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Hajimemashite minna san....welcome to my site on my fave Japanese Pop Culture likes such as dramas, movies, magazine scans, promo events etc. Mainly concentrate on my faves...Risa Watanabe... Kyoko Saito... Yui Kobayashi....Nana Owada.... Nene Shida.... if you're a fan at all of any of them then you've come to the right place(!) but many others are featured here besides them. Do mainly quick reviews on things I've watched, try to make the reviews brief, quick to read through with not too many spoilers, just whether they're good or bad and why I thought so plus whether you may find them enjoyable. Many, many screenshots are included from everything I've watched plus any video trailers if they're available. Hope you find something that interests you, don't hesitate to comment, arigato gozaimasu!

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Sunday, May 21, 2023

"Boderless" drama: Episode eight of ten recap

 


 Air Dates: March 7th until May 9, 2021 on dTV/Hikari, Sunday nights at 11:00 pm
Episode are 30-34 minutes in length, subs done by Westillsubbing

Main Cast: There's seven members from the three Sakamichi groups, two each from Hina and Nogi while there's three from Keya(Sakura). There's a new series called "Actress" which began on April 14th and it appears it would help watching this show first as four of the cast make a return and some stories are a continuation from this drama. Everyone does make an appearance in each show but the stories/episodes are centered around two major characters, somehow in the end the stories connect with each other. The first two shows focus on these two gals so will have their names first in the cast list. For now only a little bit is known of the other characters, bio pics are from the drama's dTV site.


 Kyoko Saito(Hina) as Kiri Katayama.... You rarely heard Kiri being used so may refer to her as Katayama. But in the third show she said to use her first name so that's what I'll be doing. Kiri is a very odd high school student, she's not shunned by others though prefers to be alone but was intrigued by Nao and the pair hooked up. It appears Kiri wants to be a mystery or crime writer as she's obsessed with the human body and what it takes to kill someone! Kyoko is listed as being seventeen in age but was 23 when this drama was filmed.


 Hikaru Morita(Keya) as Nao Mori.... Seventeen year old high school student who thinks her life is just so boring and ordinary. Nao is best friends with Saeko who is her complete opposite and she wonders why would such a popular girl like her? Nao's life soon changed drastically when she met Katayama and will that change be for the worse?


 Yui Kobayashi(Keya) as Kotone Ichihara.... Works at her father's cafe and is the older sister of the below character. Kotone is one cheerful and happy go lucky young woman which is the opposite of her sister but not much is known about the pair yet. It was learned in the third episode that Kotone failed twice to get into a musical school, since that happened two years ago she refuses to play the piano.


Seira Hayakawa(Nogi) as Kanon Ichihara.... Younger sister of Kotone and it doesn't appear they get along so well, for now it seems Kanon's dream is to be a rock star. Unlike her sister Kanon has passed an exam to attend a music college which she's kept a secret, she's also been working as a barmaid to save money so she can move to Tokyo. She has a huge crush on Kazushi who seems to like Kotone more which is another reason for the sisters drifting apart.


 Risa Watanabe(Keya) as Haru Yatsuji.... Older sister of the below girl, through the first two shows we've just seen the pair in a forest escaping from a crazed killer! It shows Risa's age as twenty but she was 22 when this series was filmed.


 Hiyori Hamagishi(Hina) as Kei Yatsiji.... Blind younger sister of the above girl, her injury occurred when she was about five in age due to a car accident.


 Sakura Endo(Nogi) as Yuuki Matsumiya.... We didn't meet her until the fifth episode. Yuuki is a sixteen year old(?) who has an unknown disease which prevents her from attending school or really leaving the massive estate she lives in. Though not a key figure in the murder mystery her father is, will add him in to the list if he continues to appear in the episodes. In the sixth show Yuuki was sent to a special hospital in Hokkaido, because of the murder?



Other main cast members, don't think there will be any new characters added in.

Ichirouta Miyakawa as Akira Ichihara.... Father of Kotone and Kanon, he owns a small coffee cafe in the town and it's unknown what happened to his wife.

Ayako Konno as Saeko.... Nao's best friend since they were little girls.

