"Kyoufu Shinbun" drama: Episode six 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. Thanks if you read the above recap for the firth episode, know it was muddled at times but that's how the show turned out being and many other viewers were a bit baffled by the events. So had watched this episode first before writing up the above recap as I thought some of the mysteries would be told or those muddled details became clearer. But they weren't(!) as really nothing in this episode referred back to the fifth show. The biggest mystery is if Shizuru is actually her mother Yae from the year 1870, that we have no clue about yet. But haven't viewed the last episode yet as not to spoil things so perhaps some questions will be answered then.

 So this picks up where episode four ended and there were a pair of cliffhangers. One was of Shizuru getting into a bike accident and it was all because her ex-friend Momoka had cut the brakes on Shizuru's bike. It appeared to Momoka that her new 'boyfriend' Yuzuke has dumped her for Shizuru though the two really weren't officially a couple. The other incident to end off the fourth episode was the detective Shinozaki breaking into Shizuru's apartment to look for a copy of the Terror Bulletin newspaper. He's heavily in debt to some loan sharks and wants to use the paper to find out what major tragedies will be occurring. That way he may be able to invest in stocks or a company to get some needed cash, that theory worked for the now deceased Hirukawa man. When you sign a copy of the Terror Bulletin you are now the 'owner' of the paper and are the only person who can read it though you do age 100 days each time reading it. Whew, kind of a long intro but one that was needed if you've been following these posts, now on to the regular recap.

 In that top screenshot is the handler of the Terror Bulletin, Kigata. He had been welcoming Shizuru back from her 'trip to the year 1870' and had told her then that her previous identity had been of the mother Yae. But no more was mentioned of that nor did we see Kigata again, that's a shame as he's still a mysterious character and why is he the handler of the Terror Bulletin? Shizuru's bike accident that ended the fourth episode wasn't too severe but she's wondering if her ex-friend Momoka wasn't the cause of it. On an important note she's now made up with Yuzuke and the pair slept together for the first time. When Momoka heard of that it sent her a bit over the edge and now her main purpose in life is to bring down Shizuru. She tried to enlist the help of the detective Shinozaki in doing that as he had visited her looking for info on the Terror Bulletin but that pairing didn't go anywhere.

 So why was Shinozaki looking for info on the cursed newspaper, didn't be find a copy of any issues in Shizuru's apartment and then transfer the ownership to himself? The answer is NO as there was no copy of the Terror Bulletin there, another bigger question is who does the paper get delivered to now? That's because it no longer goes to Shizuru and she has no clue why as she didn't have any person sign the paper. Shinozaki even visited Shizuru at her mother's cafe where she told the detective the news of her no longer receiving the paper. So now both are baffled on who is getting the Terror Bulletin, also her mother said she was clueless but we'll soon find out she knows what took place. That scene led Shinozaki to head to Momoka's with no success with finding the new owner.

 There's four screenshots in the two above batches showing Shizuru in a pair of deadly situations which she barely escaped from. She had received two messages from an unknown number saying they had info on the person who cut the brakes on Shizuru's bike and wanted to meet her. In the first incident there was a fire at a cafe, she fled to safety but a few did perish in the blaze. The second time she was with Yuzuke and right in front of Shizuru a gangster was shot to death which barely missed her. Could those messages have come from the new owner of the Terror Bulletin and did they want Shizuru to also die? Her suspicions led to Momoka and with Yuzuke headed to her apartment, no one was there but the door was unlocked. It looked like there had been a struggle, some blood was on the floor along with a tooth and had Momoka been abducted or worse?

 Shizuru enlisted the help of Shinozaki to investigate Momoka's disappearance, he really wants to find her too if she is the new owner of the Terror Bulletin. A forensics team searched Momoka's apartment though found zero clues but a humorous incident occurred. That was of Shinozaki finding Momoka's wallet and taking all of the bills for himself!!!! Later that night a terrifying scene took place at Shizuru's apartment which is the second to last screenshot above. While Shizuru was sleeping she was awakened by someone in bed with her(!), it wasn't a human nor Nao but the spirit of Momoka telling Shizuru she'll never forgive her! The following day she told Yuzuke about Momoka's ghost and he hit the boiling point with Shizuru's Terror Bulletin tales. So much that he even slapped her severely but there's more to why Yuzuke has suddenly 'lost it'.

 That slap really crushed the spirit of Shizuru to her lowest point yet, so much that she wanted to move back in with her mother for a short spell. Which the mother Utako agreed to enthusiastically as she had missed her daughter plus had some very important news. However Utako noticed the bruise from Yuzuke's slap and silently vowed to enact revenge. Wasn't long in coming as that night she set up an ambush outside of Yuzuke's apartment, before he knew what was happening Utako had walloped him on head with a huge wooden club and was going in for the kill. But outside of Yusuke's apartment was also Shizuru who was able to subdue her mother to a slight extent but it took the arriving Shinozaki to take control but during the confusion Utako fled and for days couldn't be found.

 Shizuru needed to go to the hospital for her injuries which weren't severe, Yuzuke's were though but he'll survive. But in a huge bombshell he's confessed to Shinozaki that he knows what happened to Momoka as.... he had killed her!!!! Shinozaki told Shizuru the details of the gruesome killing and she couldn't believe that life could get any lower. Above and below are some screenshots of the killing, Yuzuke had gone to Momoka's residence asking for her to forgive him and Shizuru. She wouldn't accept that apology and during that scene we even learned that Momoka had tried to hire some gangsters to kill Shizuru which they refused to do. Yuzuke couldn't believe what he heard and flew into a rage as he hit Momoka several times but had no intention of killing her. Her death occurred when Momoka had knocked over a shelf with many glass objects on it that fell on top of her, one had somehow sliced her throat and she quickly bled to death. 

 Final segment, though Yuzuke didn't 'officially murder' Momoka his actions led to her death. Instead of contacting the police he chopped up Momoka's body into tiny pieces and threw the parts into the woods surrounding Kyoto. But he had kept the head for some odd reason in his huge backpack and it's unknown at this point if Shinozaki will be charging Yuzuke with murder. The final scene took place back at Shizuru's mother's house, the police hadn't been able to locate her but Shizuru knew her mother would be hiding at the house which she was. One mystery was solved as Utako admitted she was the new owner of the Terror Bulletin and was targeting criminals who deserved to be punished. 

So seems Utako may have powers that Shizuru and Hirukawa didn't possess which was targeting certain people(criminals) but perhaps because of that the handler Kigata granted her that ability. But in two of those tragedies her daughter Shizuru was almost killed, why would her mother send her messages to be at those locations? Utako said it wasn't her who sent those messages to Shizuru and though the mother is slipping away from reality did believe her on that. We'll learn who did send those in the next recap. Utako's state of mind is really frightening Shizuru, though she's targeting criminals innocent people could also get hurt. So as the episode came to it's conclusion to Utako's dismay and fury Shizuru had found a blank copy of the Terror Bulletin, once again she'll be the one receiving the newspaper as she signed it.

 Did view the final episode after writing the above up, often times series like this end up om too much of a happy note but not tis drama. Kind of hard to make horrific events sound scary in recaps and this show has had it's share, you can probably tell that by the screenshots. Was thinking about the fifth episode and to me it may have worked better if that was the first show. Instead of a whole episode devoted to the origin of the Terror Bulletin in 1870 perhaps showing what took place in the fist twenty minutes would have worked out better, then the series could have fast forwarded to 2020. Just my two cents worth and the final recap for this drama is the next post.