Signal~Chouki Mikaiketsu Jiken Sousahan

As a child, Kento Saegusa  (Kentaro Sakaguchi) was a shy and introverted boy without any friends except for a friendly classmate named Ayaka who takes a liking to him.

On a rainy afternoon after school, Ayaka is waiting for the shower to let up so she can go home, and Kento thinks about offering her his umbrella. Sadly, his shyness takes over and he ends up leaving without saying anything. On his way out, he sees a pretty, rich looking woman come to pick her up and, relieved, forgets all about it.

 

That night, however, the news comes out that Ayaka is missing and hasn’t come home. Days later, her body is found dead, and a man has been listed as a probable suspect.

Only Kenta knows that it wasn’t a man at all, and tries to tell the grownups around him. He even goes down to the police station to tell them what he saw, but no one pays attention to him and it’s all he can do to leave them a note saying  “the kidnapper is a woman”. From then on he carries a burden of guilt, thinking, “If only I’d let her my umbrella, Ayaka would still be alive.”

Fast forward to the present and we see Kenta has grown into a police investigator with an extraordinary sense of observation. With his eye, he can figure out exactly what a person is thinking  just by their clothing, behavior, etc. His haunted past, however, has turned into a callous young man who doesn’t care about morals and only uses his abilities to get scoops and make money. This causes him to clash with other investigators, including the sombre and serious detective Misaki Sakurai (Michiko Kichise) who feel Kenta’s disrespectful behavior an insult towards the profession.

While leaving the station, Kenta happens to hear a walkie talkie crackling in a bag of trash.

Taking it out, he hears the sound of a detective named Takeshi Oyama (Kazuki Kitamura) saying he is at the site of an old hospital and has found the remains of the suspect kidnapper in an old grating in the yard.

 The signal abruptly cuts and Saesuga frustratedly slaps the walkie talkie trying to make it turn back on…and that’s when he realizes the device doesn’t even have BATTERIES in it!!

Kenta doesn’t know what to make of it, but his curiosity compels him to go to the old hospital and look in the grating himself. What he finds there shocks his senses…for indeed, there is an old skeleton laying inside the drainage!

The authorities are called and the bones are identified as the missing suspect. But his remains tell them that he was tied up there and killed…leaving them to conclude that he wasn’t the killer and was only set up as the fall guy.

Kenta ’s mind is still reeling over the discovery of the bones. Somehow, the voice on the walkie talkie is contacting him through TIME! The voice is speaking to him from 15 yers in the past, and with the statute of limitations for the murder about to expire, it’s up to Kenta to team up with Sakurai and find the culprit!

I didn’t see the original Korean drama SIGNAL that this show is based on, but this is a  interesting premise for a time-traveling story and I’m excited to see where it goes! Reading the dramawiki synopsis, it seems that Kenta and Oyama will continue to communicate through the walkie talkie to solve more cold case files after this initial storyline. Sounds Good!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com