Burn the House Down (2023)

Anzu Murata's undercover infiltration of Makiko Mitarai's home is driven by a very precise, deeply personal objective: she is determined to prove that her mother, Satsuki, was falsely blamed for the house fire that destroyed their family 13 years earlier. As a child, Anzu watched her family home engulfed in flames and then saw her mother publicly branded as the arsonist, a stigma that coincided with Satsuki's mental and physical collapse. The adult Anzu carries that image like a permanent burn mark: orange fire reflected in her wide eyes, the chaotic shouting of neighbors, and the numb silence of her mother being taken away.

When the series moves to the present, Anzu has transformed that trauma into a calculated mission. Makiko, once Satsuki's close friend and now the glamorous second wife of Anzu's father, Osamu, is the person Anzu suspects most. Makiko stepped into Satsuki's former life--her house, her social position, her husband--and Anzu cannot accept that this was coincidence. She believes Makiko engineered both the fire and the scandal to replace Satsuki.

To expose Makiko, Anzu needs access to the Mitarai house--not just the polished, staged living areas where Makiko films her influencer content, but the private, cluttered corners where real secrets might still be hidden. She knows the layout from childhood, so she is certain old evidence could remain in forgotten boxes, drawers, or storage spaces.

However, she cannot walk in as herself. Osamu has abandoned his first family and had no contact with Anzu and her sister Yuzu for years, so the risk of instant recognition from him is lower, but Makiko is not someone she can fool with a simple disguise. To get around this, Anzu adopts a carefully constructed false identity. She borrows the name and basic background of her best friend, a strategy that gives her a ready-made personal history she can answer questions about without hesitation. This alias is polished enough to withstand Makiko's initial scrutiny and to pass the checks of the housekeeping agency that supplies domestic staff.

Anzu then enters the home under the guise of a polite, diligent housekeeper. She uses her knowledge of rich households' dynamics to become unobtrusive but useful--always available, never threatening. She keeps her hair and clothing simple and neutral, blending perfectly into the background of Makiko's curated lifestyle. When Makiko gives her a set of explicit rules--especially the forbidding of access to the upstairs floor--Anzu immediately understands that the very area she is banned from is where the most valuable secrets likely are.

She performs her cleaning duties with sincere efficiency while quietly mapping changes in the house since her childhood: which rooms have been repurposed, where the storage has been shifted, how Makiko uses each space. Whenever she is left alone, Anzu pushes the limits of the allowed zones just a little, testing locks, noting cameras, and clocking the rhythm of the family's movements so she knows when someone is likely to come or go.

The biggest test of her cover comes when she discovers Makiko's eldest son, Kiichi, living sequestered in an upstairs room. Officially, Kiichi is supposed to be abroad, thriving in a prestigious job. In reality, he is shut in, suffering from agoraphobia, quietly rotting in a dark, stale environment that contrasts brutally with Makiko's bright, polished public image. This discovery is dangerous for Anzu: Kiichi becomes the first family member to encounter her in a context where she is clearly breaking Makiko's rules.

Instead of denouncing her, though, Kiichi's own isolation and emotional wounds make him more curious than suspicious. Anzu gauges his mood quickly and speaks carefully, staying in character as a newly hired housekeeper who "lost her way" upstairs. From then on, she has to maintain her alias not only in front of Makiko and the household staff but also in more intimate one-on-one conversations with Kiichi, whose sensitivity and watchfulness could expose her if she slips.

All of this works in Anzu's favor because Osamu has been absent from her life for over a decade. The emotional distance and his self-absorbed detachment from his first family mean he never considers that the quiet young woman hired through an agency might be his own daughter. Makiko, convinced of her own control over the household and distracted by maintaining her online persona, focuses more on how Anzu can serve her than on who she really is.

Thus Anzu successfully infiltrates the Mitarai household by: carrying her childhood knowledge of the home's structure; adopting her best friend's identity to build a credible, verifiable background; entering via a housekeeping agency, which lowers suspicion; presenting herself as humble, efficient, and compliant; and navigating the personalities of Makiko, Osamu, and Kiichi so skillfully that none of them initially recognize the girl whose life was shattered in this very house.

Thirteen years before the main timeline, the fire that destroyed the Murata/Mitarai home erupts on what should have been an ordinary night, yet it unfolds with a troubling pattern of small, suspicious details that never leave Anzu's memory. As a child, she remembers the air turning acrid and thick, the smoke curling across ceilings and under doors faster than any normal household accident would allow. Outside, the sky glows orange, and the people gathered in the street murmur with a mix of concern and voyeuristic curiosity. In the middle of it all is her mother, Satsuki, staring at the flames with a hollow, stunned expression.

Officially, the story becomes very simple very quickly: Satsuki is blamed for the fire. At the time, she is fragile, overwhelmed, and unable to defend herself effectively. She eventually "admits" responsibility under the pressure of accusation and social stigma. That confession fixes her in the public mind as the culprit and turns her into the scapegoat: the careless, unstable wife who burned down her own home. The shame and psychological burden of that label crush her. By the time we reach the present day, she is hospitalized, her memory fractured, and her sense of self eroded.

