Unnatural

A series of events leads single, 25-year-old Mikuri Moriyama and 36-year-old Hiramasa Tsuzaki to marry as a cover.

The drama tells the story of air force pilots and their families from 1945 to 1971. As the husbands embarked on patriotic missions to fight against the enemies, their families must content with horror of wars, mass emigration to distant land, and death of love ones. Their shared experience brought the military families together to support one another.

In 2002 (Heisei 14), public relations officer Mikami Yoshinobu of D Prefectural Police, is having an intense confrontation with the correspondents’ club, over the issue of the anonymity of a perpetrator in a traffic accident that caused serious injuries. Meanwhile, the public relations office is informed by the top brass that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department commissioner’s visit to the home of the family of the victim in “64”, an important unsolved case with its statute of limitation about to run out, has been decided one week later. The case which the police refer to internally as “64” is the kidnapping and murder of Shoko-chan which took place in just seven days in January 1989 (Showa 64). It was the worst in D Prefectural Police’s history. Mikami is under strict orders to obtain the family’s consent as well as to give the reporters’ questions beforehand. The visit is meant to emphasise the police’s resolve to put all effort into solving the case. However, the victim’s father, Amemiya Yoshio, rejects the commissioner’s visit and the correspondents’ club refuses to cooperate for the commissioner’s press conference. Mikami is torn between the top brass, which operates on organisational principles, and the correspondents’ club. The club denounces the complete change in Mikami’s attitude which had been open until then. In fact, Mikami has a big problem at home. His only daughter, Ayumi, has been missing since several months ago…

At a prestigious high school in Tokyo, the third grade D class consists of high scoring students. Their previous homeroom teacher went crazy in a short period of time and quit their job. The students in third grade D class pushes their homeroom teachers to the edge and watches their teachers collapse mentally. The students view it as a game they enjoy playing. Tsuneo Yoshizawa appears in third grade D class as their new homeroom teacher. Tsuneo Yoshizawa keeps a smile on his face, even though he is attacked verbally and physically by the students. He never loses his smile. The students' behavior gets worse towards Tsuneo Yoshizawa and they concoct a plan to kill their teacher.

Sakura is a single 39-year-old woman who works as the assistant manager at a beauty salon. She spends her days making her customers look beautiful but doesn’t pay much attention to her own appearance. All of that changes when she goes to a party and meets Hiroto, a much younger man who is a biker. Will Sakura revel in the attention of the handsome but dangerous Hiroto or notice the constant interest of her hard-talking and hard-drinking salon manager, Rintaro?

45-year-old Hiro Kamon works as a librarian because she loves books. Although she is worshiped as the "aloof beauty" and "ideal female" for her beautiful, gentle smile and amiability, she actually dislikes people. Hiro has been hurt countless times, and Chōji, the only guy she loved wholeheartedly in university, also fled in one night. She has become a person who no longer believes in love and has decided to live alone for life. But she ends up acting as a "fake married couple" with Chōji, whom she happens to meet again, for the sake of his mother, Teruno, who has been given a short time to live.

The story of Saeki Kentaro, who continues to fail the National Bar Examinations and lose sight of the goal of his life, and his old sister Keiko, who is a freelance writer looking up their grandfather Miyabe who died in the Pacific War as a Kamikaze pilot. Miyabe had an astute ability as a pilot of fighter planes, but he was extraordinarily afraid of death. His two grandchildren started wondering why he applied for the Kamikaze corps. Revealing Miyabe’s unexpected title of “genius yet coward”, they unveil a surprising fact which has been sealed for over 60 years.

Freelance programmer Sakagami is paralyzed in the lower half of his body and confined to a wheelchair. He sets up a company called dele.LIFE in partnership with a law firm established by his late father. At the request of clients, Sakagami works together with a freelance jack-of-all-trades Mashiba to delete all unfavorable digital records of their clients left in their computers and smartphones after they die. They are not supposed to see inside the files but when they feel something strange in the client’s death, they cannot help getting involved.

Suzume is a girl born to a family running a small restaurant in Gifu Prefecture. She loses her hearing in one ear from a disease. Encouraged by her loving parents and childhood friend, she lives through an eventful life with a tenacious spirit.

Shiratori Sakuto is 28, but has the intelligence of a 6-year-old boy. He works for Dream Flower Service, a flower distribution centre which provides employment for problem youth. One day, he and a colleague, Yanagawa Ryuichi, delivers a rose bouquet to the apartment building where Mochizuki Haruka lives. Because Haruka does not know that the deliveryman is mentally challenged, she is shocked by his response and tries to call the police. Haruka works for a brain physiology research centre where Professor Hachisuka Daigo has been studying the improvement of mental performance. He has succeeded in lab experiments on a white mouse called Algernon. Sakuto is transformed into a genius through surgery. But Algernon's new intelligence begins to fade, and he dies. Sakuto realises that his genius, too, is destined to leave him.

Adapted from the novel by author Wu Hsiao-Le, the series consists of five independent stories about parenting, as well as children's pressures of growing up, when faced with the tragic consequences of social pressure, parental oppression and family dysfunction. Each story is told in two parts in this ten-part series.