Crisis: Special Investigation Squad Episode 2 (Recap)

Trotwood: I am very proud of myself because the draft of this recap is 976 words shorter than the last draft. I may be able to cut even more here. Panda told me not to worry about it, but I do want people to read these recaps, which means I can't always be the most long winded person in this blog. Opening with a random picture of Hidetoshi Nishijima would get me to read anything, but I know it won't work with most people.

Panda: The fact that you actually calculated and know the difference in word count between recap 1 and this just takes me out😃😃😃😃. Besides I am 100% sure you are not the only one who would follow Nishijima into fire.

Episode 2

We do a slow open where we hear clicks from a camera while the driver of a fancy car gets out and opens the door for an important passenger. They have stopped at a place with "Nishio" as the nameplate on the outside. We see driver's face but not the face of the man who gets out and to whom he bows. We move back to see from where the sound of camera clicks come. A man is on a roof taking pictures.
The suspenseful music and the demeanor of driver already indicates this is a shady rendezvous. And I don't know why but the headless passenger seems so familiar to me.

We immediately switch to our team’s headquarters where they are training. Oyama and Kashii are practicing stick fighting while Inami is attacking Tamaru with a knife but repeatedly getting taken out.   
Shun looks a mess in this training 😃😃

Yoshinaga comments that he stinks of alcohol, and he says he feels like he is dying.Yoshinaga tells Oyama it’s her turn, and she smirks as she walks over while Tamaru gets a phone call. When he sees the caller id, he leaves the room. Turns out the person on the phone is the guy who was taking the pictures earlier. He tries to make small talk, but Tamaru isn’t interested. I can’t tell if it is because he doesn’t like the guy that much or if Tamaru just doesn’t do small talk. The phone guy asks if they can meet because there is something he needs to tell him, and Tamaru is the only person he can trust.
I was also curious about the dynamic between TB and Furugaki (the photographer/journalist). I am thinking it's more like grudging respect in that TB respects that he i.e. photographer is good at his job and respects that, but doesn't necessarily like him as a person.

This is never good.Why don’t people just tell them now? Anyway, Tamaru agrees, and after he hangs up the same guy sends him a picture of a house with the message to keep it in case something happens to him. Sheesh. He'll be lucky to be alive in an hour. People who send such messages always die!!
I mean it's so obvious he is going to die before the meeting! This always annoys me in movies too! Like just say what you want right now. Sigh. Switching to Inami, why is he even bothering to train/fight. He is too hungover, sure even my kid would take him out.

Tamaru goes back into the training room where Inami is now getting beat by Kashii. He’s begging to be relieved. Tamaru takes his place while Inami runs into the bathroom to throw up. When asked about phone call, he just says it was an old acquaintance. Later, he’s waiting at the bottom of escalator at a train station for this person. They see each other, and as the acquaintance makes his way to Tamaru, he gets bumped by a passerby. He grabs his arm in pain but keeps walking; however, by the time he reaches Tamaru, he doesn’t look good. He collapses and gets out only one word before he dies. Poison. (and this surprises no one; although I did hope for a different outcome).
I remember being shocked first time I watched this that Furugaki even made it to the meeting point. But I rejoiced too soon apparently, he died and dramaland laws are once again are enforced. He did manage to say Arisu? Alisu? before he takes his last breath, so I guess it's up to the team to decipher the clue.

Tamura scans crowd, but makes a quick exit, calling our favorite water supply company.

TB looked so hot making that call, totally inappropriate but true.
Absolutely true. I was distracted, I had to go back to see what he was actually doing.

Back at headquarters, Yoshinaga is on the phone while they all wait. When he hangs up, he tells them that they have ruled the death a cause by a heart attack, but Tamaru refuses to believe it. He says it was cyanide poisoning, and Oyama wonders how he knows and is impressed when she realizes that he has actually seen such poisoning.
Impressed is not how I would feel ...

Yoshinaga believes him but wonders why they are saying differently despite the evidence. They pull up picture of victim, Furagaki Shinichiro, he was a reporter that Tamaru met when he was on the regular police investigative unit. He says that he was a trustworthy reporter. Why would he contact Tamaru? What national crisis what he hinting at? More importantly to Yoshinaga is the fact that Tamaru was at the scene, and the police are still looking for the man that witnesses say was with the dead guy and left -Tamaru.
Obviously, he was trustworthy, TB would not have even gone to see him in the first place. If it had been Inami, then the character of the reporter could have been shaky cos Inami himself is very shaky.

