The second episode of the drama series "The Hot Spot" (Nippon TV, Sunday 10:30 pm), starring actress Ichikawa Mikako, was broadcast on January 19th. In the episode, a scene was depicted in which the protagonist Endo Kiyomi (Ichikawa), a single mother who works at a business hotel, and her childhood friends, along with "alien" Takahashi (Kadota Akihiro), talk about childhood games in a car, which became a hot topic on social media.
◇The following contains spoilers.
In the second episode, Kiyomi finds out one day that her coworker Takahashi is an alien. Takahashi warns her not to tell anyone, but Kiyomi ends up telling her childhood friends Hazuki (Suzuki Anne) and Minami (Hiraiwa Kami). As a result, Kiyomi, Hazuki, Minami, and Takahashi all share a secret.
Kiyomi is approached by Hazuki, an elementary school teacher, to find a solution for a volleyball that has gotten stuck in the ceiling of the gymnasium. So Kiyomi and her friends plan to use the powers of the alien Takahashi. They forcefully persuade Takahashi, who is hesitant to use his powers. Kiyomi and her friends head to the school in their car to sneak into the school in the middle of the night and retrieve the ball... and so the story unfolds.
On the way to the elementary school, the topic of Takahashi's real age of 54 comes up. Kiyomi and the others ask Takahashi about the games he played as a child. Takahashi answers, "For our generation, we had things like radio-controlled cars and Gundam plastic models," to which Hazuki responds, "What is Gundam plastic model again?" Takahashi replies, "It's a Gundam plastic model," to which Hazuki replies with vague knowledge, "Oh, is it some kind of robot?", to which Takahashi corrects her, saying, "It's a mobile suit, though."
On social media, many people expressed their discomfort with the fact that Kiyomi and the others hadn't heard of the hit movie "ET" in the previous episode. "I don't know ET, and I don't know much about Gundam model... it feels like a hint," "I guess not knowing ET or Gundam is a hint," "It's weird that they don't know ET, there must be something to it," and "It bothers me that they're missing bits of sci-fi knowledge like ET and Gundam model."