Takayuki Hamatsu as Kozo Katsuji.... Father of Haru and Kei, was he killed by a crazed man?

Gaku Oshida as Kazushi.... Good friend of the Ichihara family, about the same age as Kotone and seems to like her quite a bit. However having a huge crush on Kazushi was her younger sister Kanon and she is so jealous of her sister which is one reason they've drifted apart.

Tooru Tezuka as Shigenobu Matsumiya..... Father of Yuuki and owns the very successful Matsumiya Pharmaceutical company. A the end of the fifth episode he stabbed his one time mistress Maya to death in front of his daughter. In such a surprise it was revealed in the sixth show that Matsumiya is the man who was murdered in the first episode!!!! 

Sayuri Kokushou as Hiroko Matsumiya.... Very strict mother of Yuuki and is the VP at her husband's company. For a while she was a suspect in his killing but that wasn't to be, she's just glad the creep is dead! 

Ruto Chitose as Maya Shinozaki.... We only saw her in the fifth show, at the end of it she was stabbed to death by Matsumiya. Stabbed to death is what everyone had thought but she does make a return in this show as the killer of Matsumiya!

In this fourth episode we finally got a view of this unnamed city where the action is taking place. It's that tiny as you can see and does anyone know what city it is? At the end of the sixth episode discovered the city is in Saitama but is still unnamed.



Previous recaps



 Short promo video for episode eight
   
   

 Thrilling ending to that previous episode, some mysteries were cleared up but also a few new ones arose. One thing we're now sure of is that all four stories took place in real life, two we thought may have been in the novel Kiri is writing. Here's a theory of mine and it could be way off base. The action is taking place in March/April 2020, wonder if a year later Kiri did finish her novel and what we're viewing are the stories from it? Does make sense to an extent though could also be completely wrong. At the end of that prior episode a violent man entered the coffee cafe and he appears to be the killer of Matsumiya. However it's not a man though with the hood on could pass for one, Kiri figured it out near the end it was a woman and I will be calling that person Maya. At first thought she was murdered at the end of the fifth episode which took place four years ago. But that wasn't the case and that will be explained in this recap with hopefully many other questions about what's been taking place.









 Not quite sure how Kiri and Nao ended up at the Ishihara cafe, it's owned by the father of the two sisters Kotone and Kanon. The pair had been investigating the murder of Matsumiya at his villa and had left there, the next time we saw them was entering the cafe at the end of episode seven. It was just after the arrival of that hooded figure who will eventually take it off, as mentioned will call this person Maya and hope I'm right on my deduction. That's Maya above holding Kanon at bay with a knife and for the longest time no one knew what this person wanted. Besides Kanon in the cafe was her father Ishihara, the family friend Kazushi who says above to take him and let Kanon go. The other two were Kiri and Nao, you'd think the five could take down Maya but he/she also had a stun gun. All were ordered to throw down their phones which were promptly stepped on and are now useless. However Kiri said she didn't have a phone as her parents wouldn't allow her to carry one outside of their house, later on though it was discovered she had slipped it into Nao's school bag. 

 This was taking place in the cafe, the other half of the building is where Ishihara and his two daughters lived. That's in the back of the building and you can't hear what is happening in the cafe from there. In the back was the older daughter Kotone who was taking care of Haru and Kei, if you read the above recap you know Kotone's father had found them in the woods and brought them back to his place. The plan was for him to bring the two girls to the police but of course the father now has something much more pressing going on! So for the longest time the three girls in back had no clue what was taking place in the cafe, the trio were just getting to know each other. Kotone and Kanon have drifted so far apart from each other the last two years, listening to how well Haru and Kei get along has made Kotone very envious of their relationship. Kei may be blind but she has some special abilities about her, she's told Kotone there's no way her younger sister hates her and Kei just may be right as we'll be seeing. Being blind means Kei's other senses are more acute, she swore there was a commotion going on in the cafe. Which was right on the money for there was a camera set up in the house which had a view of the cafe, the trio above are about to check out what it could be.









