"Mystery to Iunakare" drama, episode four recap

 

 Air Dates: January 10th until March 14, 2022 on Fuji-TV, Mondays at 9:00 pm

 Total of nine episodes, first show was seventy minutes in length but the others will be the usual 46 minutes. Blitz Fansubs is once again doing this drama, they're also doing another current series I'm viewing.

Ratings:

Episode one, 13.6% .... episode two, 12.7%.... Episode three, 13.2 %.... Episode four, 13.3%

Main Cast: The series takes place in Tokyo and most of the action revolves around cases being investigated by the fictional Otonari police station. However all of the stories and cases will end up involving the 21 year old college student Kunou and unlike other dramas will be using the character's last names as that's all they've been using. A huge plus for this series is that it doesn't star any of my fave actresses or Idols though Mai Shiraishi made a guest appearance. But I've seen all of the cast in many other dramas and they're all superb actors, so far superb describes this drama!

Masaki Suda as Totono Kunou.... In real life Masaki turns 29 in February but plays the 21 year old Kunou who is attending the prestigious Toei university. He's such a loner but doesn't act like a nerd or outcast at all, he makes sure others know he's never had a job, girlfriend, any other friends nor socializes in the least. But somehow Kunou has the intelligence of a Sherlock Holmes and let's others know how to solve their life problems. But not in an egotistical way as he is a down to earth guy though on occasion others have wanted to beat Kunou for telling them how to live properly. The name Totono is a play on words as it means neat and orderly which seems like another apt description for him.

Sairi Ito as Seiko Furomitsu.... The only female detective at the Otonari station and was looked down upon by her male counterparts. So much that Furomitsu had written a letter of resignation up in the first show but after meeting Kunou changed her mind about quitting. She is a dependable person whose confidence is growing with each show.

Matsuya Onoe as Yuto Ikemoto.... Detective at the station and in a way kind of a goofy man. In the first episode his wife had a child though his marriage wasn't going all that smoothly, that is until meeting Kunoe who gave him some solid advice though he himself has never been married nor had a girlfriend. Ikemoto was the only one for a while who treated Furomitsu as somewhat of an equal.

Michitaka Tsutsui as Mariaki Aoto....Inspector at the Otonari station and is kind of a hard man to figure out. Aoto is a bit quiet though there could be some good reasons for that, he was once a Deputy Inspector but got demoted for a case where he targeted the wrong suspect. That happened seven yeas ago but Kunou remembered the case and told Aoto where he may have gone wrong.

 Guest Stars: There's going to be many known actors making some guest appearances, after so many in the last two episodes just one in this show.

 Tasuku Emoto as Michio Mifune.... A serial bomber who is then naturally the focus of this episode. The man has planted three bombs and had given clues on their whereabouts so no one ended up getting injured. Mifune looks to be in his mid to late twenties, he didn't have a happy childhood which seemed to be the main reason for planting bombs. The key clue for Kunou solving this case were the letters MI, you can see what the bomber's names began with.

Previous recaps

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

 Thanks if you've been reading these recaps, hard to make these kinds of posts exciting reads. But think of them as if you were reading a recap of a ballgame that describes all of the action and hopefully have done a well enough job that a few viewers will want to check this superb drama out. This will be like the first recap which was a stand alone post, almost always do back to back recaps for dramas. But this is another stand alone case which actually works out for the best. It's a ten episode series which means after this there will be three batches of two posts. Have done four recaps for this drama in about six days so will slow down a tad and have the next pair in about a week.

 That bottom screenshot is of the bomber Michio Mifune though we don't see much of him until a quarter of the episode has passed. He turned out to be a very complicated man due to an accident that occurred in this show, that pic is of him at home listening to the police track his bombs as he was able to hack into their radio network. On with the story and what Mifune did for bomb #1 was to send the police a coded message on where it was, but there was a clue that the bomb was in a 36 story building in the Shinagawa district of Tokyo. The police did find this bomb quick enough and the code didn't need to be ciphered. A second bomb threat was sent the following day, they're being sent by the internet and the dates for this episode were December 17th to the 19th. This bomb was located in an 18 story building in the Otonari district, just where our main detectives are located!

 No blind luck this time in locating the bomb as there's many buildings that size in the area. Kunou has gotten such a godly like reputation at the Otonari police department for the way he solved the two cases already, that third screenshot is of the female detective Furomitsu calling Kunou for more help on this case! Of course he was about to enjoy a meal of curry and if there's justice in this drama he'll be allowed to finish a curry meal before this series ends! Reluctantly Kunou agreed to help and went to the Otonari station to read the second message. Both have been written in English, Kunou seems to have a solid grasp on the language and was able to decipher the code rather quickly. But he didn't let on to Furomitsu about the bomb's location as you can see in the fourth screenshot, Kunou says he's more interested in the 'why' of these messages versus where the bomb is. For instance why is this person planting bombs but more so why is he giving the police clues on where they are? But time was of the essence as the bomb would explode in less than an hour, Kunou told the detective it was planted in a restaurant named Queen and the bomb squad disabled it with time to spare.

