Minami Hamabe: "Talio Fukushu Daiko no Futari" drama episode two recap

 

 Air Dates: October 9th until November 20, 2020 on NHK... Friday nights at 10:00 pm

Title roughly translates over to Eye for an Eye Revenge Agency's Two People

Main Cast: Just two characters for these shows but may add in Mami's father in later

Minami Hamabe as Mami Shirasawa.... Twenty year old ex-lawyer which may seem hard to believe. Mami never attended a regular college but passed the difficult 'Bar Exam Preliminary Test' which seems to be the same as a law degree. She worked Armstrong Law Firm but was disbarred as a lawyer for her actions in episode one.

Masaki Okada as Kensuke Kuroiwa..... Runs the Kuroiwa agency which is a shady operation that scams those down on their luck which is how he met Mami. However he's quite an intelligent man who appears to know more about how the law works than she does.

 Guest Stars:

Pistol Takahara as Kanji Tanamura.... Owner of a small Washi paper plant in the village of Kangeki and who hired the pair to reveal the truth about the Guru

Ayumi Ito as the Guru.... Woman who is the main 'religious' leader in Kangeki but is deceiving the villagers to make a hefty profit

Masanobu Sakata as Tatsuzo Sugawa.... Owner of the village inn

Tomoko Ikuta as Yorie Sugawa.... Wife of the above character

Links to previous episodes, of course there's just one for now:

Episode one recap 

 Bit of a gap since the first recap so have that above if you want to get to know the two main characters a bit better. Reason for the gap is that instead of doing them weekly will be doing these posts very other week with two recaps in a row so naturally that means the next post has episode three. The fourth show just aired but subs don't get done for close to a week and they being done by aoinousagi at DA. The plan was to have these two recaps done on October 31st but know that's not going to happen as that's the current date and with three other posts to write up bet the published date will be November 2nd.

 Before we start off with the case for this 'revenge team' want to discuss Mami's current situation which shocked me when I viewed this show. In episode one she had been the youngest lawyer at the Armstrong Law Firm, she's just twenty in age but somehow has received a law degree. She had never been assigned a case but was in the first show and it was a case the firm thought didn't have a chance. They were right but after Mami lost the case she hooked up with her new 'partner' Kensuke to enact revenge for the woman she lost the case for. The pair were successful but it seems Mami overstepped her legal bounds and was fired from the firm along with losing her lawyer's license. I did not not miss those details from the end of episode one and by the end of the third episode it's never been explained what really took place and am surprised her being a lawyer isn't part of the story anymore.

 Though Mami can't stand the scammer Kensuke and vice versa the two are always together, actually it's more her as she's always at his shabby office. In the beginning is when we learned of Mami being disbarred from the law firm, when she was being chastised by Kensuke about that a client entered the office, could this be their first true case? The answer is yes as this man about fifty in age wants to hire the team to discover the secrets of the village's new Guru. It's that woman in the third screenshot above, her true name was never revealed until the very end so just will refer to her as Guru as that's what the villagers called her. This man who paid the pair a visit was Tanimura, he owns a small Washi paper company where him and his wife worked  but now it's down to just him.

 That's because his wife had committed suicide and Tanimura was convinced she was led to it by Guru who would demand to be compensated well when she gave a person her special 'blessing'. Tanimura and his wife were not wealthy and their small business was suffering so the wife didn't have much to donate to Guru's cause. This made the wife feel so guilty and Guru didn't let her forget about the meager offering, Tanimura didn't help out much as he rode his wife hard for falling under the Guru's spell. Eventually his wife couldn't take it anymore and ended her life, Tanimura came to Tokyo to enlist the aid of Mami and Kensuke who headed straight to the small village located in Saitama.

 Tanimura's business wasn't suffering because of a lack of customers but because he can't get enough materials to create the washi paper which is unique to Japan. Guru claimed it's because of him not donating enough to her ministry and has been cursed, Tanimura thinks that's a lot of bull and wants her devious ways to be exposed. Mami and Kensuke stayed at the village's only inn owned by another man around fifty named Sugawa and his wife Yorie. While he says on the outside he's with Tanimura and Guru is a fake deep down he's on her side as we'll find out, the wife Yorie is completely under her spell and will do anything for Guru. Not knowing where to begin the new 'revenge team' head to the temple to view a service and of course were noticed by Guru who called them non-believers. As you can see above Guru was able to light a fire in her hands without getting burnt a bit, that trick has really won the villagers over.

