"Mystery to Iunakare" drama, episode seven 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 and recapping.

Ratings:

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

Episode five, 10.0% .... Episode six, 10.2% .... Episode seven, 12.3%

No doubt the drop in ratings for two shows was due to the Olympics.

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 turned 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.

 Eita Nagayama as Garo Inudo.... Though we mainly just see him in flashbacks he does play an important part in this series and expect to see a return from him in the final two shows. To learn more about Garo read the second and third recaps, his sister had been murdered and along with his two cousins Garo tried to find the killer. Which did happen and the trio got their revenge but are on now on the run from the law. Kunou and Garo got along so well together and it's possible Garo has a hand in the some of the events that have been taking place.

Amane Okayama as Rokuta Shimodo.... His original last name was Orito which was changed after his parents died in a fire. However will be referring to him as Roku which is what others call him, the name can also mean Frog. What an odd person who was the assistant to the below character and they're a pair of arsonists. Roku got to know Kunou at the hospital and unknown until the end was that Ihara was dead and now a figment of Roku's imagination!

Taichi Saotome as Kanato Ihara.... First met Roku when he set his parent's house on fire(!) but since then Roku has thought of him as his savior. He's 21 in age and also had been abused by their parents, in Ihara's case by his mother after she divorced his father. Sounds very odd but in these two shows Ihara was dead and only Roku was seeing him.

Mugi Kadowaki as Raika.... Patient at the hospital Kunou was staying at. She's memorized the book "The Thoughts of the Emperor" and communicates with Kunou via words from the book. Another very mysterious woman about 25 in age.

Previous recaps

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

Episode five

 The big advantage to having two posts in a row is that what took place in the first recap doesn't need to be discussed all that much. The first seven minutes featured the final five minutes of the ending for episode six but about two minutes of new action was spliced in. This was the darkest story to date and by the end of this show still had a few questions of what took place, mainly with Raika and what her connection may have been with the arsons.

 What was spliced in was the Otonari police working on the four recent arson cases where the parents had died but the abused child survived. There's no doubt to them Ihara is behind the fires but he's nowhere to be found and will explain more on about it later on in the post.... it's because he was dead! So that last recap ended with Roku trapping Kunou in a warehouse, the time is a little after 11:00 pm. Also in the warehouse were the parents of the girl we met at the end of the previous episode, she had drawn that flame symbol on a wall for she had been abused and wanted her parents dead! However the family lived in an apartment building and Roku couldn't burn it down as he would kill innocent people so his plan was to burn them alive in the warehouse! Kunou had been getting a bit too close to the truth about the fires so the new plan was to burn him to death with the parents. But as explained in the last recap since his parents died in a fire Roku has to wear tinted glasses for when he sees the color red he gets queasy and a bit out of control.

 It was night so Roku wasn't wearing the glasses, in a smart move Kunou grabbed a can of tomatoes from a shelf and said he would open it unless Roku confessed to what had been going on. What Kunou really wanted was to meet this mysterious man Ihara who Roku always talked about, the pair soon headed to his and Roku's hideout. Unsure why Kunou did a few things at the time such as not calling the police to free those two parents nor did he call his new friend Furomitsu on the force to tell her about Ihara and Roku.... yet! As the pair were departing the warehouse the red ornament that Raika had given Kunou in the last show slipped off his phone which he didn't notice.... or did he? But at 3:00 am Raika did come to the warehouse where she noticed it on the ground, the question was why was she there? Plus she did surmise that Kunou had gone with Roku to that hideout, she appeared there later on in the show and another question was how did she know the location?

 So finally Kunou meets this elusive Ihara who you can see above but he really didn't meet a 'live person' which will be explained. But Kunou did learn the story of Ihara who was abused by his mother after his parents had gotten divorced. She too died in a fire though it was an accident but after her death Ihara felt so much freedom and thought to himself that he could save others by killing the parents of abused children! Such as Roku's who he had killed five years ago and since then Roku has thought of Ihara as a God for saving him but deep down did Ihara save this warped young man? To date know that Ihara has killed parents in four recent arson fires plus Roku's parents, know there's many more in the past but unsure what the total is. One other child 'saved' was a boy named Sumi whose parents died five years ago by a fire set by Ihara, he's now a seventeen year old high school student.

 Sumi set up the website named Angel of Fire which the Otonari police feel is the key to the arsons and was Sumi working with Ihara and Roku? They tracked this young man down and learned the whole story of the site and why Ihara did what he did. In Japan the child abuse laws are extremely lax compared to the ones in America, often the police and doctor's hands are tied when they see an abused child. Sumi had been abused and drew a picture of that flame symbol in front of his house after a talk with Ihara, shortly after the arson took place with his parents dying. But Sumi's website was for others to share their experiences on losing parents in a fire and had nothing to do with the parents Ihara has been killing in fires. As a matter of fact Sumi is now bitter towards Ihara for killing his parents and if he had to do it over again he never would have drawn that symbol that in a way has destroyed his life and also many others. So Sumi is now in the clear but that also means the Otonari police are back at square one and a final note about Sumi.

 That's Sumi in the top screenshot and two months prior had met up with Ihara and Roku. Sumi told the pair about how his life hasn't been better since the death of his parents, also that so many others were regretting that they had asked Ihara to kill their parents too. Ihara had wanted Sumi to join him in 'saving' others which he refused and that conversation made Ihara think about what he's been doing. Later on he told his partner Roku that perhaps what they've been doing is wrong, could there be another way to protect these abused children? Ihara finally decided that he no longer wanted to be the Angel that killed parents and told Roku he would cease with the fires which infuriated Roku. Not sure why this man was so peeved about that decision but he's not in his right mind as we'll soon see. That bottom screenshot shows what happened to Ihara after that decision as Roku stabbed him to death and has kept Ihara's body in a freezer!

 Kunou has been listening to all this and so hasn't the trio from the Otonari police department. Kunou had called Furomitsu and kept the phone on, she and her two mates were listening to the rantings of Roku which to her were extremely odd. That's because it had been a one sided conversation as Roku was talking with himself but also impersonating Ihara. Of course Kunou could see what was going on and told Roku that there's no Ihara present to talk to. That finally broke Roku's mind completely and he soon confessed to everything that was mentioned above about Ihara wanting to quit being an arsonist and how Roku then stabbed his savior to death. Roku during this scene was a very difficult man to describe and even the police listening in didn't know what to make of it. So Ihara had been the mastermind behind the arsons over the last seven years though Roku had done the last two on his own due to his savior's death and there was something slightly different to them according to Raika.

 Raika somehow made an appearance at that hideaway and as you can see above she made the comment about the last two arsons being a bit haphazard. That above screenshot was from the final scene and Kunou was still so confused on who Raika really was, could she have been abused as a child and thought about asking Ihara to burn her parents to death? So now it's Christmas day but not really a merry one but at least this case was solved as Roku was led away by the police, though Kunou played the major part in nabbing the man he didn't solve this case as he did the previous ones.

 So that wraps up this story and this was a shorter recap than the others. There's three episodes to go and don't know if it'll be one long case/story that Kunou will be involved with. But do expect to see a return from Garo in at least two of those shows and has he been playing a part in these last two cases? As usual have plenty of screenshots here to make the story a bit easier to understand. Am all caught up with the two current dramas I'm reviewing so the next show I'll be recapping is one that just ended. It's called "Patissier-san to Ojousan" and it was just a four episode series. Have viewed the first two episodes and will be having those recaps sometime within the week.