"Bishoku Tantei Akechi Goro" drama: Episode two recap

 Air Dates: April 12th to June 26, 2020 on NTV, Sunday's at 10:30 pm and nine episodes in all

Title translates over to 'Gourmet Detective Goro Akechi'.... this episode's rating: 8.6%

Main Cast:

Tomoya Nakamura as Goro Akechi.... Runs the Edogawa Private Investigation firm named after the famous writer, he's a connoisseur of fine foods and is the the grandson of a very wealthy store owner. Seems like a capable detective but can he actually solve cases?

Fuka Koshiba as Ichigo Kobayashi.... Operates a food truck outside of Akechi's office, he stops by for lunch most days but never pays her. By pure chance she happened to get roped into helping him out on the first case and has become his 'unofficial' assistant.

Yukiya Kitamura as Toru Katono.... Detective at the local station who often butts heads with Akechi though the pair seem to respect each other.

Kanto Sato as Tatsuomi Takahashi.... Somewhat new detective at the local police station who is Katano's partner though he would rather help out Akechi on the cases.

Miu Tomita as Momoko.... Ichigo's best friend who appears to be crazy about all men.

Semi regulars or perhaps full time members of the cast.

Eiko Koike as Takizawa but is actually known as Mary Magdalena.... Hired Akechi in episode one to find out of her husband was cheating on her but in reality is was a clever ploy by her. Though it seemed to all she died falling from a cliff in the same episode she's somehow come back from the dead and think she'll be in every show but not 100% positive of that. 

Mirai Shida as Ringo but whose real name is Akane Furukawa.... Played a major role in two people getting poisoned this show but the big question is how did she get mixed up with Mary?

 That previous recap was much longer than I imagined but that is the case often with first episodes as many characters need to be introduced along with the storyline(s). Had been planning on just doing about four posts for this drama as I expected the shows to have one case and no ongoing story. That's not the case as it appears Akechi will be having a long battle with the mysterious Mary and after two episodes can't quite put my finger on what she's all about and wonder how did she return from the dead? This recap begins off with where the last one ended with a young couple lying dead in their room at the Teito Hotel, the cause of their deaths were easy to figure out but was it a double suicide or murder?

 Akechi had been at the hotel when the bodies were discovered as he was attending a meeting of his 'Gourmet Club'. As mentioned in the first show Akechi is such a connoisseur of fine foods and does get upset when someone interrupts him while he's partaking in a meal. Also at the meeting was the detective Katono and the pair often butt heads though do help each other out. The two dashed to the room to find the young couple lying on the floor, they needed to wait for the lab to give the concrete answer but all signs pointed to cyanide being the cause of death. The way the scene was laid out made it appear the couple hadn't planned on taking their lives, someone had to give the pair the drug but wouldn't they have noticed it's distinct odor?

 That was the puzzle to this case in the beginning and Akechi tried figuring out how the cyanide could have been placed in the food without being noticed, for that he used his 'new assistant' Ichigo. She dressed as a member of the room service crew and visited the kitchen where she said it was so crowded no person could have slipped cyanide in the food there plus the smell would have been noticed. But there was a break for Akechi as Katono and his assistant Takahashi had found out what foods were in the victim's stomachs and by mistake let Akechi hear the results. The whole case will revolve around Ringos which is the word for Apple in Japanese. Seems there was some bits of apple in their stomach though there was no evidence of apples in the room, where did it come from?

 And that's what Akechi began to work on immediately, he noticed that apples were not on the couple's order so it could only be one person who could have given it to them. That's whoever was the server that day but the whole staff was clean as none had been sent to the room. Another key clue for Akechi was the guest list for that day, to his amazement whose name should be on the list but.... Mary Magdalena who he thought had perished falling off a cliff! That wasn't the case as now Akechi has another case to solve, the murder and Mary's reappearance and were they connected? Before the investigations could continue Akechi was visited at his office by an older man who was the butler of his family. May not mention Ichigo often enough but these days she's constantly by his side, she was truly blown away by the fact that there were such things as 'butlers' in real life as the pair then took a time out to visit Akechi's old house.

 Hard to call Akechi's old residence a house as it's more of a large mansion. The only person that seems to currently reside there is his mother who is now the head of the popular Ogiya Department store after the death of her husband. Akechi's mother is extremely disappointed in her son for not wanting to be the next president of the store and feels he's wasting his time just being a private detective. The mother really blamed the grandfather for spoiling her son growing up and Akechi's love for fine food came from visiting so many restaurants with the grandfather. Mother and son do not get along well as both had some harsh words to say to each other, Akechi didn't eat a bite of the food though Ichigo managed to gobble down as much as she could.