 Kunou hadn't seen the first coded bomb threat but solved that too, was there any connection to them? Yes there was and Kunou has one sharp mind which he'll put to good use later. Both threats had scrambled English letters, he was able to deduce that they spelled out the titles of two books. The first bomb was located at a cafe named Edogawa who was a famous Japanese mystery writer, the second at a restaurant named after the American writer Ellery Queen. However Kunou wasn't positive that this trend would continue if there were more threats, not so to Furomitsu who thinks Kunou is a genius! That took place on December 18th, of course the following was the 19th and the bomber has uploaded another bomb threat, it was received shortly before noon and is scheduled to go off at 3:30. Furmomistu and her partner Ikemoto wanted to bring in Kunou again to solve the code but that was nixed by the inspector Aoto who said they're detectives and should be able to solve it on their own. 

 Which Furomitsu did and by a lucky break discovered it was the title of an Agatha Christie novel. This latest bomb was to go off in a three story building in the Asakusa district and it just so happened there was a coffee shop there named after the writer. But though the police searched the shop and others in the building their efforts went for naught, Furomitsu thought what did she figure out wrong? As mentioned this bombers name is Mifune who was a scraggly type of man, aren't they all in dramas or films? He left his apartment to possibly view the explosion if there was one but on his way was hit by a truck in the pouring rain, physically Mifune was okay but is now suffering from a case of..... Amnesia! Mifune ended up sitting on a riverbank, of all people who should walk by during that time was Kunou and of course he was curious about why he was sitting there in the rain. The pair ended up sitting under a small veranda and had a long talk, but with his amnesia Mifune had a hard time talking about himself. But the ever observant Kunou noticed many traits about this man's hand movements and certain subjects he talked about, before long Kunou realized he was sitting with the serial bomber!!!!

 There's just way too many subtle things Kunou notices to talk about such as hand/finger movements, they way people react to things and certain words/phrases a person says often. As mentioned before this is a drama that's better to view than read about because of those subtle things along with it's mysterious atmosphere. But Mifune's memory had slowly been coming back and blurted out he thought he may have planted a bomb somewhere! That plus a few other observations made Kunou realize he was sitting with the serial bomber but almost forgot to mention one thing. During this whole time Kunou didn't know this man's name was Mifune as he himself had forgotten it plus he didn't have a wallet or phone, by the end of the show Mifune will remember his name. Kunou did contact the pair of Furomitsu and Ikemeoto with the news he had found the bomber however the man had amnesia! There was about ninety minutes to go before this third bomb would explode, Kunou told the pair of detectives to hold on as he'll try to find out it's location.

 Mifune had led a troubled life, first his mother left him when he was about four and then some years later his father found a new woman and abandoned his son, no clue how Mifune lived on his own which he claimed he did. At school he was bullied badly and was an outcast due to having no parents but a woman teacher became his best friend. She would take Mifune to parks and help him out with his troubles, it was eventually revealed that this woman was the real mother of Mifune! After two years she was 'sent away' according to Mifune but the true story was the woman died. During this long chat which began when Kunou discovered Mifune sitting in the rain he's noticed something that could be very, very important. Which is that Mifune has such a liking or perhaps a fetish for the word Three or the other meaning of the Kanji symbols. What I mean is the Kanji symbol for three is often pronounced San but can also be pronounced Mi(i), so much of what Mifune talks about begins with either San or Mi such as books, writers, his past and virtually everything, that's the key to Kunou for solving this case.

 As you can see in the second screenshot above Kunou was able to crack the code for this third bomb, you needed all three messages to figure out it was at the Hanawa elementary school. Mifune's memory seems to be almost back to normal and he was mighty impressed with Kunou's unique abilities that cracked the code. The reason Mifune picked that school is because of it's bad memories when he had been bullied attending there. But as Kunou pointed out there were also good memories of that school for there was the last place he saw his mother. It's a Sunday so obviously Mifune didn't want to hurt anyone as the school was closed, it's now 2:50 pm and the bomb is scheduled to explode in forty minutes. Well above you're going to see a screenshot of Mifune's watch and he said it was set thirty minutes ahead. When he was a kid he was always late to school so his teacher(mother) said to set his clocks a bit ahead and he'll never be late. But being such a fanatic about the word three along with Mi and San he's always set his clocks and watches thirty minutes fast. Many people do set their clocks ahead but is was very odd to Kunou that Mifune set it so far ahead but then again it was another thing that's a multiple of 3, so weren't the amount of stories high the buildings where the bombs were placed at.

 Took a while for it to sink in but it did in the nick of time for Kunou. If Mifune sets his clocks ahead thirty minutes then that would mean the clock on the bomb was fast and would blow up thirty minutes earlier than expected!!!! It's now 2:58 pm, in two minutes the bomb will explode and Kunou quickly contacted Furomitsu who told everyone to evacuate immediately. Most did but it being a drama the bomb squad remained and with ONE SECOND to spare deactivated the bomb, no students would have been killed because it was a Sunday but the school would have been destroyed. So soon afterwards the police arrived to haul Mifune away and that's when he finally told Kunou his real name, of course both names began with a MI.

 And that wraps up this recap save for one incident in the final forty seconds. Kunou was on his way home and passed the spot where Mifune had been hit by a car. He noticed a phone down an embankment which he presumed was Mifune's and attempted to grab it but the phone was just out of his reach. So he attempted to grab it with his umbrella but at that exact moment Furomitsu appeared and called out Kunou's name. That made him tumble down the hill and the next episode will begin with him in the hospital recovering from the fall. Haven't viewed that show yet but sure it's another interesting episode, next pair of these will be in about a week. Usually recommend viewing these screenshots and do so for this episode as they contain so many small yet key details of what took place.