"Kyoufu Shinbun" drama: Episode four recap

 

 Air Dates: August 29th until October October 10, 2020 Saturday nights at 11:40 pm on Fuji-TV

This series also goes by the name of Terror Newspaper and subs were done by HPriest

Main Characters: Setting is the city of Kyoto. Shizuku receives the haunted newspaper every day at midnight and their tragic stories always come true. She's not the only one though to get this Terror Bulletin paper but only the person that receives it can read the stories. Bottom character was introduced in this episode.

Sei Shiraishi as Shizuru Onoda.... Second year student at Chuo University in Kyoto. She's lived in the city with her parents but moved out to her own apartment at the beginning of the first episode. After Shizuru's first night at the apartment she began to receive a 'Terror Newspaper' at midnight each night and quickly her life turned upside down.

Hitomi Kuroki as Utako Onoda.... Shizuru's mother who didn't play an important role in the first two episodes but will from the third show on. 

Eiji Yokota as Kuranosuke Onoda.... The father of Shizuru who ran a coffee shop/mini restaurant but he was killed at the end of the first episode!

Taiki Sato as Yusuke Matsuda.... Shizuru's new friend and he works at Hannari Delivery as a bike courier which is how he met Shizuru.

Yuki Katayama as Momoka Miyazawa.... Shizuru's best friend or up until the third show. 

Taro Suruga as Rintaro Shinozaki.... Detective for the East Kyoto police department. He believes Shizuru's story about the cursed paper and is teaming up with her to prevent more tragedies. Shinozaki is also heavily in debt with some loan sharks. 

Manabu Ino as Toya Hirukawa.... The person responsible for Shizuru receiving the Terror Bulletin newspaper. To break the curse he had to send the paper to another person but he's been cursed already as he's 25 year old man who now looks to be seventy.

Ryotaro Sakaguchi as Tomowo Katagiri/Rei Kigata.... Young man who is Shizuru's neighbor. He lives with his mother and is quite odd but not sure to what extent yet. This character was Tomowo in the first three shows which was an alias, his real name is Kigata who could actually be a ghost who appears/disappears in a matter of seconds.

Momoko Fukuchi as Harumi Hirukawa.... Toya's sister who is in a wheelchair. She was introduced in the fourth show and at one time she received the Terror Bulletin. 

 

Links to the previous recaps:

Episode one .... Episode two

 Above are the links to the first two shows, will probably refer back to a few details or events though not too many of them so may help to peruse them. Wanted to have these recaps done by Thursday but think I failed(did it!). Hate to moan but my keyboard is on it's last legs and these slightly longer posts take twice as long to write up, soon a new laptop will be bought! As you can see above the bottom character is new in this episode and think will also be in the next two shows. Plus the person above her has had a name change and will discuss his details before the main recap begins.

 Shizuru thought that a young man named Tomowo lived next door to her with his mother. That's true but we met the real one in this show who is in a wheelchair, the person impersonating him is named Kigata. According to the man Hirukawa this person is a devil who is responsible for her getting the Terror Bulletin, he probably delivered it to Hirukawa too. Besides being the only person to have the ability to read the paper which predicts the future a person ages 100 days when they read it, Hirukawa is only 25 in age yet now looks to be a seventy year old man! So Kigata pops in and out on a regular basis which leads me to think he's some sort of ghost or spirit, now on to the regular recap.

 In that top screenshot Shizuru now has some confidence in herself as she knows she can change the future. If you read the above recap you know what happened but in the second episode it turned into a tragedy. Shizuru can't do it by herself and needs help from her mother Utako and the detective Shinozaki. Also with help from the man Hirukawa who has escaped from the hospital and really has only days to live as though he's just 25 he's about to die from old age! After his meeting with Shizuru he passed out and was brought back to the hospital by Shinozaki. Don't know how exactly but Hirukawa knows everything about the Terror Bulletin newspaper, he admitted he was the person responsible for Shizuru getting the paper but he's got an excellent reason for doing that and he's not a bad person.

 There is a way to get rid of the curse which is to have a person write their name and sometimes address on the Terror Bulletin, to the average person it looks like a blank piece of paper. When Hirukawa worked for the delivery company that moved Shizuru into her new apartment he tricked her into signing the paper. He also admitted the only reason he had been getting the cursed newspaper himself is because his sister Harumi had first been tricked, in order to save her life he signed the contract over to him. So if Shizuru want's to stop the deliveries she just needs to get another person to sign the Terror Bulletin though that's much easier said then done. Plus when another person signs the paper that means they're cursed so you wouldn't want to choose a friend or an older person. An older person because when the new person getting the paper dies the contract reverts back to the original person who was getting the paper if that makes sense. Knowing he was going to die soon Hirukawa realized his sister would then be cursed again so he just chose Shizuru randomly plus because she was young.

