"CHEAT" drama: Episode one recap

 

 Air Dates: October 3rd to December 6, 2019   Thursday nights at midnight on NTV. There was a total of ten episodes plus a mini five minute 'special' following those shows.

Subs were done by ECOTV, also goes by the name of Trap the Con Man.

The drama's home page: CHEAT YTV site

 Main Cast: All save for the bottom person are part of the 'CHEAT' team though that person was the one who had created it. The CHEAT team are the top four who get revenge for those who have been swindled but don't think the scammers are ever or rarely sent to prison.

Tsubasa Honda as Saki Hoshino/Momo Kisaragi.... Two names, Saki is her real one but in her spare time she moonlights as an Idol named Momo. Saki is the leader of the CHEAT team and also a bit of a hothead, she's tried to keep her Idoling passion a secret but it was discovered by Kamo who for now isn't saying anything.

Haruka Fukuhara as Mizuki Maruyama.... Genius hacker and the youngest of the team plus her attractiveness at times can be a bit too overwhelming!

Daichi Kaneko as Yuto Kamo.... Newest person of the team who joined in the first episode. He's an undercover police detective assigned to the team by Anzai, Kamo can be overly naive quite often.

Shuhei Uesugi as Shun Negishi.... Master of the team at creating and installing surveillance equipment, was once a detective.

Shunsuke Kazama as Kazuki Anzai..... Created the CHEAT team and is Kamo's superior, seems to be quite a dark and ruthless man.

Guest Stars:

Tsutomu Takahashi as Ryosuke Namioka.... Leader of a swindling team and the members of CHEAT have been on his tail for many months.

Yoko Imamoto as Fumie Igarashi.... Woman who was swindled by the above man.

Yui Yokoyama as Reiko Hosokawa.... Partner of Namioka and all AKB fans should know who she is very well.

 Know I'm a bit late for a date again(!) but the subs for this series weren't completed until July or so, just learned about that recently. This is a drama I had really been itching to see as those top two are such massive faves of mine plus both are superb actresses. There was a total of ten episodes, have viewed two and not sure if there is any kind of continuing storyline or if the episodes are all stand alone ones. Will be doing two at a time and I did enjoy the first two shows, it's so refreshing watching a forty minute drama versus my current Korean one that's twice as long. 

 Did say there was no ongoing storyline which through two shows is semi right but there could be some. One is about Saki's father and though we know zero about his past it seems he fled the country to Thailand. According to Anzai he's returned and he told that to Saki but mothing more was mentioned. The other two possible storylines are first Saki's secret life which you can see right above. She's a 'Street Idol' and hasn't let any of her team know about it. Not much happened in this show about her Idoling passion but will talk about it more in the next recap. The other deals with the CHEAT team and why did Anzai create it? For now it's a mystery but to me have a feeling they're all in debt to him, not money wise but think he may have kept the trio of Saki, Mizuki and Shun from going to prison. I'm not a 100% certain but just have that sneaking suspicion that's why he created the CHEAT team.

 And their main goal is to enact revenge on those who have been swindled. There will be one major case in each show but also at least one minor incident such as in the top two screenshots where Saki and Mizuki collared a guy using bogus/stolen credit cards. The team of three is about to increase by one as Anzai has brought a new man with him when he visited the trio who operate behind a billiards room. For whatever reason this new man Kamo can't remain as a detective under Anzai but he's someone he wants to keep and no doubt use. Besides bringing Kamo Anzai has brought the CHEAT team a new assignment, that's to track down a swindler named Namioka who has cheated many out of their savings by saying he's from a bank and so many have fallen for his ruse.

 This Namioka character is well known by Saki and her mates as Mizuki says above, they've been on his trail for two months and still can't pin anything on him. Also above is the newest victim, there's been over a hundred to date and her name is Fumie. The way Namioka's scam worked was that a cohort would place a call to a victim claiming to be from the 'All Japan Union Bank' and give such an unbelievable sales pitch the victim would know it's a scam and hang up. Shortly after another of Namioka's cronies would call saying they're from the police and need help in catching those scammers. Fumie fell for it and went to a meeting with the 'police' where she brought her bank card, soon it was cleaned out to the tune of one million yen!

