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

 Air Dates: February 1st until March 14th, shows are on TV-Asahi Saturday nights at 11:15 pm

Subs by EcoTV, based on a novel by Seiichiro Oyama
Episode rating- 4.2%

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

 May 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. Actually the three since then have done quite well too, maybe my writing style is improving(no)?

 Getting a bit burnt out from all these recent posts, about thirty in the last week which may be a record for me so let's make this short and sweet. Five episodes, five murder cases for the investigation department of the Nishimori police force to solve. However they've been slightly inept as in those first four cases it was up to the alibi breaking talents of the twenty year old watch repairer Tokino to solve the cases, same story for this show.
 As you can see above Tokino is saying 'an unsolved case?' which is partially true. There's actually two cases that were unsolved with the main one happening three months ago on November 20th. On that date a 65 year old man named Tomioka had been murdered in his home, that case has remained unsolved and the veteran detective Makimura has had zero leads in the case. The other unsolved one had been discovered at the beginning of this episode as a body had been found buried in Tomioka's unkempt garden, the forensics team estimates the body had been there for at least a dozen years.
 A little bit of work by the medical staff has determined the man was named Wada who had gone missing thirteen years ago leaving behind a wife and eight year old son. Rumor had it Wada had been stealing money from his employer who just happened to be the now dead Tomioka and the force has deducted that he was the one who had killed Wada. So the case for Tomioka is back in full swing and the question naturally is who murdered the old man? The list of suspects is very short, as a matter of fact it contains just one name who is Wada's son Eisuke who is now a 21 year old college student.

 We hadn't see too much of the veteran detective Makimura up until this episode but his part finally becomes an important one. He's the main investigator on Tomioka's murder case but now that Saji is on the force Makimura and his assistant Yuma felt that Saji will take the case over to claim all of the credit. That was Saji's intention or at least at first though Yuma had pleaded with him to let Makimura handle things his own way whether it turns out well or not. First off for Makimura with Yuma in tow is to question the son Eisuke who of course had an alibi for the night of the killing, actually he had more than one alibi.

 The murder of Tomioka took place on November 20th at around 9:00 pm. Eisuke had claimed he was with his friend Furukawa from five in the afternoon until after midnight. Eisuke showed the detectives a receipt from a store that took place shortly before 7:00 pm, then the pair had played video games at Eisuke's apartment until midnight or shortly after. The main alibi was a song that Eisuke had downloaded from the internet at 11:46 pm by the popular singer Akagi. The download was free for that day so Eisuke had only 14 minutes until the offer expired.

 Furukawa was there when the song was downloaded and listened to the tune right after it was acquired. Furukawa vouched 100% that all of Eisuke's details that took place on the night of November 20th was accurate, is the list of suspects now down to zero? Had to feel a bit bad for Makimura who tried so hard but just couldn't figure out what part of the alibis were lies. Saji offered to help him out but Makimura said if a detective can't solve a case on his own then he shouldn't be on the force, those words struck a chord with Saji.

 We finally see more of Tokino in the second half of the show, she's the main reason for viewing this drama. Along with Saji she visited the son Eisuke to see if she can't find some clues that could destroy his alibis. She's also a gaming fan and the two played one that Eisuke had developed but Tokino wasn't as interested in playing but to get Eisuke talking as his guard would be let down while playing. Don't think too much was gained from the visit or at least to our eyes there wasn't but of course everything to solve the case was taken in by Tokino. If there's one negative to this series is that they don't go into enough detail on how she comes up with the clues to solve a case, all of her deductions are correct but too many times we're left wondering how did she come up with that deduction? What Tokino deduced was that Eisuke had set the clocks in his apartment back 15 minutes, with his friend Furukawa over playing games he wouldn't be paying attention to the time which is what happened. 

 Plus when Eisuke downloaded the free song it was actually 12:01 am or November 20th, the pair had actually spent the night at Eisuke's apartment on November 19th. Eisuke had also gone to the same store on the 20th to purchase the exact items at the same time as he felt the receipt would also work in his favor. Tokino had surmised that because it was now February his friend Furukawa would be a bit hazy on the details of three months ago and she was spot on with that assumption.

 Eisuke's mother had died the previous August, while she was alive Eisuke didn't want to kill Tomioka but now that she was deceased he put is murder plan in action. It would have worked too if it wasn't for his father's body being found and it appeared Eisuke may have been the person to alert the police about the body. Edit.... it didn't appear he made the call but definitely did as Eisuke wanted his father's murderer caught which worked but at the same time it caused his own arrest. So at the show's conclusion Eisuke confessed to his deeds after Saji had related all of the details but Eisuke knew it was Tokino who had solved the crime. Least it was a partially happy ending as Saji did let the veteran Makimura take the credit for solving the case.

 All five shows have been enjoyable but the last two haven't been as interesting. The big reason is that we haven't seen as much of  Minami who is why I've been watching this series as she's one fine young actress. Just two more episodes to go in this drama so what i plan on doing is having back to back recaps for those two show which will happen by the end of the month.