"Nanji no Na" drama, episode five of eight recap

 

 Air Dates: April 6th until May 25, 2022 on TV-Tokyo, Wednesday nights at 12:30 am

Subs were done by GEO9875 at DA, also has the title of Your Name.

Main Cast: Wrote this up after viewing two episodes and have been making many edits to the character's bios, what a confusing drama it was at first.

Hirona Yamazaki as Toko Aso.... Her real name is Riyako Mikami and is using the identity of another character in this show which will be explained in the recaps. She works as the president of the ETS agency which is a front as it's not a dispatching company but one that destroys people's lives! Riyako is such a stuck up person and we'll be learning what her background was before the name change as I'm very curious about it.

Kii Kitano as Hisae Aso.... The real sister of Toko though her last name isn't Aso but Mikami too. Hisae is a bit of a shut-in and has been that way for three years since breaking up with her boyfriend. At the time Hisae was working at a pharmaceutical company and seems to know every kind of medicine created. She takes care of the household for 'Toko' but her sister has a love/hate relationship with her and constantly berates her. Actually as we learned in the fourth show the two aren't sisters(!) but friends since high school.

Mijika Nagai as The Mysterious Woman.... But she does have a name and she's the real Toko Aso! Years before she had fallen heavily into debt and 'thanks' to Kawashima's company they were all paid off. But the price was that Riyako would be allowed to assume her identity for five years and these days the real Toko is a drug addict and very down on her luck. In the fourth show she died of an overdose but it was no accident!

Hidekazu Mashima as Koji Kawashima....Owns the ETS agency which says it's a dispatching company but that's a front. Their main objective is to bring down an individual such as someone who owes money, is gong through a divorce and such, will explain it better as time goes on.

Waku Kyoten as Kyohei Ito... Only saw him in the first show and he's a whiz at computers who just won a prestigious web designer award. He seems to love Toko but those feelings will never be returned.

Naoto Kataoka as Ryosuke Iki.... Is a manager at the esteemed Crown Hotel who has had his eye on Toko for a while, we didn't meet him until the end of the second episode. But by episode four him and Toko have struck up a close relationship.

ETS.... In the third episode we did learn more about this company though much of it was lies Toko was telling Iki. It stands for Extra Talent Staff and Toko told him the agency hires actors to help others in their lives. For instance if someone needed an escort, a grandmother wanted a grandson for a party, etc. In other words to bring some joy to a person's life but in reality ETS brings havoc to a person's life such as a vengeful wife wanting to disgrace her husband and other things along that line, we've seen one life destroyed already by Toko.

Previous recaps

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

 Not as much happened in this show versus the first four episodes though it was a solid ending which could set the tone for the final three shows. Most dramas that are in the 23-26 minute range I end taking 40+ screenshots for these recaps. Not so for this show as the average as only been 32 and took only 29 for this episode. The fourth episode ended up with Hisae at the house of an elderly woman named Mamako Tsujiko, have explained that story twice already so it may be good to skim through some previous recaps. The two struck up a friendship rather quickly and Mamako has trusted Hisae enough to let use her bankbooks to withdraw money for groceries and such. But Hisae was in dire straights for cash and began to skim some money with each withdrawal which has made Mamako a bit suspicious. We viewers knew it was just going to be a matter of time until Hisae took the bank books or cleaned out an account but what took place in this episode's beginning was quite surprising. 

 Left something out that took place at the end of the previous episode to see how it ended up. What happened was Hisae was making tea for Mamako and put some drops from a small medicine bottle into it, at the time thought it was a drug to make her unconscious. I was correct with it being a drug but not the other half as this potion was lethal and what happened was that hours later Mamako dropped dead! That came as a shock and in the above top screenshot Hisae was on her way to paying her older friend a visit two days later when her neighbors told Hisae what had happened, good acting job by Hisae not to jump and down with joy!!!! Mamako had three bank accounts, know Hisae cleaned out one but don't know about the others. With that one account she paid off the rent on her secret apartment for a year and had $1,200 left over, Hisae is far from the kind of person we thought she was. 

 More about the now devilish Hisae coming up but what of her older sister Toko? As you can see above her and Ryosuke Iki have really gotten very close to each other in such a short amount of time, it was the first night they had spent together. Didn't think it would happen so soon but Toko finally came clean about much of her past to Iki and how Toko Asko isn't her real name. That of course is Riyako Mikami and she told Iki part of the reason for using a different name, she told him it was because of working at the ETS agency but not that she was using the name of a client who was now dead! Iki sees something in Toko the rest of us don't, granted she is an attractive woman but she has the aura of being such a hard to believe/trust person. 

 Iki began using her real name of Riyako but for now Hisae still uses Toko and seeing as how that's the name I've been using will continue to do so. Toko also dropped the bombshell that Hisae wasn't her true sister but the pair had known each other since high school, we still need to learn how these two ever began living together for they are so different. We also don't know much about Toko's previous relationships but seems none have gone well and she's been used a few times by men in the past as Iki is the first man she really trusts. So that turned out to be perhaps Toko's most fulfilling night of her life and Iki wants to make things even more serious, in the last episode he even dropped a hint of them opening a hotel in Paris.

 That night together wasn't planned as Toko was supposed to return home, Hisae didn't know what exactly was going on but perhaps silently did. You can see above she's worried to death with her 'sister' Toko finding a partner, if so she won't be needed any more? That's what raced through Hisae's mind until the next morning and as we learn don't get on Hisae's bad side! When Toko finally made it back to the house the following morning she confessed to Hisae she told Iki almost all their background info and how Toko wasn't her real name. That stunned Hisae who can feel Toko rapidly slipping away from her, this brought us to a short flashback just before the episode ended.

 In that bottom screenshot is the real Toko Aso who after letting Riyako use her name for the past three years changed her own name to Shinako. Hisae knew this woman had become a drug addict and if there's one thing Hisae knows everything about it's medicines and drugs. Two episodes ago is when Toko learned the news of Shinako dying on the streets from an overdose and we all thought she used the money the new Toko gave her. But as the show ended we saw that flashback and it was just before Shinako had died, she had been approached by a woman who gave her a bag of drugs. If you haven't figured it out yet that woman was no other than.... Hisae!!!! Yes, it was her who arranged for Shinako aka Toko to have that overdose and what a change we've seen in this storyline. Up until this episode we all thought Hisae was this very meek and quiet woman who had been bullied by her 'sister' Toko but she now how two murders on her hands! Next post is the recap for the sixth episode which was the most intense to date, the question now is did Hisae commit any more murders in the past?