"CHEAT" drama: Episode six recap

 

 Air Dates: October 3rd to December 6, 2019   Thursday nights at midnight on N/YTV. 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.

Link to the show's site: 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.

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 most of the time.

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 plus is he connected to Namioka?

Ren Kiriyama as Masaki Hasumi.... Works in the same office as Anzai though the pair despise each other, he's hell bent on nabbing Saki's father Hoshino as eighteen years prior he swindled Hasumi's father out of his live savings. 

Mansaku Ikeuchi as Minoru Hoshino.... Saki's father who fled Japan in 2001 after swindling many out of their money. Has returned to Japan and is being hunted by many.

Guest Stars:

Nayuta Fukuzaki as Kaito.... Seventeen year old boy who has been running a Phishing scam, not so much for cash but to purchase items.

Tom Fujita as Nyugen.... Vietnamese immigrant working at a restaurant.

Links to the previous episodes:

Episode one recap

Episode two recap

Episode three recap

Episode four recap

 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. Will talk a bit about Kamo to begin this post off with, he's a character that's been a bit suspicious to me the last few shows. At the end of the previous episode he had been caught in Seno's office while he was looking for whatever, info on Namioka? The person who walked in on him was Saki and surprised she didn't say anything.... yet. She probably wondered what Kamo was doing there but is keeping her questions under wrap for now. Anzai is Kamo's superior and thought there had to be a reason he was assigned to work with the CHEAT team. There is which is unknown for now but towards the end of this show Kamo did tell Anzai he was getting tired of deceiving the team, can he come clean? Of course the answer was NO and what I'm thinking is that he was assigned there to get info on Saki's father Hoshino who is a master swindler.

 This was another superb show but the case the CHEAT team needed to solve may have been the weakest one, that may not be a bad thing as it should be shorter to explain. So far there's been a different kind of scam the team has had to solve each show and then to nab the swindler, this time around it was for a Phishing scam which you don't hear about as often these days. Kamo had been caught in one and he had clicked on a bogus link in an e-mail he had been sent. The site was named Kaito and immediately Kamo's bank account had been lessened to the tune of 59,000 yen for a watch. Kaito is also the name of the swindler and he's much different than the previous ones. That's because he's a seventeen year old boy who doesn't attend school and just spends his day sending out these Phishing e-mails.

 Kaito isn't a greedy lad as while the swindlers before were mainly concerned with getting as much cash as possible he was just using this scam to purchase items such as watches, jewelry and such, none that were very high priced. To Kamo the easiest way to nab this person would be to watch where the items were being delivered to, made sense and that's what the CHEAT team did but mainly Kamo. Kaito may be young but he's also clever and made sure it was never him who picked up a package nor was it sent to his own residence. He had ben duping some college students to retrieve his packages and there were many per day, you'd think a person would get tired of so many watches. Actually before he was eventually nabbed Kaito thought the same thing but it was too late by then.

 This stakeout was a success and the team followed the person picking up a package from an empty apartment building expecting to be led to Kaito. That wasn't the case as he did cover his tracks very well, instead they went to the residence of a college student named Kashikawa, him and his immigrant roommate Nguyen had been picking up packages for Kaito for a while. They had never met Kaito nor had any of the other students picking up his packages but they all had been paid well so didn't think much of it. Actually Kaito had been siphoning some money off the sites he's hacked into but mainly just to pay off those picking up his packages. That's Kaito above who had been observing the encounter at Kashikawa's apartment via a camera he had installed in a laptop, that didn't fool Saki but she kept quiet about it as not to let on to Kaito she knew what he was doing.

 Kaito just can't get enough students to do his dirty work, he has that many packages coming in every day. Going undercover then was Shun posing as a college student and was immediately recruited by Kaito which led to his downfall, actually that was one of two things. What Shun had done was to install a tracking device in one of the packages, it was kind of big so surprised it hadn't been noticed by Kaito. That led him to Kaito's secret hideaway, in tow with him was Mizuki who also had done her own devious trick. After not using her computer skills too much in the first four shows she certainly has the last two episodes and finally Haruka's role has become quite huge.

 As in the previous show Mizuki had designed a program to block a phishing or virus message, instead what happened is that she was able to connect back to the sender's computer. Don't know if that's possible in real life but if not she could be quite a wealthy young woman by selling it. So when Kaito attempted his Phishing scam on her computer it backfired as her program was able to hack into Kaito's, Mizuki downloaded every single thing from his computer, once that was completed she wiped Kaito's clean. So this was bit of an easy assignment for the CHEAT team to solve but as was the case with the other swindlers when Kaito was arrested by Anzai he did bring up the name of Namioka.

 Wasn't as much for Saki to do with bringing down this young swindler, it was mainly the work of Shun and Mizuki. But she has other things on her mind such as her father Hoshino, she appears to be secretly hunting for him and wants to nab him before the detective Hasumi does. He's got a vendetta against Hoshino who had cheated his father out of his life savings 18 years prior. Also on Saki's mind was her Idoling career and does she still have one? In the last show she had to miss Jewel ✰ Toriko's first major show due to hunting down her father, she didn't even let her mates know. 

 Above in two screenshots is one of the group's member's who is Yuna. She's become so down on the group and Saki failing to show up for the performance was the final straw. She had wanted to be 

Jewel ✰ Toriko's center so badly but somehow the fans had chosen Mai for that honor. So Yuna is up in the air on what she wants to do, also so isn't Saki who deep down wants to be a popular Idol and we never have learned why that's her secret ambition. Sure things will be resolved in the final show and wouldn't be surprised if the group had a performance to end the series off. 

 Right above is Kamo talking to Anzai, as mentioned in the beginning he's getting tired of deceiving the CHEAT team and wants out. But Anzai won't hear of that and he's also been a mysterious character, we know why Hasumi wants to desperately to find Hoshino but why does he? There's a lot of possibilities for these last few shows, wouldn't be too shocked if perhaps Anzai wasn't working for Namioka or maybe he's even his boss?

 Had to stretch this recap out a bit as the case wasn't nearly as compelling as the other ones were yet this was just as good as the first five episodes. This has been the only show I've been concentrating on lately so will try to zip through the final four episodes and have the recaps done quite soon, may have all four in a row.