Burn the House Down ~ 御手洗家、炎上する ~ Mitarai ke, Enjou Suru (SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED)

 Started watching this one over the past weekend and I finished it tonight.  I hadn't planned on watching it; didn't even know about it but Netflix recommended it.  I saw it was 2023 so I figured why not.  There were no actors in it that I had heard of but I decided to watch it anyway even though I didn't read the plot lol.

The story starts with a nice big house on fire.  A woman drops to her knees and says to a guy that it's her fault and she apologizes to him.  The woman is Satsuki, the woman of the house and the man is Osamu, her husband.  One of their young kids, Anzu, is there and she sees another woman in the crowd kind of smiling and then she leaves.

Years later, Satuski and Osamu are now divorced, and she is in the hospital with a case of amnesia.  She remembers her 2 daughters but she's not remembering a lot of other things.  It all stems from the stress of feeling guilty of having set the fire in her home.

Anzu is sure her mother was not the one who did it and she sets out to find out what happened.

Osamu is now married to the woman who was in the crowd smiling, Makiko.  We find out that Satsuki and Makiko used to be friends.  Makiko was divorced and raising her 2 sons who were the same age as Anzu and her sister Yuzu.  Makiko was struggling financially and she was jealous of Satsuki because her husband was a doctor and he made a lot of money.  Makiko and the boys would have dinner with Satsuki and her family not realizing how jealous she was of the family.

Anzu is sure Makiko was the one who set the fire 13 years ago so she and her sister, along with a friend who is computer saavy, was going to find evidence to prove it.

The story moved fairly quickly.  I was all set to see how the girls would find out the truth (Makiko set the fire on purpose over her jealousy) and how they would let it come out. Eventually, Makiko was cornered when presented with the truth by Anzu and she broke down and confessed.  She was arrested the next day but, there was a twist in the interrogation.  I was NOT expecting THAT twist at all!

Finally, just as the real truth was set to be revealed, there was yet ANOTHER TWIST.  I hadn't seen that coming either.

The last half of the last episode was shitty.  They could have spent 1 whole episode slowly getting to that ending.  For me, it was rushed.  And it was rushed in a terrible way.  I still really liked it and I recommend it!

Why Didn't I Tell You a Million Times? ~ 100万回 言えばよかった (SPOILERS)

Finished this one yesterday.  SPOILERS BELOW

I mostly loved it but was twice disappointed.  Once was Netflix's fault.  I was determined to watch this drama without looking at how many episodes it has; I like not knowing.  I thought E09 was going to be it because everything was wrapping up nicely but at the end, the part where they usually show scenes from the next episode, there WERE scenes and on the lower right hand side the usual 2 buttons... "watch credits" and "next episode".  I was very surprised and hopeful that this next episode would be some years later and Yui and Uozumi would be a couple with a baby boy they named Torino or Naoki.  Boy was I wrong.  

Episode 10 was kind of stupid.  We dealt with knowing Naoki had died and then finding his body.  We saw the funeral and cremation and found out how and why he died.  The end of E09 should have been the end.  I would have been annoyed that they didn't end it with Yui and Uozumi getting together but it would have been nice than what followed in E10.

Yui wakes up the day after Naoki has disappeared since the mystery of his death was revealed and the murderer was arrested.  As she's waking up, she's telling us she wanted everything to have been a dream.  She then hears something in her apartment.  She gets up and Naoki is in the kitchen cooking breakfast and Yui can see him!  What?  Right about there I was thinking, if this really was just a dream, they better explain what is going on.

Naoki is still dead but for some reason unknown even to him, he's been given time to go back.  No idea how long before he's gone again.  They decide to have Yui call Ouzumi to meet up.  When he arrives, he see Yui and she apologizes for having had to bother him they're talking when Naoki comes out from hiding behind a pillar next to Yui.  Uozumi freaks out.  They go out to eat and they talk.  

Yui tells Naoki she is going to invite his parents over.  They arrive and they say they were wanting to meet with her one last time.  Naoki is in a room close by listening to them.  He had told Yui he didn't want to shock them so he said he wouldn't meet with them.  It made me sick to listen to them talk about what a good son he was after the way they had treated him when he was a kid.  Even when he was missing his mother revealed that after Naoki left home, the only time his mother bothered to contact him was when they need Naoki to help his younger brother by giving more bone marrow to him.  Absolutely disgusted.  Naoki's father was just as bad.  Did not have anything nice to say and was so cold about it all.

At the end of E10, Yui and Naoki go to the beach and they sit on a log and talk.  He tells her over and over that he loves her.  She smiles and tells him she knows but he keeps telling her aishiteru until he is gone again, and this time, for good.

Why Didn't I Tell You a Million Times? ~ 100万回 言えばよかった

 After I finished S02 of Dragon Zakura, I needed another J-drama to watch.  Found this one on Netflix.  I chose it because I recognized Ken'ichi Matsuyama.  It's been a really long time since I watched J-dramas regularly so it's very rare that I will recognize any of the actors' names.

So, I recognized Ken'ichi Matsuyama's face and I proceeded to look at the names of the other actors in this drama and I saw one I knew.  Mao Inoue.  Our precious little Tsukushi Makino from Hana Yori Dango!  Once I saw she was in it, I knew I had to watch this. It's been nearly 20 years since I first saw her.  Since J-dramas were really difficult to find back then, I never really got a chance to see anything else she did after the last movie.  I will be making a list of her dramas and movies and will make sure I watch as many as I can find!

As I started to watch the first episode, it was slow.  I have this problem when I start.  I want to get to the "good" part right away lol.  It wasn't until almost halfway through the episode that I realized the girl I was watching was Mao Inoue.  The more I looked at her face, the more she didn't look like her but at the same time, she did.  It's years later and she is now 36 YO!  She was only 18 when she first took on the role of Makino.

I watched the first episode and just loved it by the end of it.  I started E02 but had to stop watching because it was late and I had to get to bed so I could get up early for work.  This weekend I plan to watch a couple of more episodes since it's Labor Day weekend and I'll have time!

I am still trying to figure out how I can bypass the black screen thing so I can make screenshots.  I miss doing that.