Air Dates: April 12th to June 26, 2020 on NTV, Sunday's at 10:30 pm and nine episodes in all
Title translates over to 'Gourmet Detective Goro Akechi'.... this episode's rating: 8.6%
Main Cast:
Tomoya Nakamura as Goro Akechi.... Runs the Edogawa Private Investigation firm named after the famous writer, he's a connoisseur of fine foods and is the the grandson of a very wealthy store owner. Seems like a capable detective but can he actually solve cases?
Fuka Koshiba as Ichigo Kobayashi.... Operates a food truck outside of Akechi's office, he stops by for lunch most days but never pays her. By pure chance she happened to get roped into helping him out on the first case and has become his 'unofficial' assistant.
Yukiya Kitamura as Toru Katono.... Detective at the local station who often butts heads with Akechi though the pair seem to respect each other.
Kanto Sato as Tatsuomi Takahashi.... Somewhat new detective at the local police station who is Katono's partner though he would rather help out Akechi on the cases.
Miu Tomita as Momoko.... Ichigo's best friend who appears to be crazy about all men.
Akechi's murderous nemesis....
Eiko Koike as Takizawa but is actually known as Mary Magdalena.... Hired Akechi in episode one to find out if her husband was cheating on her but in reality is was a clever ploy by her. Though it seemed to all she died falling from a cliff in the same episode she's somehow come back from the dead and she does resemble her idol 'Mona Lisa' quite a bit.
Guest star for this episode
Shinji Takeda as Chef Ito.... Owner and chef of a fine French restaurant whose reputation was unfairly stained by a 'gourmet food' reviewer, also an 'ally' of Mary
Nakamura as Akechi in this series is such a connoisseur of fine food but in a previous drama he played a chef who could care less about how his food turned out and was more concerned about horse racing. That drama was "Gakkeppuchi Hotel" from 2018, solid show but to me was a tad disappointing. This series through four shows certainly hasn't been and you can usually tell if I like a show by the length of these recaps. When they're on the long side with most details explained you know I'm enjoying the drama and to date these recaps have been longer than most Japanese shows. Don't know if this will be the same but probably will so let's get on with it.
On a side note have you ever noticed how much the Japanese love French culture such as their cuisine and fashion? Bring that up as most of the action takes place in a French restaurant and there were also some 'scenes' from Paris. But it's not just from this episode as I've noticed that in so many other dramas and films.
Maison Verite is a French restaurant in the Omotesando section of Tokyo where this drama is set. The establishment has been around for close to a decade and may serve the best French cuisine in the area, to Akechi perhaps the best in Tokyo. However hard times have befallen the restaurant as the amount of customers has dwindled to just a few a day. One big reason is that the place is expensive while right around the corner a new trendy French eatery has opened which draws huge crowds and the meal prices are half of Maison Verite's. Another factor in their current state is that a 'food critic' named 'Gourmet King' gave the restaurant a bad review on his website and that review was totally undeserving, food critics were rightfully put down in this show.
The critic's name was Iwato who after writing the less than flattering review was invited back to the Maison Verite restaurant by it's chef and owner, Ito. At the place it's just him and one server named Nonika as Ito can't afford to pay staff these days. He served Iwato the lunch special on the house which usually would cost 3,500 yen but luckily(?) Iwato never had the chance to taste the main dish. That's because before it was served he choked on some French bread called Pain de campagne which is usually sliced. That happened at 2:00 pm, called to the scene were the two trusty local detectives named Katono and Takahashi. Also at the crime scene were Akechi and Ichigo as the restaurant was right around the corner from his office.
According to the evidence Iwato choked on the bread which was a mystery to our food expert and detective, Akechi. That kind of bread is always served sliced, how could it be possible to choke on such an item unless.... it wasn't sliced?! So once again Akechi involved himself with a regular police case, so far he hasn't made any $$ from a client but did talk about how Akechi comes from a very wealthy family. It's not essential but it may help to read the first two recaps as some things were explained and won't be going into too much detail about them. Also you may need to find out some info on Akechi's new nemesis Mary and we don't know why she has such a vendetta against him.
