Okamoto had written about places he wanted to go to and had pictures of those locations, to Fushimi those places are where he had gone and he didn't read the stories well enough. Because of his jealousy Fushimi had been bombarding Okamoto with hate mail, after a while enough was enough so Okamoto contacted Giba to take care of Fushimi. Which is what he did rather easily after Giba revealed his true identity, he was able to take the gun away from Fushimi and even when it appeared Fushimi could hurt him or an old man with a knife Giba turned the tables on him.
 He may not look it but Giba seems to be an excellent fighter and is a person who never loses his cool. After just a few minutes he had Fushimi down for the count and the crowd was able to leave the tower safely. Watching the action from an unknown place was a woman named Teika, she's a mysterious person who we only saw in the final minutes which also happened in the next episode. With Giba being successful with his revenge for Okamoto this episode came to it's close, while all of the other shows are 28-30 minutes in length this one was only 23.

 As mentioned this show started off well and did have some potential but it flopped badly after the five minute mark. While not a horrible view I've seen so much better and luckily it only lasted for 23 minutes. Didn't see enough of Aoi and her character seems to be such an interesting one, also didn't see enough of her in the next episode. The recap for that show is the next post, while still not a great watch episode two did turn out to be so much better.