 Over a hundred people have fell for that scheme and you wonder how can that many be so gullible? The CHEAT team jumped right into action as they didn't want Namioka to scam anyone else, though he's new and very naive the main person in solving these cases will be Kamo. In the first two shows he's the one who had to go undercover and meet that perp, that's him above with Namioka who was looking for a new office. Kamo pretended to be from the Kanasai Real Estate firm and had an office all ready to move into. Being a scammer Namioka is always a bit leery and ended up refusing the offer but did refer Kamo to a friend(ally) of his. That was Reiko and as mentioned in the cast list was played by Yui Yokoyama who has been one of my fave AKB members. She checked out the office and brought a team to scan for 'bugs' as in that kind of work you can't take any chances.

 To Kamo's puzzlement Reiko's 'debuggers' found that the office was clean and she immediately moved her team of scammers into it. The reason Kamo was puzzled was because he knew Shun had installed a camera and some microphones into the office, where did they go? Shun is an ex-detective, why he's an 'ex' is unknown for now but he's also the CHEAT team's expert on installing surveillance equipment. Monitoring his installments is Mizuki who is an expert hacker, wonder if she may have been nabbed by Anzai doing her own scams? There was equipment set up and in a very nice twist it was in a different office, that was arranged by Saki who is thinks ten steps ahead of any scammer. In this new office the swindling is going well for Reiko who is working under Namioka but an unforeseen event took place that was planned by Saki.

 She arranged for a fake fire in the new office's building, with no time to spare Reiko's team had to pack up their computers and records but where could they move them to? Arriving on the scene was Kamo who told Reiko she could move into a spare office for the time being, with no choice she agreed. And this was the office that Shun had bugged(!) and I thought that was such an ingenious scheme set up by Saki who also did one other thing. While Reiko's team was moving their things out they were piled in a hallway, a disguised Saki ambled by and took what she was looking for which was a blue bag. The office had been staked out and the bag had been delivered by a 'money carrier', she quickly locked the bag in a gym locker and fled back to the office. There the team were able to watch Reiko and her scammers in action and had just enough on tape to nab Reiko for pretending to be a bank representative and swindling many out of their life savings. But the main object had been to bring down Namioka and nothing on the tape could implicate him.

 Unknown to three of the four CHEAT team members, not Saki, Reiko was aware of the camera and had a fake conversation with Namioka. She arranged to meet him at his club but it was a ruse to catch the person who was filming them. Saki was on to the fake conversation, she told Kamo to meet up with Namioka at that club. Before he left Saki secretly gave him a 'good luck amulet' but it actually contained the key to the gym locker where she stashed the bag she stole. Namioka's henchmen quickly pounced on Kamo when he entered the club, finding the key on him they headed to the locker where the bag was retrieved which was jam backed with cash. While a triumphant Namioka sat in his club gloating and wondering what to do with Kamo entering was Saki who claimed to be a detective and was there checking on a stolen gym bag. Namioka at first claimed it wasn't his bag but when Saki checked it out and discovered that it was  packed with bills Namioka changed his tune and said that the bag was his.

 That's all Saki needed to hear as she had secretly been taping the action on her phone. She then took the bag and dumped it on the floor, while there were many bills they had all been defaced. Saki had switched the money in the bag with bills that Fumie's children had defaced with crayons and such, guess doing that makes them invalid. So as it turned out Fumie got her money back though I think there was more than one million in the bag, whatever amount it was is money that Namioka is now out of and you can see Saki above gloating to him! He's a person who we'll be seeing again in the last two episodes, that event brought this show to an end but do have a question or two.

 Will also talk about that bottom screenshot in the next recap which is the post below this one, will also be able to talk more about the CHEAT team. So what I had been wondering is does the team get paid and if so by whom? Is Anzai the detective paying them and purchasing their equipment? If not does that mean the team gets to keep the money left over after swindling the swindler? The other one is does the criminal go to jail, the impression I got was no but then again could be wrong with that.