 Don't understand why but those first two paragraphs are always the longest and tend to get shorter as the post goes on. In both batches above are Momoka, at one time Shizuru's best friend, and Yuzuke who is a newish friend as they work at the same delivery company. But may have to use ex-friends for both, especially Momoka and by her actions wonder if she truly was ever Shizuru's friend? Momoka used that incident at the end of episode two to get closer to Yuzuke, so close they've been sleeping together and had kept it hidden from Shizuru. She was able to deduce what the situation was between the pair, by the end of the show Yuzuke did apologize for dating her friend though Shzuru hadn't quite accepted it, meanwhile by the end Momoka hates Shizuru more than ever!

 Back to the main topic for this show which is how can Shizuru somehow get rid of the Terror Bulletin curse? Of course if Shizuru gets someone to sign the paper they'll get the curse instead, Shizuru may be saved but that other person would be on a track to die! Shizuru became quite desperate and twice almost had another person sign it but she just couldn't go through with it. One was a little girl and would she want to destroy her life? The other person was an extremely perverted man who she made a delivery to, as he was signing the paper Shizuru noticed he had a son and whisked the paper away. Even her mother volunteered to sign the Terror Bulletin but being so much older the curse would be reverted back to Shizuru in a month or so. Don't know why it wasn't thought of but if a different person signed the paper each day then the curse would have no effect on anyone.

 By the end of the episode Shizuru still didn't get another person to sign the newspaper to lift the curse, Yuzuke almost did but once again she couldn't go through with the evil deed. We saw a lot more of the detective Shinozaki in this show, seems like a decent chap but does have some problems. Such as that he owes loan sharks quite a bit of cash and has no way to pay it back. Shinozaki is also kind of a rebel at the station who does things his own way but he's efficient. His commanding officer has had a tail on Shinozaki for a few weeks which is driving him up a wall. But 'help' was on the way as Shizuru had told him of a traffic accident that would be taking place the following day. So what Shinozaki had done was tell those two detectives above to be at the location and it worked out well as those two men became the victims to the Terror Bulletin story!

 Hirukawa is aging rapidly, reading the cursed newspaper will age you 33 years in one year(!) so though just 25 in age he's about to die of old age. Shinozaki has tracked down his sister Harumi who you can see above, she's in a wheelchair and needs an operation to walk again but it's quite expensive. But in his will Hirukawa has left his sister everything, to her amazement he has stocks worth over 33 million yen! Harumi should be able to afford the operation with that amount of money and had a talk with Shinozaki about it. She had the curse originally and Hirukawa transferred the contract to himself to save his sister, still don't know how he knew so much about the Terror Bulletin. By the end of the show Hirukawa passed away but was a decent person as he had asked about Shizuru's well being.

 Those top three screenshots are extremely important and Harumi had been telling Shinozaki how her brother made so much money in the stock market. He had used the info from the Terror Bulletin stories to determine which stocks and companies would become successful from the tragedies, that gave the heavily in debt Shinozaki an idea. If he could do the same thing which is to determine which stocks would rise then he too could make a fortune and get rid of his hounding loan sharks. So after that meeting with Harumi Shinozaki went to Shizuru's apartment knowing she wasn't home. He began searching for the Terror Bulletin as he wanted to sign it to get the curse for himself! He's a desperate man so he's even risking his life for some money.

 One final mini scene which is just above. Shizuru was making her first delivery of the day and was pedaling down a hill. An intersection was coming up and when she tried to apply the brakes they failed her and she crashed into a small vehicle. Yuzuke happened to be on the scene and rushed to Shizuru's aid, she wasn't too badly hurt but was about to pass out. Just before she did Shizuru noticed hiding in the bushes was her ex-friend Momoka who was holding a pair of scissors(!), obviously she realized what the woman had done! Kind of an intense ending once again and the happenings have set up the potential for the next episode to be the best.

 However it's not and viewed it halfway through writing this recap up. Would have never thought the next episode would be what it was which was a story set back in the Edo era of Japan! That's when the curse began and the details of it were mostly explained but though not all quite yet. It was a decent episode and did end up in the present time but for a seven episode series was it really needed? Will have that recap and the final two episodes in about a week, hopefully before June ends.