Minami Hamabe: "Providing Alibi Cracking" drama episode three recap

 Air Dates: February 1st until ????, shows are on TV-Asahi Saturday nights at 11:15 pm

Subs by EcoTV, based on a novel by Seiichiro Oyama
Episode rating- 5.1%

Main Cast:

Minami Hamabe as Tokino Mitani.... twenty year old woman who is the owner of a watch and clock repair shop her grandfather left her and an expert at cracking alibis

Ken Yasuda as Saji Yoshiyuki.... new head detective at the Nishimori police station after being 'demoted' from the Tokyo branch, secretly relies on Tokino to break alibis

Ryo Narita as.... nicknamed Junior at the police station, father is a high raking member of the Diet and has such a crush on Tokino

 Masanobu Katsumura as.....

Tokio Emoto as....

Shinsho Nakamura as....

 Also....

Hitomi Korenaga as Karen Takasugi

Takuya Mizoguchi as Masato Hori

Leo Morimoto as Tokio Mitani

Yuta Inoue as Atomu Shimogo

 Will be tweaking the above as these posts go on adding in some bio info and perhaps some new characters. The setting is the fictional town of Nishimori which also lies in the fictional prefecture of Nano. The first two episodes have been solid and have a feeling the shows will keep getting better as they go on. These kinds of quirky and intelligent series are the ones I usually enjoy more than most others, wouldn't be surprised if this was one of my top five shows of the year. Don't know why but the first post for the series may have set a record for most views for a recap, perhaps Minami has many fans out there and why not as she's one fine young actress.

 Manami Hashimoto was a special guest star in this episode playing the character of Junko. She's one of the hottest woman in the history of the world and one of my all time fave gravure models, now need to work on a regular post for her. Three episodes and all three cases have dealt with a murder, hopefully one of these shows they'll be a change of crime but still another fine episode.

 The victim in this show was mentioned in the top screenshot, it was a 35 year old woman named Toshiko. She was a piano instructor who had been killed by first someone banging her head against the piano to make her unconscious and then had been strangled by a piano wire.As you can see above the time of death was estimated to have occurred between 9:00 am and noon, no students were suspects as Toshiko had no lessons that day. Another dead end for detective Saji to start a case off with but that wouldn't last long as there was a visitor at police headquarters.
 It was a massage owner named Shibata who stated that Toshiko had been at his parlor the morning of her death until 11:00 am which meant the murder probably took place close to noon time. He also stated the victim had a sister named Junko, there was no forced entry to Toshiko's apartment so someone must have used a key, her sister was the obvious person. Saji went to her house alone but his younger rival Yuma also had the same idea as the pair arrived separately but at the same time. Junko is one ultra attractive woman as Saji stood gaping at her when she answered the door.

 Yuma had a hard time believing Junko's story that while her sister was being murdered she was sound asleep at her house, not just for a few hours but twenty! She works at a club as a hostess and usually goes to sleep around 4:00 am, the next thing Junko knew it was midnight the following night which was twenty hours later. Junko wondered could she have possibly sleepwalked and done the actual crime of murdering her sister? Yuma thinks so without a doubt but Saji thought there was no way a sleepwalking person could do such a devious crime which meant he's back to square one with no solid suspects.
 But things start to fall into place slowly and naturally the key behind everything was the young watch shop owner Tokino who we didn't see as much this episode. She knew most of the details of the case from Yuma who has too much of an open mouth around Tokino as he has such a crush on her. Tokino is in agreement with Saji that there's no way Junko could have done the crime if she had slept for twenty hours, if not her then who? There weren't many people involved in Toshiko's life so Tokino's suspicions began to fall on the massage parlor owner Shibata. Tokino even went for a massage around the same time of the morning when Toshiko was supposedly there to case the joint, at the end we find out her discoveries.

 Saji went to interview Junko at her club and once again he was in awe with her dazzling looks. Junko said every night before she retired for the night she had one glass of wine, Saji wondered if someone could have tampered with the bottle and put sleeping pills in the wine? He had the bottle checked out but it was a dead end as no pills were found in it. More bad news for Saji as the police chief has taken him off the murder case due to pressure from Yuma who wants to solve the case. The chief and most of the staff at the station are a bit intimidated by Yuma as his father is a high raking Diet official, Saji however still worked on the case.
 Now he has more assistance from Tokino and he's kept their working relationship a secret but Yuma has been having suspicions that someone is helping Saji solve the cases. Bit of a complicated ending as it seemed they stretched things a bit but it was a bit interesting. According to Tokino a possible way for Shibata to have done the crime had to deal with Junko. Her sister had a key to Junko's house, seems far fetched but Tokino surmised that Toshiko along with Shibata had switched the bottle of wine with one heavily laced with sleeping pills, once Junko was sound asleep the bottle was switched again with a clean one and Junko had then been whisked to Shibata's massage parlor.

 So while everyone thought that Toshiko was getting a massage at 10:00 am it was actually her sister Junko and it's hard to tell who is who when they're face down. Shibata's assistant had done some of the massage too which would have given both Shibata and Toshiko an alibi, after the massage was complete Shibata brought Junko back home where she slept until midnight. We hadn't known it for a while but Shibata was married to a rich woman whose money had paid for his parlor.
 But money wasn't everything as Shibata and Toshiko were having an affair, they devised a scheme to murder his wife at the time when Toshiko was supposedly having her massage. It wasn't explained well but for some reason Shibata couldn't go through with killing his wife but instead turned the tables on Toshiko and murdered her! Time of death her was 9:07 am which didn't leave Shibata with an alibi as the parlor didn't open until 10:00 am.
 After Shibata returned Junko to her house he put blood on her nightgown which had led Junko to think she may have slept walked and murdered Toshiko. Saji had Shibata cornered with all of the evidence and of course most of it was due to Tokino's breaking his alibi with her ability of 'turning back time'. With no options Shibata confessed to the murder of Toshiko which leaves Tokino with a perfect record of solving murders, for a small town there sure are many killings. Once again as an episode ended Yuma confronted Saji with what methods did he use to solve the case, Saji is quiet about it of course but think sooner or later the secret will be revealed.

 All three episodes have been enjoyable watches but do have one minor complaint. We don't see enough of the culprits throughout an episode and it'd be nice for us to observe what took place before Tokino breaks an alibi, seems a few times the conclusion of a case has been rushed. Besides that though this has been a solid series and had a feeling it would be coming in. Hopefully will return the same time next week with the recap for episode four.