Since The Day I Took You Away~ Anata wo Ubatta Sono Hi Kara

Psychological drama Anata wo Ubatta Sono Hi Kara (Since The Day I Took You Away) tells the story of a woman named Hiromi Nakagoshi (Keiko Kitagawa), and when we first meet up with her, she is a wife with seemingly no culinary talents chatting it up with a single father in a cooking class. Nicking her finger with a knife, she confides to the man that she is here to brush up on her skills to get her kids to eat. The man, Asahi Yuuki (Nao Omori) sympathizes, saying that his kids are fussy eaters too! A friendship of sorts is made as the two continue their lessons.

When we check in on Hiromi later in the restroom, however, we are to find that this cheerful and friendly persona of hers is all a lie. This facade of being a helpless Mom has all been a ruse to get closer to the man Yuuki Asahi- and the reason we will learn is a very dark one indeed.

Once upon a time, Hiromi Nakagoshi was a happily married woman with a husband named Keigo and a young daughter named Akari. On her 3rd birthday, Akari wanted corn pizza as part of her birthday meal from a local pastry store.

As Akari is allergic to shellfish, Hiromi diligently checks the ingredients and, seeing it clear of any problems, decides it is OK for her, and allows her daughter to have it for her dessert.

But that evening, while celebrating her birthday, Akari begins to feel unwell after eating the corn pizza, and when she develops a severe allergic reaction, the terrified parents rush her to the hospital.

The doctors do their best, but they are too late and Akari passes away. And despite Hiromi’s efforts to check and double check things, they are horrified to learn find she has died from a reaction to shellfish. Somehow despite the label's list of ingredients, the substance was in the pizza.

The pastry shop is brought up on charges of mislabelling their goods and negligent in the itemizing of their ingredients for their products. The president of the shop, however, denies any wrongdoing and insists there has been no error on their part. The President is the aforementioned Asahi Yuuki, and he says he understands the importance of correct procedures. But when he seems to suggest that it is ultimately the adults responsibility what a child eats, the media take it as him blaming the parents of the deceased child, enraging the public and infuriating Hiromi and her husband.

From that moment Hiromi has had only dark thoughts about this man, and when the case is dismissed and he is let go, she reaches despair. Her life becomes a shadow of its former self, and even her marriage gets dissolved. When she learns that Yuuki has moved on with his life with seemingly no remorse, she begins to entertain ideas of violent revenge against him.

Stalking him  in his fine abode with a seemingly happy family with his two daughters, Hiromi cannot stand the injustice of someone who has taken everything from her and yet gets to live his life in luxury. 

With murder in mind and knife in hand, she goes to Yuuki’s house with the intention of extracting her revenge on him, but when she is seen approaching the house by the family's tutor, she comes to her senses, and running away, ends up tossing the weapon into the river.

Getting back to her car, she races back home in shock at how close she came to doing the deed. But she is FURTHER shocked when who should appear in the back seat of her car but Yuuki's youngest daughter! In a strange twist of fate, while Hiromi was at the Yuuki household, little Moe managed to sneak into the car while playing a game of hide and seek (which no one in the house appeared to be paying attention to).

Realizing the opportunity that has dropped into her lap, her first feverish thought is to end Moe’s life in the same way Yuuki had inadvertently done to her daughter. But when little Moe sings a song Akari had once sung, she cannot do the deed- and instead comes up with a new plan- to steal Moe away and raise her as her OWN daughter!

By the time Yuuki and the family have noticed Moe has disappeared, both she and Hiromi are long gone and miles away… The authorities are called in and a different kind of hide-and-seek begins, with Hiromi and Moe on one end and the law on the other. And thus begins our drama.

And there’s also a savvy news investigator named Sawa Azumi (Sawa Niimura) who has taken a keen interest in the case and may be the only one who senses just exactly what may be transpiring here….

MAN, I’ve been highly anticipating this drama since its announcement months back- as you all know, I love Keiko Kitagawa, and not only is she amazing here, this plotline harkens back to thrillers like MOTHER with Yasuko Matsuyuki or  Youkami no Semi (the Cicada's Eighth Day), that Rei Dan child abduction drama which is still one of my ALL-TIME favorites.

The preview for next week's Anata wo Ubatta Sono Hi Kara already looks chock full of intriguing developments and I can’t WAIT to see MORE- Should be a GREAT drama!