Nanase Nishino: "Kotodamasou" drama, episode nine 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 ended 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 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?

Nanao as Sora Sugai.... Briefly saw her in the seventh and eighth episodes. Added her in for this ninth show as her role became much larger. She's the one who killed Natsume 25 years ago but we're still no sure if it's her or Sora who has become the Kotdama curse.

 Previous recaps

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

Episode five .... Episode six .... Episode seven .... Episode eight

 Been two weeks since the last recaps so it may help to read the eighth episode again. My fault as I didn't realize that the subs were completed a week ago but will give a brief overview on where the show stands as we enter this ninth episode. Eight women have resided at the Ladies' Court apartment building, two who stayed in apartment one have been killed by the Kotodama curse. Lot of tragedies and eerie events took place with the other six but no deaths or have there been? In the final five minutes of the eighth show both Asami and Saki were pulled into mirrors, to their death or to some kind of cursed world?

 Shortly after that Ayako was pulled into her bathtub that was full of water. And as the episode ended Shiori was dragged underneath her bed by a pair of slimy hands, is the death total now up to four? Plus at the end of the seventh show Reishi had been pulled into the caretaker's room by the arms of Kotodama, he hasn't been seen since then. So only two females are left, that's our star Kotoha and Hitomi who is such a large fan of the deceased writer Natsume. The question is whether this dead writer is the demon Kotodama and the pair are now on a hunt to find out the truth of what took place 25 years ago, few mysteries were cleared up in this show. Haven't viewed the final episode yet as I want to keep the suspense up and won't watch it until this recap has been written up.

 Check out that bottom screenshot, I really thought it was a creepy moment and will get into what it meant shortly. There's no way the police could be contacted as how would they believe a dead woman from 25 years ago is responsible for a possible six deaths?! The only person to turn to as far as Kotoha was concerned was Reishi's aunt Shima who is the head of a local shrine. She's tried to help out many times prior and has given some good advice which have all been failures, mainly because it seems the Kotodama curse has grown stronger. In the top screenshot is Kotoha along with Hitomi who have once again pleaded for Shima to help them out, she will but not until later on. She's advised them to find out more about the dead writer Natsume and why is she so angry at the residents of the building who had nothing to do with what took place 25 years ago.

 Back at their building another creepy incident took place and they're becoming plentiful. Kotoha was finally able to open the room where Reishi's supposed to be, she chanted 'Reishi be safe' which she hoped would please the spirit. After that the door did open but the only thing there was a brick wall!!!! But a few short seconds later what should start coming out of the solid wall but a female ghost however it wasn't the spirit of Natsume, who was this other woman? There's only one person who knows about the events of 25 years ago, that's the apartment building owner Hatori who has kept too many details hidden. With all of these recent incidents Hatori knows he needs to help and showed the two women some pictures from way back then, the year would be 1996. He tried to tear the building down but the cursed spirit ended up killing all of the workers! Kotoha viewed an old photo album where she recognized a face, it was the one she saw coming out of the brick wall! Her name was Sora who supposedly killed Natsume and that's her in that above bottom screenshot.

 Hatori is about 55 in age and had been fairly healthy until two or so months ago which would have been the beginning of October. But since then he's had some serious issues and needs a steel cane to walk these days, that he admitted to Kotoha. She thought to herself that's the exact time I moved into the apartment building plus when all of these eerie happenings began, could I be the reason for these misfortunes? Kotoha does raise a good point as I'm wondering too if she could be cause of the Kotodama reawakening. It takes three sets of three raps on the caretaker's door to revive the curse which is what she did at the beginning of the first episode. So it's back to the apartment building as Kotoha, along with Hitomi, will be taking Shima's advice and learn even more about the murdered Natsume. However you can see above what awaited them when they returned, the brick wall had crumbled and the curse is on the prowl, is that who we saw outside of Hatori's window?

 In tow with the two women was Shima who now really wants to solve the mystery of the curse for her own pride but never has seemed that concerned about her nephew Reishi. As you can see in the above first screenshot a seance/ritual was performed to call the spirit of Natsume back into the real world.... and it worked!!!! But being a spirit means you must possess the body of a human and she chose Hitomi which made sense as she was such a fan of the deceased writer. Won't go into every detail Natsume said about the events from 25 years ago but she wasn't what she appeared to be. Natsume did write a very successful debut novel but after that couldn't think of anything else to write. She then moved into the women's apartment building for some inspiration which didn't work but she did meet the caretaker Sora. The pair became close friends very quickly and Sora was a fan of that novel plus had dreams of also being an author. 

 So what eventually happened is that Sora began to help Natsume out with ideas and even wrote much of her next two novels which was unknown to everyone. So you could say that Sora was Natsume's 'ghostwriter' which was later confirmed by Hatori, why would Sora let her take all of the credit? Well, as you can see in the third screenshot the pair were more than just regular friends and a you-know-what kind of relationship began. After confessing much of what took place so many years ago Natsume started to lose her powers and left the body of Hitomi. With those bombshells Kotoha said it's time to confront Hatori one more time and along with Shima dashed to his manor. But before that you can see in the first screenshot above that Shima entered the caretaker's room hoping to find whatever, perhaps Reishi? He was nowhere to be found nor any evidence of him, no spirits were there either so where is the curse of Kotodama now?

 At the house the two women confronted Hatori with their evidence of Sora writing Natsume's novels and are demanding answers! Hatori is slowly coming clean with everything that took place with Natsume but only in drips and drabs which is making the situation much worse. He confessed that Kotoha and Shima are 100% correct with all of their findings about Sora writing the novels and having Natsume take all of the credit. But there's more that they don't know which the main point being if Sora loved Natsume so much why did she kill her? In the final two minutes Hatori dropped a bombshell on the two women which is that Natsume met a man and became engaged.... to none other than Hatori! That enraged Sora so much as she felt betrayed by her lover and after that news strangled Natsume to death, since then Sora has never been seen. But is she the curse of Kotodama and not Natsume? That could be so as in the final five seconds the spirit entered Hatori's house and it appears it's to kill the man! Did that happen is not entirely clear yet, that will start off the last episode which is the next post, what another intense ending.