Hime-chan no Ribbon episode 49

Episode Title
HAATO TAKUTO de ooabare
the heart baton makes everything go wild
Air Date
1993.09.10
OP
Egao no Genki (SMAP)
ED
Hajimete no Natsu (SMAP)
  • Summary version 1.0 by Pascal Janin, 1994.03.03
  • Editing by Hitoshi Doi, 1994.04.06
  • [The first 3 minutes are a quick summary of the previous episode 48. You should better have seen it in order to understand what's coming up next :]
Just after Hanako [Hime-chan's mother] has got the phone call saying that Yumeko has disappeared from the kindergarten, Daichi's father goes there and asks Yumeko's teacher and classmates what they have seen. The kids tell him that the guy who has been seen with Yumeko was wearing dark glasses.

At home, Hime-chan says it was the same guy she had seen looking at her mother during the reception.

Then her mother says that Yumeko will be probably killed. Everyone is in shock, but she replies that in the novel she wrote, Kokkyou no Kanata ni, the hero's child is kidnapped by the coup d'etat team and is killed. Daichi's father retorts that it's only a story in a book. Hanako, however, says that they have recently got in touch with somebody who had some information about a coup d'etat in a country and was about to give them to the press.

As she talks, the camera follows the Radjah at the Shinjuku station, followed himself by three men wearing dark glasses and black suits. They all take a train.

Hanako adds, in tears, that something has happened so that their correspondent has unexpectedly run off and since then they have no way to contact him again.. exactly the same way the story is told in her novel.

Daichi's father thinks that the criminals might have found the link between the recent events and the book, so that they think that Hanako, the writer, holds the information too. Then the phone rings.

Hanako is supposed to stay on the line as long as she can, in order to give the police enough time to trace the kidnapper, so she takes a deep breath and picks up the phone.

The guy on the other end calls her Nonohara-sensei. He tells her he has kidnapped Yumeko, and if she wants to see her daughter alive, she must give him next week's part of her novel. Hanako says that it's impractical, because the novel will end in about three weeks, and she has already given this last three week part to her editor on the previous day, just before the reception began.

The guy looks surprised to hear that the end of the novel has already been written. Then he says he will exchange Yumeko for the floppy with the end of the story written on it.

In his car, Yumeko is sitting on the left front seat, and sees a girl eating an ice (soft) cream outside. So she asks the kidnapper for some too. At the Nonohara's home, everyone can hear Yumeko's voice and the kidnapper talking unexpectedly nicely to her. Then he tells Hanako that she has to come, alone, at eleven on the dot to the public phone near the south exit of the station with the floppy disk, and not to say a word to the police. Then he hung up.

The phone call hasn't lasted long enough for him to be discovered. There is just half an hour left before they would have to meet. Since her mother must go there alone, Hime-chan goes to her room and reduces herself to the size of Pokota, using the heart baton. Then they both take a ride on the flying magical pen, and follow Hime-chan's mother.

Just before Hanako leaves, Daichi's father gives her a brooch, with a mike hidden in it, and an earphone to let the police contact her if needed.

In the train that the Radjah has taken, the three 'spying' guys still look for him. But he hides himself among a group of kids who thought it was a game.

Hanako is now by the public phone, waiting for the call. It's one to eleven, and Hime-chan and Pokota fly just above the clock. In the street, some policemen, in plain clothes, look at her too.

Then the phone rings and Hanako picks it up. The kidnapper tells her to take the subway ticket hidden behind the public phone, and hurry to take the train that was just arriving in the station. She complains she has no time to do so, but the guy tells her to take it if she really wants to see Yumeko again.

So she rushes at the train and gets into it just before the doors shut. But her husband and Daichi's father, who were just behind her, arrive too late. So Hime-chan, following Pokota's advice, follows the train, flying above it.

[CM break]

In the train, Hanako hears Daichi's father [thanks to the earphone he gave her] asking her if she sees the kidnapper somewhere. She replies there's nobody who looks like one. But he was actually pretending to be reading a newspaper, and has heard Hanako talking to the police in her brooch. Soon he comes and aims a gun, hidden under his newspaper, in her back. He snatches the brooch from her coat, then steps on it. Then he does the same with her earphone.

In the police car, a voice on the radio tells Daichi's father that they have lost contact with Hanako.

Hanako immediately asks about Yumeko, but the guy tells her not to speak out loud. They will leave the train at the next station, and go meet her.

Hime-chan and Pokota were still flying above the train when they see Hanako and the kidnapper getting off. She recognizes the guy as the one she saw at the reception and wants to help her mother, but Pokota has spotted the gun in her back so he stops Hime-chan.

In the meantime, the train that the Radjah has taken has stopped in the same station, and by coincidence Hanako and the kidnapper walk on the platform just in front of his window. He then remembers and recognizes the woman as the one he had met at the reception. But he is spotted by the three guys who were after him, and must get off quickly. When he was running away, he bumps into Hanako, and her purse bursts open.