There is a moment when they pause because they don’t really have any jurisdiction over this case. Inami says they need to work on it to clear Tamaru’s name and that Tamaru wouldn’t have left the scene if he didn’t want to work on it independently. There share a conspiratorial look. Kashii wants a show of hands of who wants to work on it, and they all raise them except Yoshinaga.
I love that Inami pushed for them to take the case, and OMG see that smile!!!!! My heart-eau.

Instead, Yoshinaga asks Oyama to pull up the picture of the house that Furugaki sent, but it looks like a regular house. Kashii wonders if it houses terrorists. They also ask about Furugaki’s last word: Arisu/Alice?  Is that a neighborhood, a name, what?
Well, Alice is definitely a name, but Arisu sounds like a wine.

Yoshinaga puts Kashii and Oyama on the case to start researching any information about those neighborhoods, he’s going to see if can get updates from the police, and he tells Tamura and Inami that they need to check out Fusugaki’s house but not to get caught since they don’t have a warrant. They don’t have a lot of time because anything they do should probably be done before the police realize the guy they are looking for is Tamaru and before whoever was after him checks his place for clues.

Unfortunately, it looks like someone has beaten them to Furugaki’s apartment. The stranger is about to leave with a laptop when he hears Tamaru using his lock pick device to get into apartment. Tamaru is alone because he asked Inami to wait for him. He doesn’t want Inami involved any more than he has to be.
The stranger is the driver from the opening scene! He is already thoroughly searching the house and looks like he has discovered something.

Tamaru enters the dark apartment, but the stranger attacks and knocks him out.
TB got jumped! Not fair.

Fortunately, Inami’s feeling like this is taking too long, so he goes into the apartment building. Instinctively, he waits when he sees the elevator coming down. The laptop thief is on elevator and tries to close door, but Inami drags him out a fight ensues with Ignami getting the upperhand.
Grateful Inami has woken up sufficiently to fight like the cop he is.

However, the elevator opens again right next to laptop thief. He takes advantage by taking the woman in the elevator hostage. He drags her out while Inami slowly follows.

Laptop thief escapes with laptop by shoving woman in front of a truck on the road and running while Inami saves her. Tamaru groggily runs out of apartment building only to see Inami raise his hands apologetically. Tamaru can only sigh.
Honestly, why did the woman stay in middle of the road even after the bad guy left her? I would think the only thing she would want to do is flee. Anyway, TB comes to and realizes they have been out-maneuvered. Drat.

Back at headquarters the next day, everyone except Yoshinaga is watching as Oyama methodically goes through all the maps in the neighborhoods they are assigned to check. When Yoshinaga arrives, he hears their bad news. They have looked at every neighborhood and have not found anything connected to “Arisu” or "Alice."

Yoshinaga has even more bad news. Everyone really EVERYONE is silent about Furugaki. It looks like there will be a cover up, and he comments that he knows that they don’t want to give up; however, they don’t even have a target and without a target they will just get lost. Oyama repeats his word “target” and “lost” to herself, thinking out loud. When he asks her, she asks them what they need for a treasure hunt as she starts typing quickly on her keyboard.
CyberHacker to the rescue.

Kajii says war funds (she rolls her eyes, but I did smirk); however, Inami answers correctly: a map marking the treasure. Oyama agrees, keeps typing, smiles, and tells them to look at monitor. She has taken the picture and found its GPS code; this pinpoints where the location of the house in picture.
Ohhh, I thought she triangulated the dead guy's phone to find its last locations using GPS. And subsequently, from the locations, they would survey to see if the house was visible. But anyway, the result is the same LOOOL.

We next see Kashii on the same roof that Furugaki had been taking pictures. He looks through binoculars and see the same house!
SCORE!

He waves his hand and Inama, Tamaru, and Yoshinaga appear shortly thereafter. When they see the house, everyone starts looking around the roof. Tamaru sees a mark on floor next to what may be an air conditioner and peels back part of the caging to feel inside. He finds a storage bag with a flashdrive in it. They have found the treasure.
DOUBLE SCORE!!

We move to Kaji eating a sandwich on a park bench with Aonuma arriving, tense. He worries about Kaji being out alone, but Kaji ignores this warning and just offers him a sandwich. They have this cryptic conversation about “you-know-who” and how there are many who are aware that the dead freelance reporter was on to something and even tried to get an interview with a nameless person.

