Yuki Kashiwagi: "Tagarin" drama, episode's one to three recap

 Air Dates: April 13 to June 22, 2013 on Fuji-TV, eleven episodes that only ran for a total of 56 minutes. Link to the Rakuten site which has them on video though not subbed:

https://tv.rakuten.co.jp/content/28065/

 Main Cast:

Yuki Kashiwagi as Ejima Chihiro.... new traffic cop at the North Kaizuka police department and has been assigned to investigate cases the chief doesn't want to make public

Yu Sawabe as Minoru Otagawa.... Detective and Ejima's bumbling immediate superior who works on the case with her. Keya fans should know him from co-hosting the 'Keyakitte' show

Kinako Kobayashi as Maki Kadomatsu... traffic cop who is Ejima's Senpai

Ikkei Watanabe as Hiromi Kuribayashi.... inept assistant professor

 Few others in the cast but very difficult to find out info as there's no Wiki page plus the Fuji site has been taken down.

 I enjoy Yuki dramas as I've watched three others she's had the lead role in plus of course a few other AKB series where she's had a large role. Was looking forward to this show and it was a decent watch but there was one major problem.... the episodes were only 4 1/2 minutes long!!!! The final show was close to thirteen minutes but overall the show just had a running time of 56 minutes and one episode of a Korean drama is even longer.
 But did find this to be a fun show and at least with the episodes being so short it means these recaps will also be. Have three episodes per recap which don't even total fourteen minutes but did take about forty screenshots for the trio so least there will be plenty of pics of Yuki. This series was a takeoff of the "Galileo" drama that aired in 2007, there was also a second season in 2103. There's just one case that will be the focus of this show which has a second title of 'Killing Curse'.

 Yuki is the main star and she plays the character of Ejima Chihiro who is a rookie traffic cop. We'll get to know her much better in a few minutes but first let's start off with an event that opened the show and will be the storyline for all eleven episodes. The location is Kaiei girls high school which is a very elite and strict institution. There we witnessed the seventeen year old student Mai Nakanishi alone in her room slightly after 10:00 pm about to watch a DVD with her headphones, there's a curfew at that time where students aren't allowed to use their computers.
 Mai takes out a video and in shades of 'Ringu' it's titled as a cursed DVD. We can't see what she watches but it terrified her to no end, Mai couldn't take watching it any more and struggled to her room's balcony. There the pain of what she viewed was too much for her and to relieve her pain Mai jumped off the balcony to her death. There was a security guard who witnessed the act and swore that the girl jumped of her own accord. Assigned to the case was detective Otagawa who figured it's an open and shut case of a suicide and was prepared to leave it as that. Didn't work out that way for Otagawa as the following morning he was confronted by a trio of female traffic cops.

 That's Otagawa in the bottom screenshot, the title of the show comes from that group of students giving him the nickname of 'Tagarin'. But before that scene he had been confronted by the female traffic cops who were led by the rookie Ejima. She had just met with the station's chief who wants her to lead secret investigations on crimes he doesn't want to be aired publicly. Her first case is the death of Mai Nakanishi and to Ejima it's not a true suicide but a death caused by watching a cursed video. Otagawa thinks she's full of it but Ejima's two mates believe her too and eventually enlist Otagawa to help them out on the case.
 First line of activity is to visit Kaiei high school to interview Mai's friends and to find out if it truly was a video that caused her to jump to her death. If not could there have been a murderer who remained hidden from the security guard? The trio searched Mai's room and were able to locate the 'cursed' video and Ejima volunteered to view it. Otagawa would hear nothing of it as being their leader it's up to him to view the video and later on he did tell the trio that he did watch it. But nothing has happened to him so the video must not be cursed but as all know it takes seven days for the curse to take effect.
 Otagawa wouldn't tell Ejima what was on the video and to solve the case she figured that her watching it would be very beneficial. Which is what she did though we didn't see too much of what she viewed but we do see more of it towards the end of the series. Not a gruesome video but we did see a person dressed in white who was covered a bit in blood, wasn't too horrifying but it did sent shivers through Ejima. Later on when she asked Otagawa about the video he confessed to not watching it!
 No wonder he was still alive as it had been over seven days since Otagawa said he viewed it. Ejima was a bit mad about his lie but is actually more scared for herself as does it mean she has less than a week to live? With that we've come to the end of the third episode, did stretch it out a bit as the entire length of them was just 13 1/2 minutes. It is an enjoyable show and have already watched every episode but do wish they were just a bit longer, next three posts are for episodes four to thirteen. Still found a way to take many screenshots which should help a bit in following the story but didn't leave any major details outs.

