Nanase Nishino: "Kotodamasou" drama, episode five recap

 

 Air Dates: October 9th until December 18, 2021 on TV-Asahi, Saturday nights at 11:00 pm

Subs done by arkisubsxx.... shows are 23 minutes in length, total of ten episodes.

**** The December 4th episode had to be pre-emepted so the series will end on the 18th.

Main Cast: The setting is a women's apartment building where #7 has just moved into. After her will be listing the cast by what room number they're in as we discovered in the third show that's key to the story. Of course Nanase has the lead role but every women will have at least one turn in the spotlight save for the female in apartment one which disappointed me a bit. Kind of a large cast and the hardest part in doing a series is writing this opening up! Episodes are a bit short so we didn't see much of a few characters early on and will be updating the bios.

Kotodama- A Japanese word that means that evil powers dwell in words and names, this is the curse our heroine is trying to discover and kill.

Nanase Nishino as Kotaha Utagawa.... Lives in apartment seven and has just moved into the building thanks to the help of her best fiend Sayaka. Kotoha has her own ViewTube show called 'Attraction Channel' and it's not all that popular so where does she get her money? The underlying question for the first four shows is does Kotoha have an odd curse, one that involves her use of words which has a bit to do with the above word Kotodama.

Ayaka Miyoshi as Sayaka Agi.... Apartment one dweller but not for too long so will need to update this for the third episode. Sayaka is Kotoha's best friend and is a budding songwriter who has had little success. That is until the first episode where a song she wrote has become a minor hit and a man performed it on live TV, however he died during his performance!

Yurika Nakamura as Shiori Maruyama.... Lives in the second apartment and is an assistant to a politician. Shiori is not an easy person to get along with and is a bit shady which has changed after she was targeted for death by her boss!

 Mayu Hotta as Ayako Komiyama... The woman in apartment #3 and seemed like the nicest female in the small building, that is until the third show. Ayako is a freelance announcer but has obtained a somewhat steady gig at Ashita-TV which has made her a tad greedy and untrustworthy, still a nice woman but there's something mysterious about her.

Misato Morita as Asami Kikukawa.... A budding doctor who lives in the fourth apartment, she was affected by the curse during the fourth episode but managed to live. However against Asami's wishes she donated a liver(!) which went to her ex-boyfriend Suzuki.

 Anna Ishii as Saki Hayashibara.... Resident of apartment five who is a school teacher and has been secretly dating a man named Suzuki, the same man who broke up with Asami!

 Rio Uchida as Hitomi Watanabe.... Final resident in the building who resides in #6. She's an editor/publisher and through six episodes is the only person in the apartment building not to have been cursed.

Kento Nagayama as Reishi Nakame.... He's a sham psychic who doesn't believe he is. In the first show he hooked up with Kotoha to perform an exorcism which proved to be fatal. However he's a major character who eventually formed a partnership with Kotoha to solve this unknown curse/mystery and is a bit of a goofy man.

 Yuki Saito as Shima Iwato.... Final major character and she's the aunt of Reishi. She's the head of a local shrine where Kotoha and Reishi have visited for advice which never seems to work because Shima is more interested in money than helping or at least early on she is.

 Previous recaps

Episode one .... Episode two .... Episode three .... Episode four

 Changed the end date as this series was supposed to wrap up on December 11th but the episode to air on the fourth was pre-empted so it'll be ending a week later. In the next recap at the top will have a better explanation of this Kotodama curse. Have been learning much more about it as time goes on, not everything has been revealed about it and still have many questions but that keeps us viewing this drama. Every show as just gotten a bit better and the sixth episode, which is the next recap, is the best of them all and this has turned out to be one of the better dramas of 2021. These recaps aren't too long so it may help to glance through some of the above ones, mainly the fourth episode which ended on a cliffhanger. That was with the doctor Asami in a surgery room about to have her liver removed(!), she lives in room #4 as the curse is working it's way up the ladder. In this show room #5 was scheduled to get the curse, that's Saki who did to an extent but not as severe as her apartment mates.

 One thing I really want to learn is why does this Kotodama curse only pick out certain things people say? Everyone has many things they wish for during the course of a day, think it may have something to do with how often you yearn for something to happen, it can be good or bad but more often than not what the Kotodama does are acts of evil. 