After three episodes the main question in this fine drama has been.... Who is Mary and why does she want to destroy Akechi???? He hasn't said but Akechi's given us the impression he knew her several years before, perhaps an ex-flame or rival? She's once again a key piece to this episode's story as she knows the chef Ito very well. They had met thirteen years prior in Paris where he was training to be a chef, seems since then they've had a long distance relationship. They still communicate and in reality it appears Ito is Mary's henchman, he said something along those lines towards the end. Mary had given Ito some instructions, those were to kill the food critic Iwato and his death was due to her planning but there was also another motive for his death.
That was to bring Akechi to the French restaurant as Mary knew he would get involved with the case. That's him above with his 'new assistant' Ichigo at the Maison Verite restaurant, like the previous two recaps may not mention her name that often but she does play a key role in the developments. Their meal was better than excellent and Akechi asked to meet the chef/owner Ito to tell him how much they enjoyed the meal, business was so bad they were the only customers in the eatery. While they were talking Ichigo happened to drop her wine glass on the floor which smashed into many pieces, it was an incident which Akechi expected to happen. Why? you may ask, that's because a delivery person happened to be at the restaurant at the time of Iwato's choking, he had sent a glass flying yet she didn't hear any sound of it breaking. Akechi talked to that person and had wondered how could that happen?
The following day Ichigo was sent 'undercover' to find out the mystery of the unbroken glass, her disguise was top notch but did she look so repulsive! Her investigating took place at Maison Verite and her quest was to find a plastic glass that wouldn't break when dropped and perhaps it would be the one that Iwato drank out of. Ichigo was unable to find such a glass so was about to dig through the trash outside but was just a tad too late as a truck was hauling it away. With the assistance of her best friend Momoko Ichigo was able to retrieve the restaurant's garbage and brought it to Akechi's office. There was no full glass in the trash but Akechi did find a small plastic piece of a glass and to him that was enough evidence to back up his theory. Now and again we saw the two main detectives Katono and Takahashi but they weren't too key to this story and Akechi never told them of his theory.
Final segment, think I can keep all of these to three of them. While Ichigo had been looking for the plastic glass Akechi had watched her food truck, it was the only time it done a booming business as all of the local women swarmed there to be served by Akechi! That bit of plastic glass was enough for Akechi to confront the chef Ito and expose the murder which he had committed. The pair met on the rooftop of the restaurant and Akechi performed a nice trick which was that he poured wine into a glass. He then dropped it but the glass didn't smash nor did any wine fall out, most people would have been shocked but not Ito. Seems he knew Akechi would eventually discover how he killed Iwato and it had been a warning from Mary.
Ito fully confessed to the crime and told Akechi that on the day of Iwato's murder he had tied the man up and stuffed unsliced Pain de campagne bread into his mouth. Knowing a delivery woman was there he held a plastic glass to his mouth which was knocked away, Ito wanted it to appear as though he was trying to save Iwato. The glass that has been mentioned is one used often by magicians as it has a separate layer to it which prevents the liquid from spilling, it's called a 'Double layered glass'. Ito didn't deny any of Akechi's accusations and was prepared to be led off to the local police station. However seeing Ito arrested wasn't part of Akechi's plan, he had no intention of letting the police know of him solving the case and if they want Ito they'll have to solve it on their own.
So that ends this case but could we be seeing Ito in future episodes? Have a feeling the answer will be yes as it seems Akechi wants Ito to be free and help him in his quest to get to Mary. Ito had told Akechi about their relationship in that final scene and how they had known each other for so many years. Also that he was still in contact with her and it was Mary who had planned Iwato's murder. Each episode will have a stand alone case but there is the underlying storyline of Mary and Akechi's desire to bring her down.
This is a nine episode series, will be doing three batches of two recaps which means the fourth show is the next post. Then will end off with a trio of them which should take place in two weeks. Did mention a few days ago about the impending changes to Blogger and how much more difficult it could be to do posts. Hopefully it won't be too bad but adding pics is supposed to be such a chore and in posts like these for dramas it's so important to have screenshots in between the segments. Plenty of pics to end things off with to help you follow the story a bit better.
No comments:
Post a Comment