"Giver" drama: Episode two 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 stars.... Itsuji Itao as Aoyama, Ren Komai as Yuuka

Episode title.... PEACEMAKER

 Mentioned in the previous recap that picked this drama because it looked interesting and knew nothing about it. Also because it's a show where the episodes are just thirty minutes in length and wanted to have a series I could zip through. Have two other ones I want to watch and recap but can't for the subs haven't been done. One of the dramas is "Cheat" which just started two weeks ago.   Someone will be doing the project but so far no subs have been done, had been planning on doing a pair of recaps every other week to keep pace with the shows and may be too hard to do that now. The other show is "Video Girl: Mai 2019" which aired earlier this year. There's a total of twelve episodes but the subs have been only done up until the seventh show, once they're completed will begin viewing it and looking forward to both of the dramas mentioned. On to the recap and while not a must watch it was certainly much better than the first episode.

 Every episode will have a guest character or two, the main person in this show was an older man named Aoyama who you can see above. He's the father of an eighteen year girl named Yuuka, there was also a brother but he died five years before. Not a lot was explained but to me it appeared Aoyama was out of work and had been invited to a job interviewing session. When he arrived at the location who should be there but Giba, the man who avenges for others. He's the person who will be leading the interviewing and escorted Aoyama to a room, a very strange one as in it were a pair of pole dancers!
 Also there were two other people who Aoyama thought were there for job interviews too. That wasn't the case Giba told the trio as he threw on the table many old newspaper articles of a serial killer from five years ago. The killer had chopped off his victim's arms which were never recovered, why had Giba given the trio these old articles Aoyama wondered? Giba told the group they had five minutes to converse and then he would return, during that time he stated they had better come up with the answer for his client, 'The Prisoner'. That person wants something from each of them, it's unknown to Giba what it may be and they better discover the answer within five minutes.
 That's because the tea they were drinking was laced with poison from some deadly scorpions, if they can't find the answer to what 'The Prisoner' wants Giba won't give them the antidote. This naturally sent them into a panic as it seemed none knew what Giba's client wanted, that is except for Aoyama. Before the five minutes were up they asked Giba to return to the room, in a scripted move the other man named Nishiwaki had grappled with Giba who had a gun targeted at his head. During their tussle Giba dropped his gun only to have it picked up by Aoyama. He began to fire randomly, only one bullet came out but it hit Nishiwaki squarely as he dropped to his death.

 We'll soon learn that Nishiwaki and the woman, Yasuda, were on Giba's team and had played along with him saying they each had a child killed by 'The Prisoner' five years ago. With the gun empty Aoyama was at a loss on what to do when suddenly the two pole dancers crumpled to the ground, Giba had said they too had been given the poison from the scorpions. With no alternative Aoyama knew he better come clean with the information Giba's client wanted, do that now or there will be no antidote for him though it seemed five minutes had passed a long time ago.
 Aoyama brought Giba out to his car where he showed him what 'the Prisoner' wanted to see, it was an ice cooler in the back of his vehicle. Giba had given the impression to Aoyama that 'The Prisoner' was a real one who had been sentenced unfairly for the serial killings of five years ago, it was all a ruse to get Aoyama talking.
 That ruse worked perfectly as first Aoyama showed Giba the cooler and what was inside it. We had an inkling of what it may be and it turned out to be correct as inside the cooler were a pair or frozen arms! After five years they had blackened and Aoyama had no clue what to do with them so he had kept them the entire time. With the cat out of the bag Aoyama began to admit everything, it wasn't the serial killer who chopped off his son's arms but it was he who did the ruthless act. The son's name was Yuya and he wasn't Aoyama's real son as he had gotten married a second time though Yuuka was his real daughter.

 Yuya was a boy Aoyama just couldn't stand though he gave no concrete reasons why. The murder happened at the time when the serial killer was on the loose, Aoyama thought by killing his stepson and chopping off his arms the blame would go to the other killer. Which was a nice deduction at first as his son's death was blamed on the serial killer but someone else had different ideas on who killed Yuya. That person was 'The Prisoner' and it wasn't a person who was in prison but someone who had been trapped because of Yuya's death five years ago.
 To Aoyama's surprise it was his daughter Yuuka who had hired Giba to get revenge for her brother's murder. She had grown close to Yuya which could be a reason why Aoyama wanted him out of the way. Yuuka sensed that her father was probably the one who killed her step brother but had no evidence to use against him so she turned to Giba's 'Revenge Team'. It's a group of about seven people and we haven't met all of them yet through these first two episodes.
 The main leader is Teika and we need to see so much more of her. She was watching the proceedings somehow between Giba and Aoyama as his team of two others appeared as though they were about to do to Aoyama what he had done to his son. Don't know if that actually took place as the scene wasn't shown but would the trio have really cut off a man's arm? Regardless of whether it happened Giba's team once again was successful in getting revenge for someone who had been done wrong, in this case Aoyama's daughter Yuuka. Plus as it shows in a below screenshot the actual serial killer was never caught. With that this recap comes to it's close and while these first two shows have been only so-so least this show was only 28 minutes long.

 Still not enough Aoi in a show but least this one was so much better than the first episode. Will just do this pair for today, had thought about doing four recaps but didn't want to watch the next two shows so quickly. These appear to be stand alone episodes with no continuing storyline which makes reading them a bit easier as you don't need to know much of what's happened to date. Will be back with the next pair in about a week or perhaps less, that's if the above shows I mentioned don't get subbed as I really want to start viewing them.