Nanase Nishino: "Kotodamasou" drama, episode three recap

 

 Air Dates: October 9th until December 11, 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 but her situation changes drastically in this show....

 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, don't know too much about her after three shows.

 Anna Ishii as Saki Hayashibara.... Resident of apartment five who is a school teacher, like the above woman we haven't seen too much of her yet so will be updating the characters as time goes on.

 Rio Uchida as Hitomi Watanabe.... Final resident in the building who resides in #6. She's an editor/publisher and the biggest reason for not knowing much about the final three characters is that the stories will go in order from apartment one up until seven.

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

 Have two more recaps for today but haven't viewed any shows after these, will wait until this post is done. It's a ten episode drama which ends next week, seven shows have been subbed so if the schedule remains at it's current pace should have all the shows recapped right around Christmas. If you're a Nanase fan highly recommend this drama as it's her best since leaving Nogi or at least her best when she's had the lead role. There's a few others in the cast who I really like, of course Ayaka is one and shocked she was killed off so quickly. Have done a post or two in the past for Mayu who has deserved more than that, promise to work on having a post for her soon.

 Episodes are 23 minutes in length and they have really flown by, that's often the case with shows I enjoy. At the end of the second episode our heroine Kotoha, along with her sham psychic friend Reishi, had trailed Shiori to an abandoned warehouse where she was supposed to make sure a reporter was killed. Shiori is an aide for a congressman named Otaka and though it was never spelled out think she's learned too much about his shady dealings. So though a reporter did write an article about a bribe incident with Otaka this 'meeting' to me was to rub out Shiori as the reporter Shimatani had never heard about such a meeting. When Kotoha and Reishi broke into the warehouse room where Shiori was she was lying on the ground unconscious, was she shot, beaten or had merely fainted?

 And what exactly happened with Shiori remains a bit of a mystery two shows later. She was badly hurt but not in a true physical sense, the hitman Narumi was nowhere to be found so what took place in that isolated room? Guess sometimes writers leave us hanging a bit to see if we can figure out what took place or will happen and that's what us viewers are doing. Seeing as how Shiori apparently wasn't harmed by a human the only alternative would the curse of Kotodama. You can see in that second screenshot a bit more of an explanation on what the word means, there's little doubt by now there is a curse at the women's apartment building by how does it get summoned and why is it hurting others? In the first recap was talking about how I viewed the first three episodes a month ago and then had to wait for the subs, that long gap is partially why there's a few unanswered questions.

 But some of them do get answered in the next recap but don't want to jump too far ahead. But at least Shiori is alive for now unlike Sayaka who died at the beginning of the second show. In the third screenshot is Hitomi who was the first women in the apartment building to deduce that the Kotodama curse may be working by room order, Sayaka was in #1 while Shiori was in the second room. So that would mean Ayako would be the next target and in a way that's what took place. That's her above in the fourth screenshot and Ayako was a temp employee at the Ashita-TV station. She's dying to get a chance to broadcast the news and had wished for the current announce to fall ill. So guess what happened.... that announcer did fall ill and in a pinch Ayako was summoned to do the news! And she did a decent job for her first time, well enough that she was asked to fill in for the time being. So the Kotodama curse is a legit one and it all revolves around words, the biggest mystery to me is why does it choose only certain words.... such as why did tragedy befall that announcer?

 Probably easy to confuse me, if you can make it through this post as mentioned things become clearer in the next recap. Ayako had learned about the 'plot' to kill the reporter Shimatani but it was really a trap to kill Shiori which failed. She worked for a congressman named Otaka who has been accepting bribes from a construction company so contracts will be awarded to them. Shimatani caught on the scam and wrote a blistering article about Otaka and his crimes. Reporting the story on air Ayako didn't give the full truth about Shimatani as Otaka has a very powerful influence over the station, she was kind of forced at first to report some lies about Shimatani such as that he had been having encounters with underage females. But following her producer Tsumura's orders has been such a boon to Ayako's career, so much she's in line to become the full time announcer for the prime time news. She's even gone out of her way to create more false stories about Shimatani as to disgrace him, that way no readers would believe what he's written about Otaka.

 Kotoha has been furious about what her neighbor has been doing and confronted her twice about it. Kotoha has talked with the reporter Shimatani and realized he's an innocent victim. The first time Ayako blew Kotoha away but not the second time which took place in their apartment's lobby. Though Ayako's career is zooming upwards minor eerie things have been happening to her, nothing major yet but is the curse of Kotodama trailing her? Trailing is a good word for in the apartment lobby Ayako noticed footprints on the floor trailing her but no person was there! Kotoha arrived on the scene at the time and told Ayako her lies are what's making the curse tail her, the only way to 'exorcise' it may be to go on air and report the truth about the fake stories involving Shimatani. However doing that would mark the end of Ayako's sudden rise to stardom plus may make her the target of Otaka if she reports the truth, what's a woman to do?

 Kotoha once again visited the sham psychic Reishi's aunt Shima who is the leader of a local shrine. But once again this woman demanded one million yen(!) just to visit the apartment building which Kotoha laughed at. This Shima does seem to know what's going on with the Kotodama curse, to date she's been kind of a comical relief but think her role will become very important. Later on Kotoha met up with Ayako for the third time, she's warned her housemate that telling a third lie on TV could be fatal for her, seems the Kotodama strikes when severe lies are told. Ayako was supposed to report that Otaka was about to begin major charitable fund but was another of his scams, when Ayako said the first few words of the story the whole studio began to shake. She immediately stopped the story and jumped under her newscasting table which may have saved her, can't say the same for her producer who was killed by a falling light!

 That incident confirmed to Ayako the existence of the curse and she'd rather lose her job then to be killed on air, who can blame her. But that's not the entire end of her story which continues on a bit into the next episode. Meanwhile what's become of Shiori who we saw in the beginning being transported unconscious to a hospital? She finally awoke and was telling Kotoha what took place at the warehouse where the reporter Shimatani was supposed to be 'killed'. When she entered the room no one was there and a few seconds after that entrance Shiori somehow caught a case of amnesia and couldn't remember one thing for days. But for some odd reason after two days in the hospital her memory roared back and Kohata taped Shiori's confession about the evil doings of the congressman Otaka. But at the very end which you can see above Shiori has relapsed into a coma like state, how could that happen so quickly Kotoha wondered? That ends this recap, the one for the fourth show is the next post and Shiori does become the main figure in the series or at least for the next show.