 So when the fourth episode ended off the doctor Asami was lying in an operating room about to have her liver removed!!!! It'll be going to her ex-boyfriend Suzuki, we rarely saw him but he turned out to be a key character. Asami had wanted to donate her liver but the hospital's main surgeon said her body wasn't strong enough but would have made an exception if she was married. In her apartment room Kotoha and a few others discovered a marriage certificate, was Asami really planning on wedding Suzuki? Yes but there's no way he would have gone through with it, highly recommend reading the previous recap for that explains what Asami tried to do with her neighbor Shiori! There's seemingly nothing this Kotodama can't do, it somehow filled out the marriage form and whisked it to the hospital where it ended up on the desk of the main surgeon!!!!

 Meanwhile the pressure of what she tried to do to Shiori and with Suzuki close to dying was too much for Asami who had fainted during her shift. When she arose where should she be but on the operating table about to donate a kidney, she screamed her body wasn't strong enough but to no avail. However the operation was a success, Suzuki is recovering nicely and Asami will be back to normal in a few days. She felt that donating her liver may bring Suzuki back to her but there's someone in the way. He had left Asami a year or so prior for another woman, against all odds who should that woman be but Asami's next door neighbor Saki! She lives in apartment five so the curse is scheduled to affect her this show, more on that coming up. Suzuki is around thirty age and has a seven year old son from a previous marriage. That son Rintaro is in Saki's class as she's a school teacher which is how she met Suzuki. The pair get along very well and that relationship was unknown to all until after the liver transplant. 

 Once things were settled down at the hospital back at the apartment building Kotoha had a serious talk with Saki and wants to know all, though a newbie at the building Kotoha has her hands in everyone's affairs! In her diary Asami had written that she would do anything to get Suzuki back, Saki knew of that and as you can see in that above two screenshots was wishing Suzuki would dump her for good and choose her. Seems when you wish too for something or tell devious lies often the Kotodama spirit gets a bit angered and that's when a person gets cursed. Hasn't happened yet to Saki but will, the curse is still with Asami and it'll eventually attack both at once. But that wishing did neither Asami nor Saki any good as you can see him above, that's Suzuki telling Saki that he's breaking up with her. But not to return to Asami as he wants nothing to do with her, both gals were dumped at the same time!

 So that'll probably be the last we see of Suzuki, vey little screen time but a major character in these last two episodes. More on the two housemates coming up but first the situation at the apartment building has gotten out of hand for Kotoha, before any more deaths she's realized that only an exorcism can rid the building of Kotodama. And the only person to turn to do is Reishi's aunt Shima who does seem to know quite a bit about the spirits but is more interested at making a splash money wise. To date Kotoha has refused to pay the older lady money just to help others but now she has no choice, Shima knew that as the price for an exorcism has risen to 2.5 million yen!!!! Kotoha doesn't have that kind of money and brings in so little from her ViewTube video show which has only 300 subscribers. But the Kotodama curse can also help out in a positive way though it hasn't happened often. With the help of Reishi Kotoha spent the night praying and chanting for her total subscribers to hit the total of 10,000, that way she'd have enough $$ to pay for the exorcism. And against all odds the Kotodama heard Kotoha's pleas as the total went way over 10,000 by morning and was still rising.

 Of course Kotoha doesn't have any money yet from her new subscribers but has vowed to Shima she will so immediately the leader of the shrine was whisked way to the cursed apartment building. The women live on the second floor, on the first is a living room, storage space, a lobby and the caretaker's office which is where Shima said the Kotodama was hiding in. For the first time that door to the office was opened, in the third screenshot above is what was hovering about but is that the main curse of Kotodama? Seems so though Shima said it could be one of it's 'henchmen' and began to chant a spell to rid the building of the demon. This 'spirit' was quite powerful and zoomed out of the room to attack Shima and it eventually ended up possessing her! But with Kotoha's help Shima regained her senses and picked up her 'magical arrow' which she flung at the spirit. It was a direct hit and the demon stumbled back into the office, it is killed but the question was for how long?

 That we'll learn in the next recap and that 'killing' of the Kotodama also saved the lives of Asami and Saki. The pair were at the hospital discussing their being dumped by Suzuki when the Kotodama attacked them and their lives were draining away rapidly. But when it appeared there was no hope left was when Shima's arrow had killed Kotodama and the curse was lifted off the two women who were now saved, forever though? So after five shows only one of the seven women has been killed sometimes the Kotodama will 'lift his curse' if a woman has been repentful enough, will describe that more in the next recap which is the next post. Plus the Kotodama will instill temporary amnesia to his victim as both Shiori and Asami had no clue what evil acts they were doing. And we'll have a new housemate at the building in the next show who is right above, she's Yukino who will be moving into Sayaka's old apartment. In the final two seconds you can see in the very last screenshot below that it seems the Kotodama has already been reawakened!