"Detective! Night Scoop" (ABC TV, Fridays at 11:17 PM) is a popular variety show where "detectives" tackle bizarre requests and worries submitted by viewers. On June 19th, Detective Takanori Takeyama investigated "Yaraten Baseball," a game he played with his late senior. Singer GACKT made his first appearance on the show as a special director, with Matsui Kemuri as assistant director and Masuda Saori as secretary.
The request came from a 64-year-old man from Osaka Prefecture. When the man entered university in Kyoto, he met a senior student named Kazuo Ishida. Senior Ishida was very knowledgeable and treated him very kindly. Even after becoming a working adult, he received accurate advice on work-related problems and personal life issues, and he considered him an indispensable mentor in life.
While working as a copywriter, Senior Ishida aspired to become a novelist, and at the age of 44, he won the Edogawa Rampo Prize. After that, he became active as a mystery writer under the name "Kaburagi Ren."
However, three years ago, he suddenly received a call from his wife informing him that "(Senior Ishida) had passed away," and he broke down in tears on the phone. Since then, he has thought of his senior at every opportunity. In particular, he can't forget the "Yaraten Baseball" games they often played together during their university days.
During our free time, we would go to a nearby park with a plastic bat and a soft ball and play a surprisingly childish game of baseball for college students, saying things like, "Can we hit this ball?" and "I'm going to hit the next one for a home run!"
I want to go back to those days. But now that I'm 64, there's no one left who will play such childish games with me. So, I was wondering if the detective could play the role of "Senior Ishida" and play "Yaraten Baseball" with me like we used to.
"Yaraten" is a Kishu dialect word for "soft ball." After playing yaraten baseball, the two apparently drank whiskey together, and some of that whiskey is still left in their system. Detective Takeyama wanted to learn more about his senior, so he went to see his wife, who was also a senior at the same university. As he listened to her story, he was overwhelmed by her deep sorrow for her deceased husband and her heartfelt feelings for his client.
The "Yaraten Baseball" game did come to fruition, but the opponent turned out to be an unexpected person. The scene of the man retracing his memories was reminiscent of Ishida-senpai's (Kaburagi Ren's) book, "Memory Detective"...
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GACKT, the special director, apparently wasn't good at ball games, and made a surreal remark that made everyone laugh: "I've only ever used a wooden bat for other purposes." In this film, the feelings of the client towards his senior from university, whom he considered his life mentor, overflow through his memories of baseball. After watching it, GACKT named Ken Ogata as his own life mentor, revealing, "He's the only person who taught me how to act."
