"Octo: Kanjou Sousakan Shinno Akari" drama, episode one recap

 

 Air Dates: July 8th until September 9, 2022 on NTV  Thursdays at midnight

Episodes are 43 minutes in length, subs are being done by Kaizan Subs

Main Cast: Most of the action takes place at the East Kanagawa police station. We really only saw the top two characters in the first show so will be updating these bios.

Marie Iitoyo as Akari Shinno.... 28 year old detective who has been at the station for a year. The recaps will explain it better but Akari has this 'unique ability' to read people's emotions, she can do that by the colors coming out of their eyes which only she can see! Akari does come off as an introvert for outside she wears a hood and inside never looks at someone's eyes, that's because she doesn't want to know what their emotions are. Don't know the details yet but at the age of thirteen her parents were murdered in their house.

Kodai Asaka as Ryo Kazehaya.... Akari's new partner but isn't what he seems to be. Kazehaya is actually a spy sent by a director named Hirayasu at the National Police, his mission is to spy on Akari and the rest of the staff at the East Kanagawa station. But he has taken a liking towards Akari and think they'll make for a solid team.

Takashi Yamanaka as Kohei Kumokawa.... Deputy Chief at the station who really believes in Akari's talents which can't be used as evidence in court.

Eiichiro Funakoshi as Mamoru Hirayasu.... A director at the National Police Force and why has he sent Kazehaya to spy on the station?

Mikoto Hibi as Satoko Kitamura.... Female detective at the station.

Kouki Nishida as Takahiro Nanjo.... Male detective at the station and like the above character didn't see much of him in the first episode.

Asami Usuda as Yuki Komoto.... Akari's psychiatrist and she knows everything about the way you can read emotions from others. Don't think she has this ability though and not sure why Akari has been visiting her for so many years. Could be because of her parents deaths plus to get advice on her unique talent of reading emotions.

Rena Matsui as Shiori Shinno.... Akari's 35 year old sister who we didn't see in this show but know she's in the hospital, has she been there since her parents were murdered?

 Guest Stars

Miyu Honda as Sakiko Unobuchi.... Eighteen year old girl who was involved in a double suicide, her mate died but not her and can she be charged with a crime?

Promo video for episode one

 

 Whew, was worried about getting the subs for this series but got some help from someone so hope this drama turns out well. It's July 25th and don't know when these first two recaps will be published, am not going to be in a hurry finishing this drama. Hope to complete this first recap before viewing the second episode and why would I say that? It's because this was a bit confusing at times, especially the parts of reading a person's emotions. But then again thought the reason this is a ten episode series is because things will be explained as we go along and I need more patience. This is Marie's sixth drama since December though three have been mini ones. But as I was saying in a recent post an actress can appear in too many dramas in a row and bet on occasion viewers get tired of seeing the same faces.... even if it Marie's!!!!

 But being in so many shows means Marie hasn't done much else this year such as being at events, in mag spreads or other kinds of activities. This series ends in September so in a way hoping it'll be her final one for the year. I'll never win any prizes but have been on a nice groove with these recaps the last few months. Have been keeping them at three segments and six paragraphs but almost all have been 25 minute episodes. These are 42 minutes in length so the recaps will be longer but it should be just one more segment though the first post of a drama is often the longest. In real life Marie is 24 and will be turning a year older in January, her character in this drama is 28 years old. Ja.Wiki is a better source of info than American sites, for instance there we learned that her character of Akari lost her parents when she was thirteen in age but no mention was made of that in this episode. **** Did struggle for a while writing this up but halfway through things really fell into place. So much that in two days watched the next three shows and wrote the recaps up but two won't be published for a few more days.

 The parents were murdered in their house while the sisters were out so that made me wonder is that when Akari got her unique ability? That's of being able to read a person's emotions through their eyes and right above is an example of that. From what I've gathered someone with her 'talent' can see eight different colors and each represents an emotion such as hope, guilt etc. and colors can be combined for other emotions. Know that's a lot to throw at you right off the bat and there's a lot to learn about this ability which should be explained as we go along. It's fifteen years after Akari's parents were killed, she's now 28 and for the last year as been a detective in the first division at the East Kanagawa police station. In this first show we really only saw two of the main characters along with the guest star who is above and sure the roles of the other characters will become a bit larger. Akari's supervisor at the station is a 44 year old veteran named Kohei who seems like a decent man and truly believes in Akari's ability to read emotions.

 That's him on the right in the top screenshot, he's talking to a new inspector at the station named Kazehaya. You'll be seeing plenty of him in this recap as he had just as much screen time as Akari. He's thirty in age and has been transferred to to the East Kanagawa station from the National Police Force, was that a huge demotion? Will jump ahead slightly to a two minute scene that took place much later on. Kazehaya has been sent there by the National Police Force's deputy director Hirayasu who wants Kazaheya to spy on the the goings on at the station and to keep a close eye on Akari, that's all we learned about that situation. So at his new assignment Kazehaya has been assigned a case involving the above girl who is named Sakiko, you can see she's slightly injured. His task is to interrogate this 18 year old and find out whether she killed another man or was it a double suicide gone wrong? His first round of questioning went nowhere, the chief Kohei then decided it was time for Akari to make an appearance and at the second interrogation he wondered who is this woman next to him?