What’s truly creepy about his conversation is that they clearly know what SIQ is up to with Aonuma telling him that they have found the house. Kaji isn’t surprised because he know they can run without being whipped (him as this horrid thoroughbred extended metaphor!). He thinks they should let them keep going with Aounuma making sure they go completely off target while he will work on what the stakes are. There is so much manipulation as if he is playing with them like they're dolls acting out an entire show for his benefit.
Yes! The two bosses monitoring the investigation's progress, and whether or not to pull the plug... I don't know, Kaji is so hard to read. I mean, they show absolutely no reaction to the fact that a man is dead because of whatever is going on, but also sound/seem a bit pissed about the political interference they have already faced about the investigation. So is the slight attitude because of pride? or righteousness? I still can't tell. The verdict is to let the team continue the investigation for now.

Yoshinaga, Inami, Tamaru, and Kashii go to the house. It appears from the outside to be empty, and Kashii can’t smell anything from the outside. Inami starts ringing the bell, but no one answers, so with a sigh Yoshinaga says they should invite themselves in, but this is funny because Tamaru has already walked ahead and done his locksmith magic.
TB has no time to waste when he is on a mission.

They walk inside with Yoshinaga reminding them to take off their shoes (he’s the only one who does, ha!, so funny!), but they find nothing, nor does Kashii smell, anything.

They go outside and see a neighbor and ask her if she knows anything about the family. She knows their name, which matches the nameplate on the house from the beginning of ep, but not much else besides the fact that there was a woman her age and two daughters who looked like they were in high school and that they moved out two days prior. They press for more—anything odd, and she remembers that two weeks ago an ambulance came and took one of the daughters to the hospital.
Hmmmmm. Something smells rotten.

Yoshinaga puts a call into Oyama, whose been working back at headquarters trying to track down more information based on what they send. He tells her about the ambulance and asks which hospital it went to that night and about any information she has about the realtor connected to house. He  tells Inami and Tamaru to check out hospital while he and Kashii go to the realtors.

At the hospital, we see the laptop thief is just leaving, so we don’t know whether he found any information. Of course, the person at the desk doesn’t want to disclose confidential information because the director is gone. Tamaru tells him that if they have to wait for a warrant, they will have the hospital shut down for a couple of days which he is sure the director doesn’t want.
TB so sexy threatening the front desk officer, grrrr.
I would have told him anything he asked leaning in like that.

So, following Inami’s suggestion, he accidentally turns monitor around so they can see information.

They are surprised when they go to the room. They find a teenage girl unconscious and hooked up to various machines. They look around a bit but find nothing, clearly at a loss about what to do.
Shun gave the front desk person a face saving way to convey the information without actively helping. Crafty. Once I saw who was in the room, I think I know the whole story.

While they stand there, another visitor shows up with flowers. This teenage girl takes one look at them and makes a run for it. They follow and catch her before she gets very far down the hall. She crying and begging and asking them not to kill her. Inami awkwardly pats her on the back, but it’s obvious they don’t really know how to handle her emotional outburst.

That girl was scared out of her wits! SIGH.

Back in the room, as she stares at the girl in the bed, she tells them that her name is Dolores, she doesn’t want to tell him her real name. The girl in the bed is Alice, but she didn’t know her real name. She only met her when they started working together at the house. She never even saw any of her customers (oh no. we know what that means). She does say that Alice told her once that she had some very dangerous ones. She feels guilty because she thinks that Alice got hurt because she (Dolores) decided to talk to the reporter. She vows to stay by Alice’s side now.
You know for a brief moment I hoped the person in the room would be the "sister's mother" and that the politician was their secret dad. I think I would have much preferred that to this story line.

Ironically, though, when they tell her that they will catch the men who put them in danger, she is equally upset. Are they going to send them back to their families? They don’t want to go back. She asks them to leave them alone. When we look at their faces, we can see that they don’t know what do with this disturbing information or this request.
The way that girl cried that she could never go back to her original parents broke my heart.

Back at headquarters, we can see what must have been on that flashdrive. Picture after picture after picture of top politicians, celebrities, policy wonks, going into that house. 
All the Who's-Who of Pedophile Weekly.

Oyama wants to get started by matching the times of these visits with the night of the ambulance or going after the real owner of the property.Those could be good ways to figure out who hurt Alice. Yoshinaga asks who else on the team wants to take this on. Kashii says he’ll do whatever the team wants. Tamaru says he’s in, but Inami declines.
Shun why did you pass on the case?????????!

He quickly stands up, saying that an emergency has come up while Oyama asks him if he doesn’t care at all about those girls and calls him a jerk. Meanwhile, Yoshinaga gets a call. We don’t know who it’s from, but it’s about Tamaru. Uh oh. This is the look I had, too, Tamaru.

And we were both right to have this look because guess where we find Tamaru next? At the viper’s bosom: Kaji’s office. He asked all sorts of personal questions.

Kaiji asked if Tamaru had a lover and I screamed - "of course Yes! Trot!".

