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| Sawatdee! |
After the storm of characters in the first episode, we get another new character, this time in the form of a half-Japanese and half-Thai girl named Meo. For most of the episode, I found that the mystery took a backseat to the introduction of Meo and the minor development of her character. On the outside, she looks cheery but I think that she is in a lot of pain because of what her father is doing. As a viewer, I think that Meo is more moe than Alice right now; her voice and 'naisu body' were the deciding factors. With everything starting to build up now, the next episode should be interesting.
This episode starts off with Meo's father running away from people who are looking for him. During his escape, he frantically calls Meo, telling her to grab the bag inside the safe in their house and run. Unfortunately, it seemed to me like he got caught. Meanwhile, Narumi has just brought a bowl of ramen to Alice's room. After owning himself by opening a can of DoKupe that Alice had dropped earlier, the doorbell rings. Upon opening the door, the star of the episode is seen standing there, greeting him with using the Thai phrase, sawatdee. Upon seeing Alice, Meo rushes up to her, in awe of how the NEET detective looks like a doll. Soon, the three get down to business and, after a flashback of what had happened earlier involving Meo's father, Alice begins to gather information about him. After learning that Meo's father is a former yakuza member, Alice focuses her attention on the bag that Meo brought. With it's contents unknown, Alice warns that, even though it may contain information about Meo's father, there may be no turning back once it is opened. Prepared for this, Meo decides to open it and is shocked to see it full of cash, with the total being 200 million yen. With this piece of information, Alice speculates that Meo's father may have been involved in some crime and that he left the money with his daughter before running away. Wanting more answers, Meo pleads for Alice to allow her to contact her father but the NEET detective firmly disallow this, saying that these are the conditions for the case. After hearing that, Meo decides that she will try to do things her own way, picking up the cash before heading towards the door. Even though Narumi tries to stop her, she will not listen, most likely because the desire to find her father caused her to stop thinking properly. Fortunately, Alice stops her client from making a major mistake by convincing her that a NEET detective is able to do many great things. And with that, Meo leaves her father's case in Alice's hands.
In the meantime, Meo starts working at Hanamaru (the ramen shop). During the time where he helped out at Hanamaru to when he walked home with Ayaka, Narumi learned that it wasn't only him with family problems. Although his mother passed away and his father rarely comes home, Meo and Ayaka have it just as as bad. For Meo, her mother also passed away and her father is now a runaway while Ayaka's parents are estranged. A while later, after Hiro comes into Alice's room with a picture of Meo's father, Alice apparently gets an error when sending it and asks Narumi to use his "skills". It turns out that Narumi's "skills" are with the computer (maybe the computer club at school did help). As the computer-illiterate workers at The Fourth's place look on, they are amazed at how Narumi can fix the multiple viruses on the computer that they contracted from visiting different porn sites. When The Fourth enters the room, these loud blockheads praise Narumi for his skills and even recommends that they initiate him into their group before The Fourth yells at them to shut up or face a beating. Before Narumi leaves, The Fourth tells him to drop this case if he doesn't want to get hurt. However, Narumi runs his mouth and almost causes the obviously dangerous man to snap. Luckily, Narumi escapes after getting shaken up a bit with The Fourth smirking at how another idiot has just appeared. After leaving, Narumi gets a phone call from Tetsu who ends up guiding him to where he is currently playing mahjong before the two of them, along with some fat man by the name of Nemo-san, chat over some food and drinks. The bald man drunk and happy until Tetsu mentioned Meo's father. After Tetsu agreed to offer his balls if he turned out to be Nemo's enemy in exchange for information about Meo's father, the drunk man reveals that Meo's father was launderer of the Kishiwada Group. It turns out that the former yakuza member left with 300 million yen, something Narumi tried to question (since he only saw 200 million yen in Meo's bag) before Tetsu shut him up by throwing a towel at his face. The two exit the restaurant soon after, leaving the fat man alone. Meanwhile, despite being told by her father to never contact him again, Meo picks up the phone and calls her father's cell phone. As the cell phone starts ringing at the other end, an unknown man smirks, stating that it finally happened.
Early the next morning, Narumi awakes to a cry of help from Alice over the phone. After rushing over to help her, he is stunned to see Meo and Ayaka in nothing but a bath towel. Although Meo didn't seem to mind, Ayaka delivers two painful slaps to the face. Narumi later learns that the so-called emergency is that Ayaka forced Alice to take a bath. Later in the day, when the everyone finally meets up, they discuss the problem at hand: the missing 100 million yen. At this point, the case starts to heat up as the group tries to figure out how the different pieces of information they have link together. After telling Ayaka and Meo to go and get her some ice cream, Alice talks with the rest of the guys about the problem at hand. Hitoshi comes up with the theory that Meo's father intends to abandon his own daughter since the Kishiwada Group had tracked him down faster than he anticipated, something that Narumi doesn't agree with. Instead of staying and chatting, he takes matters into his own hands and decides to tell Meo that her father probably won't be coming back. This stupid mistake of his causes the girl's joyful front to finally come crashing down, revealing the sadness and the pain that is inside. On top of this, Ayaka walks by the room and sees Meo crying, obviously unhappy since she thinks Narumi caused it. Back inside Alice's room, the NEET detective finally discovers something important: a cellphone hidden inside a self-made pocket at the bottom of the bag of cash. Upon seeing that the wallpaper of the phone is a picture of the Kusakabe family upon their arrival in Japan, Alice tells Narumi that they should've taken the words of Meo's father more sincerely, hinting that Hitoshi's theory is incorrect. Just then, a noise is heard from one of the monitors hooked up to a surveillance camera around Hanamaru and three men are seen standing there, with serious looks on their faces. My guess is that they are from the Kishiwada Group. With the episode preview not giving any hints, the wait for next week will be quite tough. Really looking forward to the next episode.
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