"Itoshii Uso: Yasashii Yami" drama, episode four recap

 

 Air Dates: January 14th until March 18, 2022 on TV-Asahi, Friday nights at 11:15 pm

Episodes are 48 minutes in length, subs were done by Blitz Subs, their motto is getting subs done quickly and thus far they've lived up to it!

Main Cast: Wrote much of this bio info up after viewing the first episode and will update as we go along. The first six characters are all 29 in age and attended Yamanashi Junior High School. In the first episode they attended their 14th(?) reunion since graduating and all were friends back then.... or were they? A main underlying theme is the fact all of the six main characters are living their lives as a Lie and are hiding some deep secret from their school days....

Haru as Mio Imai.... The drama seems to revolve around Mio who is a very timid person but has been well liked save for two of the main characters. Her dream was to be a manga artist and she works at the Enami Manga Studio editing stories and books. Three years ago Mio did have her first manga but none since then as that book wasn't too successful. She has an enemy at her office named Rie who appears to have stolen some of Mio's stories. Back in school she also had a severe crush on the next person.

Kento Hayashi as Shuichi Amemiya.... Is the president of a small IT company in Tokyo and he seems to be doing very well. Back in school Amemiya was adored by many of his female classmates and that's continued to the present day, it seems secretly he's also had a crush on Mio which he hasn't revealed yet. 

Yuika Motokariya as Reiko Honda.... Mio's best friend back in school and like the above two characters has moved to Tokyo while the next three still reside in Yamanashi. Reiko has been very successful as she works as an attorney but is hiding a secret/lie from Mio that happened when they were in junior high but aren't all six hiding some deep secrets?

Junpei Mizobata as Ryo Fukazawa.... Seems to be the most level headed of the six 'friends' and think he's Mio's mystery fan. Ryo has remained in Yamanashi to work at his family's winery which he will eventually take over, like the others he has a mysterious secret from the past.

Yua Shinkawa as Nanae Iwasaki.... The class 'Princess' but what a cruel and eerie person she was in the first episode.... it was her only appearance before her death! Of all the main characters Nanae's life is the biggest of lies as she has given such a false image of herself on social media but those lies were beginning to crumble around her, especially when she began to stalk Mio! She's was still living in Yamanashi and worked as an OL, none of her dreams worked out.

Tomoka Kurokawa as Yumi Nose.... Final of the six who attended school in Yamanashi and the only person to have gotten married. Yumi is just a housewife with no children and her husband Tadashi is such a strict man, perhaps even a violent person too. However she kept the misery of her marriage hidden until the third show where she met her death....

This picture is from their junior high school reunion that took place early in episode one.

 Rest of the cast who will play a major part in the action.

 Sayuri Matsumura as Rie Okazaki.... She needs no introduction to Nogi fans! Rie works at the same Manga company as Mio and has made life so uncomfortable for her. Rie has stolen at least one of her stories and constantly blames her in front of others for her own mistakes.

Satoshi Tokushige as Tadashi Nose..... Yumi's overbearing and violent(?) husband, a director for the Yamanashi Police. Obsessive would be another apt description for this psycho whose role actually became bigger after Yumi's death in the third episode.

Mari Nishio as Hiroko Enami.... Owner of the manga company Mio and Rie work at. She's been noticing more and more on how badly Rie has been treating Mio but for now has kept quiet about it though is trying to diffuse this potential time bomb.

Previous recaps, would definitely help to skim through them as so much has happened.

Episode one .... Episode two

 What an ending to the previous show with the second of the main characters dying. There's another intense finale to this recap and will we already be seeing the third major character being killed? Going to have to wait two weeks for that but the ending to these episodes have so far been the best of any drama I've seen but there's only so many characters! But do have a feeling what takes place at the end of this recap won't be a death though I'm not 100% certain of that. That last show ended with Yumi drinking the poisoned wine that was intended for her cruel husband Tadashi, the events surrounding what took place do get explained but first we had a brief flashback of Yumi's that had looked at her relationship with Nanae and what took place on that fateful day.

 Growing up Yumi may have been Nanae's best friend but in reality the two really couldn't be considered friends. Nanae always had dreams of making it big as an announcer, moving to Hollywood and living a glamorous life. Yumi said she would be perfectly content to be in a regular marriage with a doting husband and children as long as she was happy. So to Nanae's silent fury Yumi was the first to get married and it was to a man from a very wealthy family, it was a prearranged marriage. Both remained in the small city of Yamanashi, Yumi because her husband was a director for the police while Nanae had stayed because all of her dreams were crushed. The pair didn't see too much of each other over the years but stumbled upon each other near the entrance of a local park. That took place right after the reunion from the first episode and for Nanae it was a fateful encounter. The pair walked a bit into the woods, stopping on a bridge to chat. To Yumi's horror Nanae had deduced from their conversation that Yumi's marriage was a pitiful one and to top it off she was having an affair with someone, to date that man hasn't been revealed but he could be a very key character.

 Nanae can really dig under someone's skin and doesn't know when to stop. Yumi just couldn't take any more of Nanae's cruel words and threats, if she told anyone else about Yumi's affairs her whole life could be destroyed. So in an intense fit of anger Yumi pushed Nanae over the side of the bridge and fled quickly away, she did eventually confess her crime to her husband Tadashi who was able to get the investigation smothered. So that was briefly Yumi's flashback about her 'friend' Nanae and it's back to the present day when Yumi met her death at the memorial for Nanae. Yumi had put poison into a glass of wine intended for her husband, but the question to an extent still is did Yumi plan on drinking it herself? May not matter because Yumi did drink the wine, within a few minutes she crumbled to the ground in agony and died but not before telling Mio she had killed their friend Nanae. Hate to say it but it was later on by Ryo that if Mio had kept out of Yumi's life she'd still be alive!

