Five Stars

This ep was filled with nothing short of craziness! A married couple managed to kidnap Kyouske and detain him for the entire episode, while his team-mates tried their level best to figure out where he was being held captive. The couple who had kidnaped him were so confident in their plan that they even broadcast their feed, which Fushimi used to his advantage in giving his teammates clues as to his kidnapper and finally, his whereabouts later on in the ep, almost killing himself in the process.
This episode really highlighted how important communication amongst team members is no matter how small the matter. We find out that just like all the previous cases, "Sensei" was involved in this as well. Fushimi tries to talk them out of it, talking to them rationally, but in vain as they have been completely brainwashed into thinking that mass suicide is what's best for them. Minatogawa's fear for loosing the one person in her life that was her light was shown, along with a little of her back story with how their relationship began. This ep also highlighted on Nagakute, the detective from Division 1, who has always shown distaste towards KSBC. His actions here brought to light his true feelings for the new department, and not the fake facade of hatred for KSBC that was just an act he put up, as he was equally worried for the one person he showed the most hatred towards in the entire department, that being Fushimi himself.
Overall a wonderful episode.

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Another great episode, but there is an unfortunate…

Another great episode, but there is an unfortunate cyclical theme. Yamazaki has a great flash of inspiration as to what this particular case reminds him of (i.e. Ted Bundy, Zodiac, revenge suicide pact) and then KSBC director Shimibara repeats it. He says, "Ted Bundy." and then she responds with "Ted Bundy?" with a question mark. It happens in every episode and is a bit distracting by this point. It also makes Shimibara seems inept, unfortunately, like the lightbulb can't come on until Yamazaki's inspirational flashes. I'm going to give the presence of water in a -25 degree chamber the benefit of the doubt. I'm hoping that the antagonist just stepped into the hall to grab the bucket, even if it's not clearly shown. I am, however, not convinced that someone exposed to -25 temperatures for almost an hour wearing insufficient clothing would fully recover in a couple of hours with no side effects. There should have been some hypothermia side effects. But then Jack Bauer kept moving with all sorts of physical damage in the television show "24" so who am I to judge? This one may be the weakest episode of the series so far which is really a shame because this is the one that focuses so strongly on Fushimi's character and he's the one in peril.

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