"Boderless" drama: Episode nine 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

Based on a 2018 novel by Tetsuya Honda.

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, 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! Had some plastic surgery as her face had been cut up by Matsumiya, now she could easily pass for a man.

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

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

Episode five .... Episode six .... Episode seven .... Episode eight

 Short promo video for episode nine

         

   

 Writing this up on Tuesday so don't know if any new developments happened. As most Nogi fans know Seira has been in the news and really hoping she comes out of this unscathed. Took some courage to do what she reported and the fans backed up her so well, have a feeling some members did also. But Japan is different than America, even when you're right over there you come out looking guilty which may happen to Seira but as mentioned she has the support of the fans and think management has listened as the creep who directed their concerts was forced to resign. Don't want to discuss it too much today though will in the future. Up until this drama had known who Seira was but had no idea what she even looked like! Which is fabulous to me and once the dust settles with everything, probably next month, will do the first ever posts for Seira and I truly hope nothing negative happens towards her such as having to graduate.

 Suspenseful ending to the previous episode which carried over to this show, least for the first five minutes. Then things really slowed down quite a bit for the first time in this series, now that the murder of Matsumiya is cleared up was worried this drama would end up on a fluffy note. However the case isn't quite solved and the last ten minutes were quite good, few more things were thrown into the murder mystery. At 35 minutes this was the longest episode and did take the most screenshots too though not much took place save for the beginning and end. Won't view the finale until this is written up and seeing as how the ending was very mysterious am hoping for a solid conclusion, let's finally get to things and it would help to read the previous recap(s).

 That previous episode ended with the killer of Matsumiya Maya holding seven hostage at the Ishihara coffee cafe. Ishihara is the father of Kotone and Kanon, he was put out of commission by Maya's stun gun and so wasn't the family friend Kazushi. Meanwhile Kotone had been stabbed when she threw herself in front of Kanon to prevent her from being stabbed by Maya, she too is out for the count. Maya had some surgery done on her face due to it being cut up by Matsumiya, she's posing as a man but if you look closely she still does look like a woman. That top screenshot shows the blind girl Kei yelling CUT for her old sister Haru to cut the power to the cafe, she was at the circuit box outside. Just like that the cafe was in total darkness, being blind was an advantage for Kei as she has that sixth sense about her. Maya was slashing everywhere with her knife and using the stun gun but they were to no avail. Kei's father had been a Karate instructor, she remembered all that she was taught and very quickly Maya was brought down, Kei ended up being the hero in this life and death situation! So that was it for the scene as it was soon the next day and most of the action took place at the local hospital, the scenes were decent but too long which slowed things down. 

 As you can see above Maya was arrested for the murder of Matsumiya, had thought she looked older than 29 and don't know if it'll matter but the date is currently early April 2020. Of course no one was badly hurt, Kotone was to an extent as she was stabbed and is in the hospital, she was still there at the end of the show. As you can see a teary Kanon was so confused about what Kotone did, after all the bad things Kanon said about her she still put her life on the line for her sister?! A lot of words were said, especially by Kotone, but still seems this scene went nowhere though the sisters are now much closer.... though not at the point they once were, does Kanon still want to flee to Tokyo as she says below? Was hoping Kotone would have said more concrete things such as she's planning on returning to playing the piano or anything else about her future which never happened, there's always the final episode. Actually Kotone did take her phone out which had a piano on it, the pair began playing together and that was the last we saw of them in this episode. Happy ending for the pair of sisters Haru and Kei as their father was safe and sound. Maya had beaten him up badly but after a stay in the hospital he should be as good as new. What their future will hold is also unknown, Haru had moved away from the town but after what happened think she'll be returning though she didn't say that. 

 Up until this point we hadn't seen much of the junior detective team, that's Kiri on the left above and Nao on the right. Kiri is still writing a novel though we haven't heard much about it in the last few episodes. She was so impressed with Kei and Haru, Kiri was asking them above if she can interview them to learn more about their lives. That's because Kiri has two characters in her novel that are so similar to the sisters and they had also been lost in the woods looking for help, that scene was the last we saw of Haru and Kei in this show. Not positive but still think when this drama ends it may be a year later or March/April 2021 and everything we've watched is in Kiri's novel, wonder if I'm in the ballpark? So at this point we're well over halfway through this episode and wondered now that the murder has been cleared up what's next? Maya did confess to killing Matsumiya and his wife Hiroko paid a visit to the hospital to thank everyone for catching the killer, she later had another chat with Kiri and Nao who returned the book that Maya had which originally was owned by Hiroko's daughter Yuuki.

 Yuuki was/is the key figure in this murder mystery but up until now we had really only seen her in the fifth episode and that was set four years ago or 2016. When that show ended we had thought Yuuki's father Matsumiya had killed Maya but of course that wasn't the case as she was just badly injured. Yuuki had witnessed her father's attack and shortly after that was sent to a hospital in Hokkaido. One reason was that Yuuki truly was sick and had never attended school, the other was to get her out of the area in case Maya ever returned. Kiri's mind never stops working as she still has some questions about Matsumiya's murder and so many things that Maya did for they didn't make sense. Such as why was she carrying that book around for so many years plus why didn't Maya give any details about the murder when she was questioned by the police, to Kiri this case still has so many unanswered questions.

 We're now down to less than ten minutes to go in this episode, things had been a bit slow in the middle but the ending set up things up for a potential solid finale. After that chat with the girls Hiroko returned to Matsumiya Pharmaceutical, now that her husband is dead she's become the president. On an upper floor of their massive office building an unexpected surprise awaited us, Hiroko entered a secret room and who should be there but Yuuki!!!! Its now April 2020, this was the first we saw of her since that night four years ago when her father attacked Maya. That's the present day Yuuki in the middle screenshot above, doesn't she look so out of it? Her mother returned that book Nao had given her, that brought the memories flooding back to Yuuki and we had a brief yet very important flashback to five weeks earlier or February 29th. That was the date of Yuuki's 20th birthday and there was a mini party at the family's estate, so Yuuki had returned there and when did that happen plus was she living there full time along with her parents?

 Yuuki had slipped away from the party and went to the estate's front gate. She was praying that Maya remembered her birthday and was dying to see her 'first love'(?) after four years. But arriving on the scene was Yuuki's father who was beyond furious that his daughter still had feelings for the woman who was once his mistress. Matsumiya became out of control and even hit Yuuki which sent her sprawling to the ground, that was the act which lit a fuse under Yuuki who couldn't take his abuse any more. She grabbed a huge rock and began to pummel her father with all of her might and before long it appeared her father was dead or was he? Coming out of the villa at that time was Yuuki's mother along with the president's personal secretary Miyabe, they saw what Yuuki had done but didn't panic and brought her back into the villa. Shortly after that arriving on the scene was Maya, she dragged Matsumiya's body away to the town pool and she too began to pummel the body, was he dead already or were those blows the ones that finished him off? The episode ended there and that left us with many questions going into the final show. Such as who was the true killer of Matsumiya, Yuuki or Maya? What I'm wondering too is did Yuuki's mother contact Maya and offer a very sweet deal to drag the body away and take the blame for the murder, if so why was Maya still looking for Yuuki after that incident?  After a sluggish middle this episode ended on an interesting note and how will things end? Don't know and am off to view the last episode which is the next post, plenty more screenshots below of the action and the bottom fourteen are from a behind the scenes segment that aired after the episode's conclusion.