"Kyoufu Shinbun" drama: Episode three 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.

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.... Young man who is Shizuru's neighbor. He lives with his mother and is quite odd but not sure to what extent yet. In the next recap he'll be having a name change and what a mysterious character.

 

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. Those first two episodes had  some gory endings, that wasn't the case for this show which was a bit milder but the after effects from those previous incidents do play a factor. The ending of this show wasn't action packed yet was a bit intense and sets up some possible eerie occurrences for the next four episodes. 

 That top screenshot is how the last episode ended with Shizuru, Momoka and Yuzuke at the police station telling the detective Shinozaki the details of the incident where two were murdered by a crazed teen girl. During her meeting with Shinozaki he had said he believed Shizuru's tale of the Terror Bulletin newspaper and why don't they join forces? Well they did but it wasn't until the tail end of this show but it did save at least one life. The trio was really shook up at what they had witnessed, especially Shizuru's best friend Momoka who is still in such a daze on the killings she witnessed, so much will she remain friends with Shizuru? The Terror Bulletin is an eerie newspaper that just consists of one page but that page always has the details of some upcoming tragedies. It gets delivered to Shizuru at midnight most days and she's the only person that has the ability to read it.

 Shizuru thought she could possibly change the future knowing the details of a tragedy but as we saw in the last episode that wasn't the case though it turns out Shizuru may be able to change the future. She's quite distraught at not being able to save a woman and her son from being murdered in the last show, so much her new friend and coworker Yuzuke suggested Shizuru should see a therapist. She was a bit leery about that at first but she needed some sort of help and agreed to Yuzuke's suggestion. Above is the therapist whose name is Oigawa, seems their session went well but things still are dour for Shizuru. However it wasn't a mini appearance in this episode for Oigawa whose family life will be the main focus of the ending.

 We didn't see all that much of Shizuru's best friend Momoka nor her new friend Yuzuke who she does have a crush on. We will see a lot of them in the next show but best friends is what Shizuru and Momoka no longer are as Momoka has been sleeping with Yuzuke and are now dating! A character we didn't see all that much in the first two shows but thought we would soon is Shizuru's mother Utako. She had been blaming her daughter for her husband's death but of course Shizuru had nothing to do with it and the mother finally came to her senses. Good thing for Shizuru that she did as Utako may have saved her life. Shizuru was so down in the dumps, she still thought her mother blamed Shizuru for her father's death, her friend Momoka is blaming her for involving her with the Terror Bulletin tragedy that took place in the last show and even Yuzuke is much more distant. Also the man who lost his wife and son last show to the deranged killer has put the blame squarely on Shizuru which wasn't justified. 

 So the mother Utako visited Shizuru shortly after that previous incident and she told her mother the entire story of the Terror Bulletin. Most people wouldn't believe such a tale but Utako did and has vowed to work with her daughter to prevent any more tragedies. After the last show Shizuru was thinking she couldn't change the future but perhaps she could if there was enough help. She still wanted to avoid reading the paper and had been doing so for days, at once it only came at midnight but now the deliveries are all day long. Shizuru almost had a major accident with a truck avoiding the Terror Bulletin so she knew she would have to read what tragedy was about to take place. With her mother present Shizuru read the story and she's the only person that can read the paper.

 The story was one of a child being abused and how many of them are in the Kyoto area? Shizuru still still is leery about changing the future and doesn't even want to give an attempt to save a child. But her mother Utako is so gung-ho about saving lives and has changed her daughter's mind but Utako really didn't understand what she was getting herself into. Of course no child agency would give them details about recent abuse cases, they wanted to know how Shizuru knew what was happening? So it was up to the detective Shinozaki to bail the pair out as he was able to provide them a lengthy list of abuse cases. But as he told the duo those parents can be a bit crazed so he has to be there if they do enter a residence. In those bottom two screenshots above are the place where we viewers thought Shizuru and her mother would end up at. It was a case of a deranged mother really abusing her two small children and it took a while for what really took place to sink in and we viewers had to figure it out.

 The screenshot above those bottom two are of Shizuru running into her therapist Oigawa while she was on the hunt for the household where the abuse was taking place. At first we thought it was that above mother who was the culprit in the case but it wasn't or at least not in the present time. The way I deduced it is that the scene was a flashback from 25 years ago and the household was where the therapist Oigawa grew up in. It's hard to believe a mother can be so cruel but Oigawa's was, by a miracle she and her brother were able to elude her mother and flee to safety out the front door where a pair of social workers were. But what happens in a childhood often takes place when a person is an adult and that's where the story leads. When Shizuru had met Oigawa's young daughter Airi she was such a reserved and seemingly frightened girl, it didn't dawn on Shizuru at the time what the problem may be.

 Time is running out for Shizuru and her mother as the abused child was supposed to be killed that day. So after the meeting on the street with Oigawa with her daughter Shizuru started to be a little suspicious of what may be happening in that household. After viewing some pics on one of Oigawa's social sites Shizuru was convinced her therapist was abusing the daughter, she notified Shinozaki and the trio were soon at the therapist's house. There was abuse going on there but Shizuru was only half correct as it was the father who was abusing the helpless Airi. This had been going on for a while and today was the day he was going to go too far. That is until the three stormed the house and Shinozaki quickly put this beast under arrest, the mother Oigawa was completely innocent. So a happy ending for the little girl but there was something more important. That's of Shizuru knowing she can change the future and are these three going to become a team to save the world?

 There are no happy endings in this drama(!) as there was still two minutes to go. Hadn't really mentioned Hirukawa who was the man that devilishly arranged for Shizuru to receive the Terror Bulletin but as we learn in the next show he is somewhat of a decent man. He's been in the hospital but has escaped, the main reason was to warn Shizuru of impending danger. Hirukawa somehow knows who her neighbor is and it's not a person you want to know. Shizuru thought his name was Tomo and lived with his mother, his name is actually Kigata and according to Hirukawa is mighty dangerous.

 Seems by what Hirukawa was saying this Kigata has been responsible for Shizuru getting the Terror Bulletin, if she was smart she would flee right away. That's impossible as Kigata was only twenty feet away and did have an evil grin on his face. That wraps up this recap and the scene concludes in episode four which is the next post. Not as much gory action in these two shows but the intensity level has really risen, especially in the next episode.