 Not positive but looks like a case an episode will be solved by the team of Akari and Kazehaya though this interrogation is the first time they've met. Finally to the case and it involved an 18 year named Sakiko who was mentioned but not who she is. A few days prior she had been brought to the hospital and in many of the screenshots you can see how injured she was. But she's alive though the same thing can't be said for her partner Shunsuke who died from jumping off a stairwell at a love hotel. Sakiko too jumped but landed in some bushes which caused her injuries but there was no way the fall could have killed her. So this interrogation by Kazehaya and now with Akari was to determine was this incident a planned suicide, just an accident or was it a plan of Sakiko's to kill this man Shunsuke? After hearing Sakiko's story a few times think it was all three as what a mixed up young woman she is.

 While Kazehaya may be a secret spy at the station there's no denying he's a top notch investigator and he did do his homework on this case. He's discovered that Sakiko had only met Shunsuke recently which she kept denying and said he was the love of her life, her denial weren't too convincing. Plus she had uploaded some pics and a video of Shunsuke at the love hotel where it was him who said the pair were going to commit a double suicide and it's easy to see why Kazehaya was just a tad confused on what really took place. Akari isn't a talkative woman and during the questioning it appeared she was just scribbling in a notebook, that's the first screenshot above. But it wasn't just some random lines but Akari had been drawing Sakiko's emotions that were seeping out of her eyes, sounds a bit far fetched but she truly does have that unique talent. In that screenshot you see the color Orange which signifies the emotion of Hope, there's eight main emotions. That baffled Akari as why what Sakiko be hoping for at this point, to be released or was there something else going on they didn't realize? Did come out later that the Hope was for her media site to keep drawing more viewers because of the incident!

 Right above is Akari's psychologist Yuki, we only saw her in one scene but she could be an important character. Don't know if Akari really has some issues or whether she's seeing Yuki for some other help such as the emotions she sees. Yuki is an expert on the subject and many books have been written about reading people's emotions via colors so while it's rare there are others like Akari. Yuki was talking to her new partner Kazehaya who had tailed Akari to the hospital where he discovered another secret about her. That's of Akari's older sister Shiori being a patient there but we never did see her and think she too could be an important character. For now we have no clue what's wrong with Shiori but it appears she's been in the hospital for a while, since their parents died fifteen years ago? So that second interrogation with Sakiko didn't go go well though a few things were learned which need to be followed up on such as that man in the second screenshot above.

 His name is Yuma and he's a host at a club where Sakiko used to frequent. She fell rather hard for this man and used up all of her money there to spend time with him. Sakiko dropped out of school and just worked dead end jobs since so how could she afford to keep spending so much money at the club? Of course when the money ran dry Yuma didn't want to have anything to do with Sakiko and what a naive girl she is. So what she had done was to go on compensated dates but after a while even that didn't work out. She got some scathing comments from those dates on social media and before long that line of income dried up too, what could this young woman do? Sakiko is one of those youngsters whose lives revolve around social media, the most important things to them are how many Likes and Followers they get. But even Sakiko failed at that as she was such drab person her followers dropped to such a low level and most comments really put her down badly. So to Sakiko how much lower could her life go and with seemingly no more options agreed to go on a date with Shunsuke but not a normal date.

 It's very easy to track things on social media and if you're a patient detective such as Kazehaya then you'll find what ever evidence you need. His latest discovery via some phone records was that Sakiko had only met Shunsuke three hours before that first date and it was him who suggested the double suicide! Have no clue why as we never officially met the man who was a few years older than Sakiko but with her life in the dumps she agreed to his request, perhaps she could go out in style with a lot of viewers! So in a few of the screenshots you will see the pair who uploaded some videos to Sakiko's media site saying they would die, they were getting more views than she was used to so could that have played a part in Sakiko not attempting her end of the double suicide? In the middle screenshot above Sakiko did try to jump to her death but for real this time. That didn't work out(?) as near her was Kazehaya who saved the day.

 What it all boiled down to was that this case involved a troubled teen who was just so consumed with Likes and Followers, aren't too many like that? So seeing as how Shunsuke made the offer to die together there wasn't much the police could do and no charges were filed against Sakiko. However she did get a bit of a verbal lashing from Akari who said while she not be at fault she'll have to live with the guilt for the rest of her life. She asked Sakiko was being popular at a site all that important and if so why? To that Sakiko did reply being popular with many followers is the most important thing in her life, without her media site why go on living? So it was hard for me, Akari or anyone else to feel sorry for this teen and why is social media so important to teens? Hope I don't sound like an old fogy because I'm not but just can't understand the attraction of those media sites and have never joined any of them.

You wouldn't know but that was one of the toughest recaps I've ever written. Started/stopped three times as I just couldn't get into any kind of rhythm until the last three paragraphs. Don't know why but sometimes that happens and hope I didn't repeat myself too often or sound too scatterbrained! One reason could be while the show was fairly good didn't think the case was all that interesting but least we got to know the two main characters. Have viewed the second episode which was much better and a lot of things were explained so that recap should go smoother, that's the next post.