Nanase Nishino: "Kotodamasou" drama, episode seven 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. Over the course of six shows have learned more about this curse, here's a few more details.

**** The Kotodama curse is awakened when someone raps three times at the caretaker's office door, it's happened twice so far in the series.

**** The curse may also do some nice things for a potential victim such as granting a wish but in the end that wish is why the person died!

**** The Kotodama hates persons that lie, if you say the same one three times you will be possessed by the spirit.

**** However there are still some unanswered questions such as why does the Kotodama only pick out certain wishes and lies?

**** As mentioned the Kotodama has something to do with words and phrases, in the seventh episode we learned the spirit is of the dead author Natsume so guess that makes a bit of sense that the curse is someone who was so adept at words.

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 had been secretly dating a man named Suzuki, the same man who broke up with Asami! However in the fifth show he broke up with both of them.

 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.

Shiro Sano as Hisashi Hatori.... first introduced in the seventh episode, he's been the owner of the Ladies' Court apartment building for over 25 years.

Mina Fujii as Natsume Mitsuba.... We won't see too much of her but she was a writer who lived at the apartment building 25 years ago. At the time the residence was named Kotodamasou and Natsume was killed in the building, is her spirit still haunting the place?

 Previous recaps

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

Episode five .... Episode six

 Discovered a few things about the apartment building which I either missed or they weren't mentioned. One is that the building is called 'Ladies' Court', it's supposedly a condominium yet their rooms are a bit on the small side. There's three stories, the six but once seven women live on the second floor, first is the main lobby with storage space and laundry rooms but not sure what's on the third floor, there's been no mention of any other residents. As said before every episode has been a tad better than the previous show and the trend continued here. The six remaining female residents thought the curse of  Kotodama has been exorcised from their building but it was reawakened in the last episode by a new resident named Yukino who couldn't make it through one show without being killed! Now it appears the curse is more angry than ever so Kotoha feels it's up to her to save her new friends, in the final few seconds of the last show she headed out to meet the owner of the building who is right above.

 That's Reishi with Kotoha in the top screenshot. He still has a lot of screen time but his role had become less important over the last few episodes, that is until the final minutes of this show. As a matter of fact the character becomes extremely key to the curse yet we won't see him in the eighth episode. Kotoha and Reishi had been on a visit to see the Ladies' Court apartment building owner Hatori, with the reawaking of the Kotodama curse could he have any answers to save them? As Kotoha mumbled in the second screenshot above the answer was no as she felt Hatori was holding back on them, it was proven later she was correct. But Hatori did explain a bit about the building's past which he's owned for over 25 years. He's such a lover of literature and began the apartment as a place for female writers to work and live. But there was a tragedy 25 years before, so bad that Hatori had closed it down for a few years before opening it back up with a new name.

 That old name was discovered by Kotoha who had been doing some detective work with Ayako. She's also a resident of the building who works as a reporter, she was infected by the curse in the third episode but survived. The previous name of the building was Kotodamasou and there's where the name of the curse came from.  A Shrine used to be at the location of the building but was destroyed by a bomb during the war, no clue yet if that has any significance. The duo was able to find out that a young and popular writer Natsume, who is above, had been killed at the building 25 years before. She had lived in apartment #1 on the second floor but was killed in the caretaker's room which is just off the main lobby on the first floor. The investigation concluded that the caretaker Sora Sugai was the culprit but nothing more was known about the murderer, is that why the curse of Kotodama has been 'living' in the caretaker's room all these years?

    Odds are good the spirit is Natsume who is seeking revenge but that hasn't been fully established yet. The Kotodama had been working in numerical order as far as possessing the residents, it started at apartment one and was up to the fifth by the end of the fifth episode. So that meant apartment six would be next up however there was that new resident in the last show so she was spared. Hitomi is the woman living in #6 and we've seen less of her than any other character to date. She's an aspiring writer and editor but who is such a fan of Natsume's works, though the woman died at an early age she did write so many novels and other stories. Hitomi's room is packed with Natsume's books, that's the woman right above and in the next show Hitomi will hold an exhibition of the woman's works.

 Kotoha nor the other residents never knew much about Natsume until now nor what a fanatic Hitomi was of the murdered author. In the third screenshot is how Kotoha's leg is, seems like she's been targeted by Kotodama once again and is it mad at her for prying into Natsume's past? Also above you can see a pic of Reishi who was visiting Natsume's grave hoping to find anything that may help him combat the avenging spirit. Who should he run into but the apartment owner Hatori, he related to Reishi most of the incidents that led up to Natsume's murder and will they be key is stopping the curse? As mentioned the caretakers name was Sora who got along well with Natsume but over time became so jealous of her as Sora's writing career had been a failure. Secretly in her room Sora had begun dressing like Natsume and trying to write in the same style, one day she happened to be discovered by Natsume which humiliated Sora so badly she killed her 'Idol'. It's still a mystery of what happened with Sora, did she escape her punishment which is why the spirit of Kotodama is still 'alive'?

 Bit of a dramatic ending, wasn't overly long but so much took place. That top screenshot shows Kotoha lying in bed, her condition has grown much worse and it's a mystery what's ailing her and the only thing known it's the wrath of Kotodama. You can't escape this curse, in the second screenshot above Shiori and Saki attempted to move to a different building but were followed there by the curse(!), they realized they had no alternative but to stay at the Ladies' Court and accept their fate. Reishi's aunt Shima who performed the exorcism two shows ago is a bit reluctant to return to the apartment building after learning the Kotodama has reappeared. But she's given Reishi a pair of amulets to use along with some chants that should keep him safe, one thing worked while the other didn't. He's returned to the building and is surprised to see how bad Kotoha's condition has become, Reishi will stay to comfort her but deep down we all know he's acquired a crush on her. But Kotoha has gained some strength, perhaps too much as soon Reishi's life was on the brink of ending!

 Above you can see Kotoha was moaning about how hot her body is, that's because it's possessed with the spirit of Natsume and during this scene we're now close to certain that the Kotodama is the curse of the murdered writer. A possessed Kotoha began to attack Reishi, he's a much bigger person than she is but it really seemed Kotoha was going to make him the third victim of the curse. However those chants Reishi's aunt gave him worked and what they did was to force the spirit of Natsume out of Kotoha's body. But not out of the building as the pair have rightly surmised that the curse has returned to the caretaker's office. They rushed down to the lobby, following the pair were the other residents who witnessed Reishi start again on the chants and point an amulet at the caretaker's door. Whatever Reishi mumbled infuriated the spirit as within five seconds it threw the door open, grabbed Reishi and yanked him into the room. The other women rushed right over but to no avail as the door slammed in Kotoha's face with Reishi trapped inside, much more intense when you view it. That brings us to the end of this recap, next is the post for the eighth episode and what's do become of Reishi?