Bakebake:Heaven, who wants to be a mosquito if he were reborn, and Toki, who plays the wooden fish; a look back at episode 118 with "attention level" data that measures how captivated viewers were.

In the 118th episode (aired March 18th) of the NHK Asadora drama series "Bakebake " (NHK General, Monday-Saturday 8:00 AM, etc.), starring actress Akari Takaishi , what scene captivated viewers the most? We examined the minute-by-minute changes in "attention level" (according to REVISIO, Kanto region, preliminary figures), which indicates the percentage of viewers glued to their screens, and found that the highest value was 63.9% at 8:11 AM.

" Bakebake" is the 113th morning Asadora. The heroine, Toki Matsuno, and her husband, Lefkada Heaven, are modeled after Koizumi Setsu, the daughter of a fallen samurai family in Matsue, and Lafcadio Hearn(Yakumo Koizumi), known for his works such as "Kwaidan." The drama boldly reconstructs these events, changing some of the character and organization names to portray them as fiction.

◇Heaven and Tsukasanosuke become comrades who share a secret.

In the previous day's episode 117, Heaven (Tommy Bastow) empathized with Tsukasanosuke(Takashi Okabe) who said he and Heaven were the same, and confided in Tsukasa that he had been fired from the university where Tsukasanosuke worked. In episode 118, the two, who have become friends sharing this secret, return home. At home, Toki (Takaishi) is waiting for Heaven to come home, playing with the children. Then, Jo (Rairin Sugita) arrives. In order to protect Heaven's secret, Tsukasanosuke tries to enlist Jo's help and asks for his cooperation.

The "attention level," which indicates the percentage of viewers watching the show intently, was somewhat low for episode 118, as it was a transitional episode between weeks 24 and lacked any particularly exciting moments. The highest value was in the low 60s.

◇The peak scene is when Heaven and Toki go for a walk.

The peak viewership for the day was 63.9% at 8:11 AM. This was the scene where Toki invites Heaven for a walk, and the two set out together. They stroll through a quaint temple, and the scene around 8:11 AM includes Toki saying to Heaven, "If university were a little less busy, we could come here more often," and "You really work hard every day." Up until then, the scenes had been set at Heaven's home, so the sudden change of scenery may have captured viewers' attention.

Toki doesn't know it yet, but Heaven has actually been fired from his job as an English teacher at Tokyo Imperial University, so he's "free." There's very little conversation between the two of them around 8:11 AM, and the topic of being "fired" doesn't come up again later.

Instead, from 8:12 AM onwards, Toki and Heaven's conversation revolves around the topic of "What would you want to be if you were reborn?" Toki's answer, "A wooden fish drum," Heaven replies, "A mosquito." He laughs, saying he wants to sting everyone he hates, like the university president, and everyone he wants to meet. This seems to be a reference to an episode in Yakumo Koizumi's essay "Antiques," where he writes that after death he wants to be "reborn as a mosquito and sting friends who come to his grave." It's a theme typical of Heaven, who also has a gentle gaze towards "faint things," but the audience's attention level fluctuated between 60% and 63% as the episode ended.

The data used is REVISIO's proprietary "Attention Level" index (Kanto region, preliminary figures), which surveys program and commercial viewing habits in 2,000 households in the Kanto region and 600 households in the Kansai region. A dedicated device equipped with a human recognition sensor constantly measures whether people are looking at the television screen, and calculates the percentage of people in front of the television who were paying close attention to the program. (Text by Hiroki Sasamoto/MANTAN)