Fumo Chitai 1.02

aka The Waste Land

Episode 2

The aircraft division at Kinki Trading continues to try and win the jet fighter contract from the Japanese government. Iki gets an assistant, Koide. Tokyo Trading, one of Kinki's rivals, has the upper hand. General Kaiduka, the Japanese Defense Minister, buries a report on the power of the Luckheed F-104, Kinki's jet.

Iki and Satoi, his boss, appeal to a leading politician in the opposition party. The politician pledges that he will have the Defense Minister answer for burying the report. The politician backs off this pledge after he receives a visit from Samejime, an employee of Tokyo Trading.

Iki turns to Seijo Hisamatsu, a member of the current Prime Minister's cabinet. Iki first met Hisamatsu during the war. He tells Hisamatsu everything he knows. Iki's next move is to gather proof that the Prime Minister has been accepting bribes.

The scandal over the bribes gives Kinki Trading an opening. All they need now is to revise their offer down but in order to do that they need the competition's final price sheet. Koide obtains a copy of the pricing sheet from a contact in the defense department.

General Kaiduka informs Kawamata, Iki's friend, that he is about to get reassigned to a different post. Punished for taking a stand in opposition to what the general is trying to do, Kawamata is helpless. 

Iki visits with again with Chisato Akitsu. This time he sees her at a pottery exhibition. One of her pieces is on display as the exhibition. He also has another encounter with Beniko Hamanaka while he is out drinking with a colleague. She continues to rub him the wrong way.

The episode ends with Iki discovering that there has been a problem with the Luckheed F-104. One of the jets crashed during a test flight and it doesn't look like pilot error. 

Thoughts

This is very melodramatic but I am enjoying it. Maybe it will go too far for me at some point but I'm kind of expecting it to do that.