"Kyoufu Shinbun" drama: Episode five 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 .... Episode three .... Episode four

 Above are the links to the first four 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 last three recaps done by June 30th, probably didn't make it as today is the 28th. What an intense ending to the fourth episode and from it were a few horrific potential minor storylines to arise out of that. But we won't get to any of them in this recap as none took place as this was one of the most oddest episodes I've ever viewed. The action in this drama had been taking place in July 2020, in such a strange twist we've gone way back in time to about 1870!!!!

 An episode is a bit over 43 minutes, the first forty took place in that ancient year. What you'll be reading about is the origins of the Terror Bulletin newspaper which predicts future tragedies. So that was a nice change of pace but it could have been done in twenty minutes as there's only seven episodes. Hope things don't sound too confusing but I wasn't sure of all the details nor were other viewers who were baffled by this episode. All of the main characters appear in the year 1870 save for Momoka, they all have different names with Shizuru becoming Shizu. Her mother Utako has the name of Yae and was her mother(?) back then too. The detective Shinozaki was a store owner named Echigo while Shizuru's potential boyfriend in 2020 Yuzuke has the name of Nakamura and is a low ranking Samurai.. One last person is Shizuru's real life dead father Onoda who plays a monk named Kugen.

 As mentioned the setting is circa 1870 and arriving penniless in this unnamed small town was an older woman named Yae. With the woman was her twenty year old daughter named Shizu who was just involved in a major tragedy as her husband was murdered right in front of her eyes by some bandits but did that really happen? The pair has stopped off at the town's largest shop owned by a greedy man named Echigo, they offered their services to him but what could they do? It's Shizu who can do things and that's a talent for predicting future misfortunes which Echigo said was nonsense. But Shizu did predict a man drowning in a canal so he started to pay more attention to these predictions. Soon Shizu had said there would be a major storm, a fire at a boarding house along with many others that took place. By now Echigo had fully believed in Shizu's predictions so he would stock up his store with merchandise that people would need after their tragedies, it soon made him even wealthier.

 Naturally he was curious how Shizu had gained these powers and it all began after her husband was slaughtered. Shizu is pregnant, perhaps 6-7 months along, with her mother had been visiting a monk named Kugen who could explain the powers. They're coming from her womb as the unborn baby had 'witnessed' his father being murdered and this was somehow it's revenge on the world. That's the story her mother told Echigo who was worried what would happen after she gave birth? Good question but will it ever happen as about five months have passed since working for Echigo which meant that Shizu has to be at least two months overdue. But the predictions about tragedies kept on coming and is it possible this womb has a mind of it's own and doesn't want to enter the world?

 Above is a young samurai named Nakamura who first met Shizu when he saved her from some hooligans about to rough her up or perhaps do worse. He took an instant liking to Shizu who I forgot to mention barely says a word since her husband was brutally murdered. She'll always writes out her predictions, Shizu can speak but is having some post traumatic issues but soon they'll go away. Shizu's mother forbid her daughter from seeing this Nakamura man as things have been going well with Echigo but have they? For as much money as Shizu has made Echigo he's been giving them her a pittance of a salary, barely enough to live on and not enough to plan an escape.

 So a short time later the mother Yae paid a visit to Nakamura telling him of their blight. Up to now we thought Yae was just a sweet yet beaten down woman, that's not the case as what a conniving female she turns out to be. She's asked Nakamura to help them either get money or to flee the town, he's agreed to help but as of yet has no plans. Nakamura also has a beef to settle with Echigo who wouldn't sell him a kimono for his sister to be buried in, he too wants revenge on this overly greedy man. Back to Shizu's predictions and her next pair have upset two men. One is Nakamura who though a samurai doesn't like to kill others but she's predicted he will very soon. The other forecast was for Echigo and that soon he would die but Shizu had left out the details.

 The prediction about Nakamura was true as he did kill a man but in self defense, actually more than one. Echigo knew of his getting closer to Shizu and her mother, this greedy man couldn't take the chance of his money maker being whisked away so he ordered a hit on Nakamura which failed as instead the killers were killed themselves. But for the prediction of Echigo dying perhaps there were no details in the Shizu's drawing because there are none. Echigo has been getting quite sick over the last few weeks and quickly his appearance became one of a man decades older What Yae had left out telling him was that when you have a prediction written for you that person will age 100 days, Echigo has had many written for him so perhaps it's old age he's about to die of.

 That may have happened but before extreme old age could set in Echigo was stabbed to death by Yae in the final scene from this Edo period flashback. Many details and unknown tidbits came out during this scene which confused me to an extent and also many other viewers. Shizu's voice suddenly came back in full force and she told the true story of what happened with her mother to Nakamura and the monk Kugen who had witnessed Yae slaying Echigo. That wasn't the first time Yae had killed a man as she had also done the same thing to Shizu's husband but why???? It's not fully known but right after that incident Yae took Shizu away and performed a ritual on her, one that appears to be the true onset of the Terror Bulletin paper. To throw in a bit more confusion we're really not positive that Yae was actually Shizu's mother, the more I think about it the more I think she wasn't. What I'm thinking is that Yae needed a pregnant woman to perform that ritual to bring the Terror Bulletin into the world, now that the truth is almost completely out what will Yae do?

 Shizu does say Mother in that top screenshot but by then has to know that Yae wasn't her real one. After that Shizu didn't utter too many more words as without warning Yae rushed up to her 'daughter' and stabbed her to death, the baby in her womb also perished. This Yae turned out to be quite a devilsih woman as she quickly stabbed the monk Kugen to death also, finally Nakamura put an end to her evil ways and slew Yae. But the curse of the Terror Bulletin didn't die out during that scene as we witnessed a man reading it a few days after and since then the ability to read it has carried on for 150 years. The ending of that flashback could have given us a few more details on why newspaper carried on after Shizu's death but guess sometimes it's good to keep us viewers wondering about things.

 With three minutes to go in the episode it's back to 2020 and Shizuru has woken from that nightmare, so everything was just a dream? No it wasn't as standing over her was Kigata who is the 'handler' of the Terror Bulletin and is responsible for people like Shizuru receiving it. From what he said the paper wasn't supposed to evil when it was created but was to show positive stories but Yae's ritual changed that. He's there to help Shizuru and the others but we've never seen any help from him. As the episode finally came to it's conclusion Kigata dropped a bombshell on Shizuru, that's not her real name for she's actually the reincarnation of the evil mother Yae!!!!

 Whew, so does that mean Shizuru's mother in 2020 was her daughter back in 1870? Who knows as not much of what took place in this show carried over to the next episode which makes me wonder why did they devote an entire episode to the origins of the cursed newspaper? Noticed many other viewers were baffled too by the events and only half of this show should have been devoted to the flashback. Oh well, it was an interesting enough show that did answer a few questions though it raised even more! After this are the recaps for the final two shows and things to get back to being normal. Haven't viewed the final episode but the next one may end up being the best of the seven shows.