 Needless to ay all three were stunned by what was going on in the cafe, to Haru could this be the man who beat and abducted her father? The answer to that is yes and this hooded figure did admit to it later on but the immediate problem is what can Kotone, Haru and Kei do? Maya is holding Kanon with a knife pressed against her throat plus he has a stun gun, rushing this person would only make matters worse. Contacting the police is out of the question as Kotone left her phone in the cafe plus this person cut the wire to the landline. Haru had a grand plan which would involve all three of them, Kotone drew a map of the building and from that they planned their attack. Kotone would enter the cafe and as you can see above she did, meanwhile Kei would crawl in from a different entrance and wait for her chance, being blind will actually be an advantage to their plan. The plan for Haru was to go out the back door and wait for a signal, until the end we didn't know what would happen that meant.

 During that planning session in the cafe Kazushi had tried to take down this Maya man/woman but to no avail, the stun gun was used on him and he was out for the count. After that is when Maya began to reveal why she's there and if she doesn't get what she wants then more will end up like Kazushi! Maya noticed Ishihara picking up Haru and Kei in the woods, it was a case of mistaken identity. Maya had seen Kei before as she would go the Matsumiya villa to help her father out as he was the caretaker of the place after the family moved out four years ago. Maya thought Kei was the personal assistant to the daughter Yuuki so she assumed the other girl naturally was Yuuki but never got a good look at her. You can see above that Kiri quickly surmised that Yuuki was the person Maya is really after, many of my theories are from Kiri's deductions! Then is when Kotone came into the cafe and swore there was no girl in the back with that name which infuriated Maya to no end. Were all these events for nothing(?) and Maya let her guard down for a moment, just long enough for Kanon to make a run for it.










 We know why Kanon tried to flee but in the end run it was a horrible decision. Maya lunged at her with the knife which Kanon didn't notice but her older sister Kotone did. She leapt in front of the lunging Maya and took the knife right in her stomach(!), she was down and out for the rest of the show. Kanon was beside herself with grief and it takes incidents like that to bring estranged people close once again, for the rest of the episode she held the unconscious Kotone in her arms. With nothing to lose Maya began to tell her story and as you can see above Kiri had deduced she was a woman, she could tell by the voice and with the hood on did look like a man. In the fifth episode is when we saw Maya, at one time she had been the mistress of Matsumiya but was dumped badly and was out for revenge. The way was to get close to his sixteen year old daughter Yuuki and as mentioned Maya's current goal is to find this girl. After Maya got close to Yuuki she could blackmail Matsumiya but a few odd events took place. The main one being Maya truly fell in love with Yuuki who was sixteen at the time, Maya had to be at least thirty. Wouldn't that be a scandal Maya thought if the president's daughter was found to be having an affair with a woman! But as said Maya really did care for Yuuki and didn't want to see her get hurt, instead it was Maya who was hurt badly.

 For at the end of the fifth show she was stabbed many times by Matsumiya in front of Yuuki, it appeared as though Maya was dead. That wasn't the case but her face was badly scarred, during the surgery she requested to come out of it looking like a man and as you can see above it did happen. During that time Matsumiya had taken Yuuki away from the villa and sent her to a hospital in Hokkaido, Maya wasn't aware of that until now. All of that had taken place in 2016, it's now 2020 and Yuuki is twenty in age but no one knew what became of her. Maya had been spying on the villa and thought Yuuki was still there when she saw the father of Haru and Kei taking care of the place. Now that Maya has heard what the true story was she's at a loss on what to do next, kill everyone here and start searching for Yuuki again? It was during this spiel that Maya did admit to Kiri that she did kill Matsumiya and dumped his body at the town pool, he had somehow learnt of her new identity. We're getting close to the end, once that story was complete coming out of the shadows was Kei who began to scream at Maya for all of the bad things she had said about he father. Those were words Maya didn't want to hear and it appeared she was about to stab Kei when their grand plan took place. Kei screamed NOW and outside the cafe Haru cut the power to the building sending it into darkness, being blind this would give Kei a huge advantage over Maya. But that's when the episode ended and we need to wait until the next show to see how this turns out, will have the recaps to the final pair of shows later on this week. Plenty more screenshots below of the action, had more of them than any other show and the bottom fourteen are from the behind the scenes segment that aired after the episode.





































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