Review of Seinaru Kaibutsutachi Ep 7

After getting to know from Honma that Mie had a rare blood type, Shiba wonders if Mie's death had to do with the fact that she got a wrong blood transfusion by mistake. However, Kasugai's denial only serves to make Shiba more intent on finding out the truth. To that, Kasugai responds by saying that Shiba's persistence is only to make himself feel better since he would feel better if it is found out that Mie's death wasn't due to his inexperience but rather some uncontrollable factor. Although it appears that Kasugai is not shaken by the exchange, she does feel that Shiba poses an increasing threat to those involved in the scam since he's getting closer to the truth. As such, Kasugai makes use of Okubo to tell Keirin University Hospital about Shiba's surgical error which results in him being suspended indefinitely.

Shiba resolves to find out the truth regardless of whether he can still be a doctor. Touched by his sincerity, Yoko steals a sample of Mie's blood from the hospital and delivers it to Shiba. He then goes to Mizuhara for help to test the blood type. Unknown to them, Kasugai happens to see Mizuhara behaving suspiciously and finds out about what is going on. Mizuhara passes the test results to Shiba who's surprised to know that Mie has the Bombay blood type which would give a result of O+ if the simple test kit is used. That coincides with Yoko's story about how she was certain that Mie's blood type is definitely O+. The complication is, someone with the rare Bombay blood type cannot receive blood transfusions from anyone other than those with the same blood type. As a result, Shiba suspects that Kasugai deliberately killed Mie because Mie only developed complications towards the end of the surgery after Kasugai connected a new bag of blood to her!

Shiba goes to look for Itokawa and finds out that he had seen Kasugai swopping the labels on the pre-prepared blood packs belonging to Mie with those in the hospital. This strengthens his belief that Kasugai had a hand in Mie's death and he wants to confront her about this. Shiba then asks to take part in Itokawa's surgery even though he's no longer a doctor in the hospital but Mizuhara lets him have his way. Although Okubo sees what happens and wants to stop them, Kasugai stops him. When Shiba confronts Kasugai with his findings, the latter feigns ignorance but it is obvious that Shiba has hit the nail right on its head. However, before Shiba can do anything else, he is taken away by the police called in by Okubo for operating on Itokawa without permission

At the same time, tension rises in the Hyuga household as Keiko and her mother-in-law become enemies. The mother-in-law finds out the truth about the surrogate pregnancy from Toshio's ex-wife and questions Keiko about it. However, unexpectedly, Keiko admits to everything easily and insists that they had to do it to maintain the family line. In another surprising turn of events, this somehow makes her mother-in-law impressed with Keiko's convictions in thinking of the Hyuga family's interests and she even fires Toshio's ex-wife from the company in order to stop her from talking about this.

I don't know what's the bigger surprise in this episode. The fact that Kasugai killed Mie on purpose? The thing is, what was the motive? Or Keiko's mother-in-law doing an about-turn and forgiving her about the surrogate mother scam so easily? Makes me wonder how warped her values are as demonstrated through her insistence to do everything for the sake of the Hyuga family. I think I was more surprised by the latter though because I was half-expecting the mother-in-law to blow up at Keiko for engineering this scam but that was a smart move by the scriptwriter. As for Kasugai's involvement in Mie's death, I think it was pretty obvious she had a part to play but as for why and when she decided to do it, I think the answers will only be out by next week.

Frankly speaking, by this point in time, viewers already know that there isn't a surrogate mother scam after all because Mie gave birth to her own child. As such, it will be anyone's guess what happens to everyone at the end because I don't really think that anyone can be held responsible for coming up with the scam but heads may roll for Mie's death.

It has always been my concern that whenever I see a drama which impresses me throughout the entire season, there is a high chance that its ending will fall flat. I hope this drama will buck the trend though.