Both the floppy the Radjah was holding in his hand [which contains secret information about the coup d'etat team] and the floppy Hanako was carrying in her purse [which contains the last three chapters of her novel] fall on the floor and get mixed up. During the few seconds, the Radjah and Hanako stare at each other and recognize each other. Then the Radjah grasps the first floppy he finds and continues running.

At the same time, the kidnapper tries to take the remaining floppy, but Hanako is quicker and tells him he will get the floppy if and only if her daughter is in good health.

Unfortunately for the Radjah, he is soon caught by the three guys who point a gun at him. They force him to give them the floppy. But it's not the floppy they were expecting. On the floppy sticker was written Kokkyou no Kanata ni. They realize that Hanako has taken the wrong floppy.

Meanwhile the kidnapper has driven Hanako to a disused factory nearby. Hime-chan and Pokota keep following them until they stop in front of the factory. Then they turn themselves back to their original sizes, and spy on them.

Inside, Hanako holds her daughter Yumeko in her arms, saying that it has been a frightening experience for her. But Yumeko replies that she wasn't scared at all because the kidnapper [whom she kindly calls oniichan, making him blush a bit] has been very nice to her. Then the kidnapper asks Hanako for the floppy.

Hime-chan tells Pokota that she was going to call the police.

The kidnapper then switches his computer on and inserts the floppy in the drive. [long note for computer-addicts out there: at power up, his computer plays the short melody that all Macintosh computer play, but his design makes it look like a PC. :] But as the contents of the disk are displayed, he realizes that the text is written in Arabic! He takes this for a joke, and even if Hanako says it's not her floppy, he takes out his gun and points it at her and Yumeko, ready to fire at them. Then a gun shot resonates in the building!

But it was not shot from the kidnapper's gun, but from a gun belonging to one of the three guys who have followed them. The Radjah tells the kidnapper to drop his gun because these guys are very dangerous. But the kidnapper retorts that it's a mere toy, a water gun, and makes a demonstration to Hanako.

The three guys then keep reading the Radjah's floppy on the kidnapper's computer, and drop Hanako's floppy on the floor. The kidnapper wants to grab it, but the guy with the gun fires at the floppy. When she realizes that her mother is in great danger, now in the guy's line of fire, Hime-chan breaks a window to distract their attention, and runs away with Pokota. So two of the three guys immediately run after her, quickly corner her in a dead end.

Hime-chan doesn't know what to do, but Pokota has a good idea. He jumps at them, while Hime-chan takes her magical baton and aims it at Pokota to make him bigger. A large Pokota (now the size of an elephant) falls onto the two men, and sits on them.

In the building, the third guy (with the guns) keeps a close eye on the kidnapper, the Radjah, Hanako and Yumeko. The kidnapper yells at them because he doesn't understand what was going on. Hanako is very surprised because she thought that he was with them.

The third guy makes them shut up, and then spots something flying outside. Pokota, riding the magical pen, pops out in front of him, scaring him. So the guy takes out his gun and fires at Pokota. Hime-chan quickly opens her palette and freezes time. She snatches the gun from the guy and throws it away, while Pokota ties his legs with a rope. Then she unfreezes time.

The guy realizes that he has dropped his gun and wants to get it back. But his legs are tied up, so he collapses head first on the floor. The policemen arrive just in time and beat the tar out of him. Hime-chan's father is very happy to have found them, and hugs his wife and daughter.

The policemen take the three guys away. The last two, who were stuck under Pokota, complain in Arabic (the Radjah translates to Hanako) that they have been attacked by a very big cat. Pokota, hearing that, gets mad and yells at them that he isn't a cat but a lion.

Nearby, Daichi's father scolds the kidnapper for having kidnapped Yumeko, and asks him why he did that. Shyly the kidnapper confesses that he is a big fan of Nonohara-sensei, and badly wanted to know the end of her novel. Hearing that, Hime-chan's father gets very mad at him. His wife asks him to calm down, thus the kidnapper jumps at the chance, and asks her for an autograph. They all shout at him to stop fooling around [very funny ;)].

Back at the Nonohara's home, Daichi finds the mysterious otaku story very funny. Yumeko also says so, because the kidnapper bought her a doll and some ice cream. But her father scolds her for not thinking about her parents' anxiety when she got kidnapped.

Hanako feels very tired, and when the phone rings, asks Aiko to answer it instead, secretly hoping that this time it's not a stupid call. In fact, it was her editor who begs her to hurry and write the next chapter of her novel. That makes everybody laugh.

In the Land of Magic, Erika, looking at them laughing in her crystal ball, thinks that the heart baton was very helpful, and would really like to read Hanako's novel too.


[Hime-chan no Ribbon TV episode guide]

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