"Mystery to Iunakare" drama, episode six 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 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. Ihara is 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

 Really zooming through this and the 'Itoshi' series, so fast that I'm caught up with the subbing team! So may have to look for another drama to view and recap, there's two beginning within the week that I want to view and hope they'll get subbed. Two part story so after this post is the recap for episode seven with the second part of the case/story. This was the oddest case to date by far and the next episode was the strangest show to date. Our hero Kunou did play an important part in this case which had to deal with an arsonist but for the second time there was also a 'ghost' that was a key figure, in a way Kunou really didn't solve the case but without him it wouldn't have been possible. The first screenshot has the two main guest stars for this story though we didn't meet them until about ten minutes in.

 At the end of the third episode Kunou had fallen down a small hill, he wasn't hurt too badly but spent the entire fourth show in the hospital. His neighbor in the next bed turned out to be a Spirit(!) but more importantly had given Kunou the book "The Thoughts of the Emperor" by a young woman who had the entire book memorized. Not just the words but where every one was in the book and began to send Kunou coded messages that referred to the words. For instance the code may be 14-8-10 which would mean page 14, line 8, word(s) ten. So at the end of the last show Kunou met this woman at 3:00 am, her name is Raika and though we see much of her in these two episodes she remained very mysterious and what did she really want from Kunou? That first meeting lasted for barely a minute and Raika told Kunou to come to the same spot tomorrow at 3:00 pm which was the hospital's greenhouse, we didn't see it but Kunou was discharged during this episode. There was another message written on the floor which you can see above, Kunou has to use the book to decipher the code.

 It was to check the flower pot next to the message and in it was a handbag buried in the dirt. Right after that the woman in charge of the greenhouse, Umezu, rushed in and asked what in the world was Kunou doing? How Raika knew of this handbag was another mystery but according to Umezu it was a former patient's bag and the woman had died. The two got along so well and this patient's daughter never came to pick up the woman's belongings so Umezu took it for herself. Kunou and this woman had a nice heart to heart talk and as time goes on he's showing more of his 'human side'. Kunou suggested looking again in the bag and to Umezu's surprise there was a note and an envelope full of money! Seems this patient knew her daughter wouldn't take the bag so this had been a parting gift to Umezu for her friendship though Kunou said she should still report it to the hospital's lawyers. After that meeting with the greenhouse keeper Kunou was finally heading home where he noticed another note pinned to a tree, once again it was from Raika. It told Kunou to go to an address which he did, there was a huge crowd there for at the address a house had burned down killing two parents but their child was safe. Pay attention to that bottom screenshot above, that symbol will become very important to the story.

 Raika was also at the scene and as mentioned we really didn't learn much about her but she seems to know about the odd things that had been taking place. Raika was the one who alerted Kunou to that symbol which was in front of the house that burned down. Right above is where that flame symbol is from, a website named Angel of Fire and it appears that site has something to do with the recent rash of arson cases. You can see the screenshot of Ihara right above, he's about a 21 year old man who was released from prison six months ago and was an arsonist. Since his release there's been four fires where the parents had died but not the child, the common link was that the child had been abused and that flame symbol was in front of the house. The Otonari police department is on the case and Kunou's two new friends on the force Furomitsu and Ikemoto have filled him in on some of the details.

 Third screenshot above shows a man in glasses who is also about 21 in age and his name is Roku. When he was thirteen his parents had also been killed in an arson fire, Roku had put that symbol in front of his house and the culprit was none other than Ihara. To Roku this man or actually boy at the time was his savior and also the savior of so many other children who had been abused by their parents. But as we'll see in the next show did killing the parents relieve the trauma these children were going through? So after some years passed Roku hooked up with Ihara and the duo have been responsible for the four recent arsons. Roku happened to meet Kunou at the hospital greenhouse and had told Umezu to remove some red flowers immediately. Roku confessed to Kunou that he doesn't need glasses to see but instead not to see things! Since that fire at the age of thirteen anytime Roku sees something red he gets very queasy and the glasses are tinted so as not to see the color red. Actually Kunou didn't know all of those facts until the very end of this show but Kunou already has his suspicions about Roku.

 Kunou had first seen Roku at the most recent arson and he was there with his partner /savior Ihara, Kunou and Roku will keep bumping into each other for the rest of this episode. No snow on the ground but the time when this show started was two days before Christmas and in another meeting with Raika she told Kunou they should get each other gifts. All meetings with Raika are short for she can only slip out of her hospital ward at 3:00 am/pm when the nurses go on break. During this quickie get together Raika did drop a bombshell to Kunou but didn't go into the full details. She was looking at a cherry blossom tree which won't be blossoming until April and blurted out 'I won't be around then to see it happen'. Kunou is becoming more personable but had no clue how to respond to a comment like that nor did he have any idea what to get a woman for Christmas. His decision ended up being a mini painting from a French artist, Raika got Kunou a small red object that fit nicely on his phone, that'll be a key item in the next episode and did Raika realize that?

 One minor thing which is in the above screenshots. That's a pic of Kunou finally able to eat his fave meal of Curry and he must have been interrupted five times from doing that in the previous shows. Those meetings with Raika take place at the hospital and once again Kunou ran into this mysterious man named Roku. That can mean Frog in Japanese and Roku told a bit of his background which wasn't a pleasant one with being bullied by his classmates and abused by his parents. Kunou also had a silent flashback to his childhood which didn't seem to happy either but don't think he was abused. There was a turning point in Kunou's life when he was about ten and a female teacher really took a liking to him as Kunou was a bit of an outcast. She taught him to look at things in a much different way and he's carried that advice through to this day which is why he's so adept at solving problems and crimes. One other note is that we finally saw Kunou at his college but only for a minute or so. Until now thought he wanted to be in law enforcement but he's studying to be a teacher and he'd make for a superb one.

 Final segment, we didn't see much of the Otonari police detectives but we will in the next recap. They're still on the hunt for Ihara but he's nowhere to be found and there's going to be a good reason for that! For the fourth time Kunou ran into Roku and this time it was passing by an apartment building. In that second screenshot above is a eight year old girl named Risa who was being beaten by her mother and new stepfather. She's drawing a picture of that flame symbol and what it does is to alert Ihara that she's being abused and wants her parents to be killed in a fire! These children are too young to search the internet for things like that so it was Roku who discovered these children during his visits to the hospital.  Kunou observed what this girl was doing but didn't approach her to find out where she learned about the symbol and why she wanted her parents dead, at times he could be much more forceful. It's Christmas Eve and Roku has told Kunou the greenhouse keeper will be throwing a party the next day for the hospital's children, could he help that night in setting things up?

 To that Kunou said Yes but the meeting wouldn't take place until 11:00 pm and in a dark warehouse, sounds a bit suspicious to me. Not to Kunou at first but when he entered the warehouse he could sense something was wrong, mainly because Roku wasn't wearing his tinted glasses. When Kunou tried to flee he was tackled and brought back deeper into the warehouse where there were two people tied and gagged. They were the parents of the little girl Risa, they live in an apartment building so Roku couldn't burn that down and kill innocent people. So instead he'll burn the warehouse down with them in it, now that Kunou has gotten so close to the truth he too will be burned alive and what a climax to this show. Next post has the conclusion of this arson case and what a very odd episode it was.

**** Bit of a spoiler but want to reveal some of it now. There's plenty of screenshots above and below of Ihara but he's just a figment of Roku's imagination! About two months ago Roku had killed his savior and will say why in the next recap. So all this time Roku has just been talking to himself and knowing that clears up a few inconsistencies such as why Ihara was only seen once in public.