 Lot of her tricks and the solution to the case were via chemicals and ones used mainly to create washi paper. Won't go into too much detail as some of those ingredient names are twenty letters long but you can see those details in the screenshots. What Guru had done to not get burned was to have Ether in her hands, a special version of it was used by Tanimura. When you put the ether in the palm of your hand and light it the ether can keep the fire going but it's special coating prevents your hand from getting too hot or burnt, will admit I'm quite clueless about those scientific things. Mami was able to discover that trick when she secretly searched Guru's room and also found a very impressive lab there with many chemicals. Those are how Guru has been able to develop so many tricks to deceive the villagers but Mami also found many law books as Guru's up on the legal system but why?

 Kensuke may have come to the rescue of Tanimura as far as getting supplies go. He's made a deal with a local supplier who can get anything that's desired for creating washi paper, of course for a price and Kensuke wants some sort of fee for this case. This new man's name is Nomata who owned Winks Trading, he's ben able to get Tanimura a huge supply of ether and various other things needed to create the special paper. A contract was signed by the two but Tanimura was a bit leery about the 'curse' Guru put on him. He didn't believe in the actual curse was worried she or her henchman would so something to his supplies which would be stored in a warehouse until morning. Not wanting to take any chances Tanimura stayed on guard outside the warehouse all night, he's been able to rope in Mami and Kensuke to stay by his side.

 Guarding the warehouse wasn't able to save Tanimura's new supplies as during the night a fire broke out and they didn't witness anyone entering the building. Not too hilarious of a scene but the trio were rolling with laugher when they attempted to enter the warehouse and put out the fire. Some of the supplies were mulberry bushes and that's used to create laughing gas, when it's on fire that gas is released and though a tragic scene the trio couldn't stop laughing in hysterics. That wasn't the case the following day as Tanimura's supplies were destroyed and along with that perhaps his business could be too. To top it off Nomata wanted the money for the supplies as Tanimura did sign a contract which he now refuses to honor and it had been created by Guru.

 If there's one thing that Mami may be tops in the world at it's knowing the Japanese laws, she most know every single one and could have wrote the books! Guru pointed out to Tanimura that he did sign the contract and according to the 2016 Japanese law book he's required to pay off what's owed even if his order was destroyed. 'Not so fast!' exclaimed Mami, while it's true that law was valid in 2016 it's now 2020 and in March of this year the law was changed to protect the buyer and Tanimura is off the hook. Needless to say that angered Guru to no end and she stormed out of the temple, her devotees are looking at her kind of warily now. Once again Mami with Kensuke in tow managed to slip into Guru's room and what they were looking for were the chemicals that could create the explosions that burned down the warehouse and also almost set her on fire.

 Came close to forgetting the incident but two nights prior Mami and Kensuke had almost been burnt to a crisp while they were sleeping. They needed to share a room at Sugawa's inn, just before they turned in Mami blew out a candle which they had because of a power outage. However during the night the candle became lit again and exploded sending the drapes up in a ball of fire but the pair did escape. That event has been on Mami's mind as she did blow out the candle and how did it relight? In Guru's room they did find the chemical, won't spell it out but it's in the below top screenshot. But while they were snooping bursting in was Guru along with many villagers who had a change of heart and remained by her side. Besides Mami and Kensuke the inn owner Sugawa had been with the pair who were dragged outside, bound by rope and were told two will be dying within a matter of minutes!

 Only two as Guru said she would spare one if they would become a devoted follower to her. To everyone's surprise Kensuke was the one who said he would be willing to follow the all mighty Guru much to Mami's fury. Kensuke knew what he was doing and it was him who solved the case. In Guru's room Sugawa had jumped back when he opened a jar, in it were the explosives that almost killed him and Mami. Kensuke thought how could be know explosives were in the jar(?), that and a few other curious things led Kensuke to realize that Sugawa was on Guru's side and had been tricking them all along. Quickly Guru's schemes blew up in her face as now the villagers did turn against her and soon she was about to be arrested by the police, it was a rather quick ending. It turned out that Guru had once worked at a law firm in Tokyo which specialized in chemical cases which is why she knew so much about those two subjects. With that the case was solved but will have to give Kensuke most of the credit for doing so, the pair then returned to Tokyo where a huge surprise was awaiting him. Perhaps not a pleasant one as Mami announced.... she's moving into his office to live! Mami had lived in an apartment owned by her ex-law firm, now that she's no longer working there she can't live in the place so as the show ended we saw her moving her things in.

 Have done close to 1,200 recaps/reviews and as hard as it may seem to believe this was the most difficult one ever. Stopped and started three times plus my thoughts were so jumbled the entire time, took a break to do three other posts which were done with no problems. Came back to finish this and nothing changed as it was just so difficult to write up, perhaps I've been doing too many of these recaps this year. Hopefully the following recap will be a bit easier and that's the next post, also hope the recaps won't be as long as this is just a 43 minute show and the posts shouldn't be this long.