 You'd think with his wife Yumi dying Tadashi's role would have become very small but instead he became the major character of this episode and possibly the next one too. At the funeral Tadashi was so distraught with Yumi's death, Mio couldn't take his fake words anymore and in front of the crowd accused Tadashi of being such a cruel husband and a wife beater! That was true but in a very sick way Tadashi did love Yumi but not in a controlling way, he's vowed to get revenge for her death. That secret affair that Yumi was having is no longer a secret but the identity of the man is, he's still unknown by the end of this episode. Tadashi is on the hunt for this person and even travelled to Tokyo to confront Mio and Reiko about who this man is. But neither had been aware of Yumi having an affair but checking her phone records she seemed to be making a lot of calls to Ryo and why would that be?

 To Tadashi and even Yumi's friends Ryo seemed like the most logical man to be her secret lover. Whenever the conversation would turn to discovering the identity or digging more into Yumi's life Ryo would always veto the suggestion or change the subject, he began to become very suspicious. Ryo was confronted by these details by his friends but of course denied having an affair with Yumi but who wouldn't? It was revealed later on that Ryo did call Yumi often but it was about the winery's finances as her father was a banker. Meanwhile back in Tokyo Mio is really down in the dumps and after what Tadashi said at the funeral began to wonder was she really responsible for Yumi's 'accidental death'? She ended up drinking a bottle of wine by herself, shortly after knocking at her door was Amemiya who had come to comfort his friend. Both have had crushes on each other since junior high but neither has admitted it, what an innocent group these friends were. But Amemiya did spend the night to watch over Mio who passed out, the following morning the pair had a brief kiss. Nothing more has come out of that but everyone began to act as though it was a scandal!

 Tadashi as mentioned wanted revenge for his wife's death, thinking that Ryo was her secret lover the semi psycho man began to make Ryo's life utterly miserable. He targeted the winery, first by saying on a social media site his winery was responsible for Yumi's death, sending a tabloid reporter to dig up some dark secrets and then he began to leave disturbing flyers around the winery at night. But worst of all was that the winery's vineyard was being destroyed at night, someone was breaking in to snap all of the branches off the wine trees. Mio had paid a visit to the winery to confront Ryo about him being possibly Yumi's lover, that's when she discovered the vandalism taking place. She soon called Reiko and Amemiya down to Yamanashi and could the dwindling group help out their friend in a time of need? That's when Ryo pleaded with his friends he was no secret lover, Mio and Reiko seemed to believe him but Amemiya was a bit torn and the pair came so close to blows as you can see above.

 Reiko always has the best ideas, if the winery is being vandalized at night why not stake the place out, all have assumed it's Tadashi doing these evil acts. So that night Mio, Reiko and Ryo staked out the winery and that idea was successful as they caught the culprit in the act! But to their dismay it wasn't Tadashi but instead his housekeeper who was about sixty in age. Wasn't mentioned in the scene but bet Tadashi had done much of the previous damage, he's a director at the Yamanashi police HQ so he knew you can go to the well too often and sent his housekeeper there for the first time. But just like Nanae's death Tadashi will be covering this investigation up, he came to the winery to take the woman away and the trio of friends realized their plan worked yet backfired at the same time. A smirking Tadashi was leaving the winery but just as he was walking in was Amemiya and though he's been a bit shady at times he comes through in the clutch. He confronted Tadashi with an audio tape he had of Tadashi severely berating his wife Yumi and also hitting her, solid evidence to take down Tadashi but as he told Amemiya none of it would stand up in court even though the tape was real.

 Being the president of a small IT company means Amemiya always has a plan B and he did this time. Hiding in the wings was the same reporter Tadashi had sent from the Weekly Search tabloid to smear Ryo's winery. If the Yamanashi police won't prosecute their own then leave it to this reporter to reveal the truth about what kind of monster Tadashi was towards his wife, Tadashi left fuming but under his breath vowing more revenge. That act by Amemiya has brought him back into the good graces of his three friends, especially Ryo but sadly it's a group of four with two of their friends being killed, will it be three by the end of the show? We'll soon see and that story about Tadashi was published in the next issue of Weekly Search, Tadashi's days at the Police HQ could be very numbered.

 Two scenes to go and both are very important. First off Ryo met with Mio to talk about things and where does the group stand now, should they continue their own investigations of the two deaths? But more key was the fact Ryo couldn't keep a dark secret hidden any longer as it could be life threatening. The name of Nakano has been mentioned many times but not much is known about this man yet. Ryo told Mio about their Summer Festival in the year of 2007 as him, Nanae, Yumi and one other girl had gone into a field to light off fireworks. However one went shooting off in the wrong direction, it landed on the roof of Nakano's house and it eventually burned down! The fourteen year old boy was able to escape but not his parents who perished and to Ryo he feels that Nakano may have found discovered this long time secret, could he be targeting the group now seeking revenge?

 And also could this Nakano now have a new name and was perhaps Yumi's secret lover? The final forty seconds left us with another intense cliffhanger and hate to wait a week to find out what happened! Amemiya was at his IT company's office and was handed a stack of papers he brought to the elevator. He entered the elevator but was intent on reading the papers so didn't realize at first a hooded man was also there. When Amemiya peered a bit closer who should this man be but Tadashi(!), in one smooth and quick move he took out a knife and stabbed Amemiya deeply. The doors to the elevator then opened, he left while Amemiya was left clinging for his life and what another terrific ending! So that wraps up this recap, know it's early in 2022 but this could be a tough drama to top this year, intense and mysterious shows are my faves. Once again will suggest looking at some of these screenshots which do help you follow the action a bit better, next pair of recaps will be in two weeks but if you have time do recommend viewing this superb drama.