But what follows is even more disturbing and an interchange that pretty much sums up the ethical dilemmas in this show. What do you do when the right thing to do can hurt people, too? Kaji knows what the team is about to do; he wonders about their choice since there are so many houses like that in Japan. Are they going to go after them all? Of course, Tamaru says that his job is to protect people and that Furugaki gave him that information to protect people and there is a girl’s life at stake.

Kaji just says that those houses should be monitored rather than attacked because if they are attacked they will just get harder to monitor. In fact, he’s already found the person who put the girl in hospital, and he’s agreed to pay her medical bills for the rest of her life. He tells Kaji that if they keep going and that guy disappears, what will happen to that girl?
FUCK YOU KAJI.

It will also mean that Tamaru is selfish because he’s not really thinking about the girl but only acting to make himself feel better. Ouch. He asks Tamaru to hand over the flashdrive, and he reluctantly does (I’m hoping he has a copy!), but before he leaves, he vows to fight this corrupt system. When he leaves Aounuma comes in to ask how it went, and Kaji states that everything is fine and he feels great, but I’m not sure how to read his expression.
I knew the conversation could only have one outcome, but wow making him feel selfish for wanting to get justice was the lowest of blows. Somebody needs to clean that corrupt system, and I hope fervently that it's TB. As for Kaji, I think I have figured him out, he is actually a big softy and on the side of the good guys. He is just lots more pragmatic.

We go to Alice’s hospital room, and I have a bad feeling about this. No wonder because guess who sneaks in but laptop thief. Right when he takes out a syringe, Inami appears. Of course, he takes control and now we have laptop guy with the syrine planted on his neck. Inami says that he knew he would be back and that laptop thief better not underestimate him because he, too, has done unspeakable acts so he knows the kind of people laptop thief works for.
Way to redeem yourself Shunnie.

He goes on to say that laptop thief makes him want to go back to that dark side even though he wants to stay on the good side now. He warns him about showing up again and what will happen to him, letting him go, and telling him to disappear.
Even I was terrified of Inami in this scene, and yet a dark part of me wished he had injected that driver.

We see Tamaru in church with head bowed. He looks like he’s praying, but he is clearly waiting for someone as well. The woman who looked out of the apartment window in ep 1 shows up and sits next to him. It looks like a rendezvous, but it’s not the kind I am thinking of because it turns out that her husband is the undercover guy in the cult. Tamaru recruited him for this mission but has been subsequently transferred, so he doesn’t know much about what has been going on.
Hello again ma'am.

KQ

The woman (I’m going to call her Kakashi Queen or KQ for short until we find out her name) asks how much longer until she gets to see her husband. He has been gone for two years. Tamaru thinks it should be soon. He’s also there to give her a packet of money. It seems that they meet for him to give her money once a month. When she finally sees his face, she asks him something is wrong because he looks like he has been crying all day. He doesn’t say anything until she is about to give up and leave. He asks her to stay. (part of me thinks "awww" and part of me thinks "run away now"). They just sit.
It is uncomfortable. I feel reluctant chemistry. But that's KQ's secret power.

We see Kaji watching the news where all the reporters are excited about the youngest Chief Cabinet Secretary starting today. Guess who his who his driver is? Laptop Thief!! What is more interesting about this scene is that Kaji doesn’t seem happy about this turn of events.
Yes! I feel I am right about Kaji! He doesn't like the guy going free anymore than TB. Also I was correct about knowing the pedophile. I can't remember where else I have seen him but he 100% played a sleazeball there too. Urgh.

The last scene if of Inami going to his favorite bar and finding it empty. He tells the bartender that he won’t be able to enjoy his drink if he just has to look at him. The bartender asks him if something happened worried. Inami blows him off, but when the bartender walks away, we can see that there is something haunting in Inami’s eyes.
Come baby, let me give you a hug :(

Comments

I did not remember that the driver was laptop thief and that laptop thief was the driver from the beginning until I went back to read through draft of this recap. I've watched this show three times, and I didn't notice. I'm so slow! I didn't put that detail in there because I wanted people to see the show the way I saw it, and I think we aren't supposed to notice until later, otherwise it would give some of the mystery away.
Ooops, I gave the mystery away then. LOL. But seriously, I recognized him right away. His aura in the opening scene was quite strong and he made an impression. When I saw him again, I simply said oooh, the driver is back.
Enjoyed the episode btw, I started remembering bits and pieces as I watched. I had forgotten about the girls being prostitutes though, so that was a new sadness.
No worries. I'm just slow about laptop thief/driver. I remembered about the girls as soon as she ran away, but I know I had purposely forgotten because it was so painful.