 Back to the murder case and it's fairly evident from the lab results that the cyanide was placed in some apple jam, now the questions are who made the jam and who served the dead couple it? The pair of detectives Katono and Takahashi are competent but also a bit goofy as once again they managed to let slip a key bit of info to Akechi. The male victim's name was Sawada, the woman with him was his girlfriend Kawakami but that wasn't his only girlfriend. He had hailed from the Aomori region which is famous for their apples, he had been dating a woman from there for many years so the hunt for who made the apple jam seems to be within reach.

 Aomori is now Akechi's next destination and of course in tow with him will be Ichigo. The pair had been eating a small dinner at an oden cafe where Ichigo had made some comments about preparing jam and how with certain apples the smell of cyanide wouldn't be noticeable. Upon hearing that Akechi decided right them to head to Aomori though the problem was Ichigo had a bit too much Sake and was in no condition to drive. Akechi is about thirty in age but has never driven nor has he ever had a license so recruited to drive the pair to Aomori was Ichigo's best friend Momoko. She'll always have a small role in this show and her two faves in life are food and men in that order. Momoko did drive the duo there but the next day scurried back to Tokyo by herself to let Ichigo be alone with Akechi, is there a budding romance in the works for the pair?

 Final segment and the new sleuthing team have ended up at an apple orchard. Not just any one but where they expect to find the person responsible for making the jam laced with cyanide. There's many different varieties of apples, a popular one in japan is called Akane which also happens to be a female name. As you can see above there is a young woman named Akane who runs an orchard with her grandfather and was the person Akechi was on the hunt for. She just happened to be Sawada's prior girlfriend and that ended off badly for Akane. They had started dating in high school but after graduation he had gone to college in Tokyo. The pair remained close for a while as Akane would often send him jams and other local things from Aomori.

 But a long distance relationship is hard to maintain and that's what happened to the pair as he dropped out of college picking up a new girlfriend. What infuriated Akane to no end was that this girl would post pics and videos on her social media pages showing her eating the jams sent to Sawada, this new girlfriend Kawakami had no clue who Akane was. So what it boiled down to was Akane creating a special jam laced with cyanide but her plans didn't include killing Sawada. He had grown so tired of apple products from Aomori that Akane felt he wouldn't touch the jam, only Kawakami which would lead to her death. That assumption proved wrong as Sawada did eat the jam that also led to his death, Akane is so distraught over what took place but sadly it's too late to change anything.

 She was taken away by Katono and Takahashi who traveled all the way from Tokyo to arrest her. But there's really no crimes that she can be charged with at the moment as she wasn't the one who served the jam to the now dead couple. Akane confessed about everything she knew and as Akechi surmised the person to serve the victims their apple jam was.... Mary Magdalena! We saw a brief glimpse of the incident as she had been dressed as a hotel employee, in their room she heated up the apple jam. Doing that will will make the odor of cyanide disappear and be tasteless, we did learn quite a bit about what apples can do in this show. After eating just a small amount the pair succumbed to their deaths and Mary exited the hotel unnoticed. Until she's caught the police can't charge Akane with any crime, she leaves this drama for a while but will return in episode five.

 What may be explained then is how did Akane and Mary get hooked up? Aomori is a bit of a haul from Tokyo so how could Mary know anything about the relationship Akane had with a man in Tokyo? This Mary is one mysterious woman and have a strong feeling this double murder was planned out by her to get Akechi involved in it's investigation. If so it worked and in the episode's final scene seems Akechi is finally catching on to what Mary is doing but why? She had been waiting in his office and the two had a brief conversation but he didn't try to contact the police nor did he threaten her. Mary did most of the talking and was mainly letting Akechi know that his future will be filled with more evil incidents that's of her doing. Bit of a confusing ending for we don't know what Mary's true purpose is but it was also a decent finale as it seems this storyline with Mary is going to be an interesting but deadly one.

 It was nice to see Mirai with a big role in this episode and she'll be returning in episode five. I used to like her quite a bit but kind of lost track of her over the years, don't think she made the transition from teenage actress to an adult one quite well. Just looked at her DOB and hard to believe Mirai is now 27 in age, think one thing that's hurt her career is being so short as her height is just 150 cm. Really enjoyed these two shows immensely, it's so much better than I expected and as I said in the first post quirky yet serious mystery shows are among my faves. Won't be zipping through the episodes though so may not have the next pair of recaps until next weekend but the plan is to finish it up by the end of the month which shouldn't be too difficult. As is my norm plenty of screenshots to help you follow the story a bit better.