Yuki Kashiwagi: "Tagarin" drama, episode's four to six recap

 Air Dates: April 13 to June 22, 2013 on Fuji-TV, eleven episodes that only ran for a total of 56 minutes. Link to the Rakuten site which has them on video though not subbed:

https://tv.rakuten.co.jp/content/28065/

 Main Cast:

Yuki Kashiwagi as Ejima Chihiro.... new traffic cop at the North Kaizuka police department and has been assigned to investigate cases the chief doesn't want to make public

Yu Sawabe as Minoru Otagawa.... Detective and Ejima's bumbling immediate superior who works on the case with her. Keya fans should know him from co-hosting the 'Keyakitte' show

Kinako Kobayashi as Maki Kadomatsu... traffic cop who is Ejima's Senpai

Ikkei Watanabe as Hiromi Kuribayashi.... inept assistant professor

 Few others in the cast but very difficult to find out info as there's no Wiki page plus the Fuji site has been taken down.

 I tend to be a bit lazy in writing recaps up even though I do like doing them. Should have written up all four in a row which would have taken two hours tops but instead wrote up one a day, better late than never. As mentioned in the first post these shows are only 4 1/2 minutes long so these recaps are so much shorter than regular ones but least it was an enjoyable show and much did happen as there was no time for filler.

 That first recap ended off with Ejima(Yuki) watching the 'cursed video' to help her solve the death of the 17 year old student Mai Nakanishi. To Ejima's dismay her immediate supervisor Otagawa didn't view it though he said he did, was he perhaps a bit too frightened? That was never answered but to me it'd be a definite yes. Though nothing life threatening Ejima has been encountering many odd happenings that is leading her to believe the curse is there but not 'fully activated' yet. The hot water didn't work in her shower and when it did it ended up scalding her. Plus she had an incident where her high heel snapped off causing her to crash into a bookcase, from the top of it came tumbling down a glass canister which barely missed Ejima.
 The small team led by Otagawa has learned there was one other student who watched the 'cursed video' but it can't be too cursed as she's still alive. That girl was another student at the Kaiei girls high school and had the name of Risa. She had found the DVD in a desk at school, watching it has left the girl in shambles as she doesn't want to leave her room. Ejima and her team couldn't watch the video as Risa had snapped it in two so they didn't know if both DVD's were the same.
 But it's time for this investigation to begin moving forward and according to the rookie Ejima the best way is to interview any person at the school who may have known Mai. They talked to her closest friends but got nowhere but that's mainly because of Otagawa. There was a girl named Ami who kept trying to contact him with some vital info but things kept preventing him from seeing her. However Ejima was able to track down two of Mai's teachers, Okada and Mochizuki, but they had alibis for each other as at the time of Mai's 10:10 pm death both were around the local station.

 The pair are in the top screenshot and to the surprise of the police they announced they were engaged, of course they would vouch for each other but for now aren't suspects. No real spoiler but the pair will make a return to the show near the end and play a key part in how Mai died. One other vital part of information was learned from interviewing the staff is that there was a meeting of all the students less than an hour before Mai's death. The principal had found a few empty cans of beer in the kitchen and had the girls been the ones who consumed it?
 The answer was no but Ejima began wondering if it was just a trick to get Mai and the other students out of their dormitory so the criminal could set up certain things. Things that may have led to Mai's death, Ejima didn't know what the person may have done but she's on the right track. But the curse is still all she thinks about and it's getting close to seven days since she viewed the video, is her time on Earth about to end? To find out if there are such things as curses Ejima and her two mates visited a local college to ask an expert on the matter.
 That professor wasn't there but his mentor was who went by the name of Kuribayashi and that's him right above. This guy is anything but a genius and the girls are wondering if they made a mistake in asking for his help. Of course they did but before they could talk to him further these three episodes of 13 1/2 minutes hit it's conclusion. Not much to add in for now but following this post are the last two recaps for this very mini series.