However, from Anzu and Yuzu's perspective, the pieces never quite fit. The mother they knew was meticulous, especially around the house. She was not the type to leave combustible materials scattered or to handle fire in a reckless way. There is also the disturbing timing of their father's relationship with Makiko. Makiko, formerly Satsuki's friend, steps into Satsuki's life shockingly fast after the tragedy. She moves into the newly built home on the same lot and becomes Osamu's new wife, taking over not just Satsuki's position in the family but also her role as the wife of a wealthy hospital director.

In the intervening years, Makiko's public persona solidifies. She cultivates an image of a perfect, stylish wife and mother, and eventually becomes an influencer whose brand relies on appearing flawless and enviable. For Anzu, this polished façade is another reason not to trust Makiko. No one that carefully curated, she believes, would allow messy truth to poke through--especially if that truth involves a suspicious fire and a stolen life.

Although the official narrative never fully accounts for the precise ignition point or the sequence of events inside the house that night, the 13-year gap is filled with implication. Anzu and Yuzu come to suspect that Makiko's involvement in the fire might be more direct than anyone admitted--that she either triggered the disaster herself or manipulated circumstances so that Satsuki would be blamed. The fire becomes not just a random tragedy but an engineered turning point that allowed Makiko to replace Satsuki.

This suspicion is reinforced by the present-day rules Makiko imposes in her new home. Portions of the house are strictly off-limits, especially upstairs, where old evidence, documents, or items from the previous life might still be hidden. Makiko's hoarding tendencies--carefully hidden from her public image--strengthen the possibility that something from that night survives. Anzu believes that the woman who spent so much effort building a new identity on the ashes of their old house might have kept physical traces of what truly happened, even if only by accident.

For Anzu, then, the fire is not only the literal destruction of the home but the origin point of everything that follows: her family's exile, her mother's collapse, her father's moral cowardice, and Makiko's rise. Makiko is tied to that night as the person who benefited most from the outcome, as the ex-friend who stepped into Satsuki's place, and as the current guardian of whatever secrets still linger in the shadows of the rebuilt house. Even before direct evidence surfaces, Makiko's connection to the fire is emotional, circumstantial, and deeply etched into Anzu's understanding of her own ruined childhood.

Kiichi is Makiko's eldest son from a previous marriage, and when Anzu first discovers him, he is almost like a ghost haunting the Mitarai home. In public, Makiko presents Kiichi as a success story: he is supposed to be living abroad, working at a prestigious job, a shining symbol of her capability as a mother. The truth upstairs is the opposite. Kiichi is shut in a dim, cluttered room, his world reduced to drawn curtains, scattered belongings, and the tight, stale air of a man who has not stepped outside in a long time.

His agoraphobia--an intense fear of going out or being in open, uncontrolled spaces--is not presented as something born in a vacuum. It feels like the result of sustained emotional pressure and unresolved trauma. Growing up under Makiko's relentless expectations, Kiichi is molded to be an extension of her ambition. Every success reflects her, every failure threatens her image. That environment eats away at his self-worth until he becomes unable to face the outside world at all. Locked away upstairs, he becomes both a symptom and a secret of Makiko's parenting.

When Anzu accidentally encounters Kiichi while violating Makiko's rule about not going upstairs, she realizes two things at once. First, Makiko has lied about her son's situation to everyone, folding him into the glossy fiction of her public persona. Second, Kiichi might be someone who knows far more about the family's past than he is allowed to say. He was there as the family shifted, as Satsuki disappeared from their lives, as Makiko took over the house and reshaped it around her image.

Kiichi's fear of the outside world complicates his role. He cannot simply walk Anzu through old locations or accompany her to confront people. Instead, their interactions happen in the compressed, tense space of his room. Anzu has to be extremely careful with him; any abrupt move could cause him to shut down or push her away. She speaks gently, listens to his pauses, and gradually earns his trust. In that trust, he becomes a quiet witness--someone who can confirm patterns of behavior in Makiko, hint at what life was like during and after the fire, and provide small, crucial recollections that don't match the official narrative.

Kiichi also serves as a mirror for Anzu's own emotional reality. While she moves actively through the house and the world, driven by the need to clear her mother's name, she is also, in a more subtle way, trapped by the past. Kiichi's physical confinement, his inability to step into sunlight or a crowded street, externalizes a similar paralysis that exists in Anzu's heart. As she slowly draws him out emotionally--encouraging him to question his mother, to look at his own life as separate from Makiko's constructed image--she is simultaneously confronting her own fixation on revenge.

In narrative terms, Kiichi becomes a fragile but vital ally. He holds pieces of information that can either corroborate Makiko's eventual admissions or reveal inconsistencies in what the adults claim. His presence upstairs is itself evidence of the damage Makiko has inflicted on her family. Every time Anzu climbs those stairs, she is moving not just toward hidden physical clues but toward Kiichi, whose memories and emotional scars help decode the larger mystery.

Ultimately, Kiichi's importance in Anzu's investigation lies less in a single dramatic revelation and more in a steady accumulation of insights: his knowledge of the household's true daily life, his recollection of how Makiko behaved before and after the fire, and the unspoken history between him and his mother. He is both an informant and a living consequence of everything that happened 13 years ago, and his gradual emergence from isolation parallels the slow, painful emergence of the truth.

Anzu and Yuzu operate like a small, determined investigative team, each sister using her personality and place in the world to chip away at the lies surrounding their mother. Their shared goal is simple but enormous: prove Satsuki did not set the fire and give her a chance to heal, both in the eyes of the public and in her own mind.

Anzu is the one who goes into the lion's den. Inside the Mitarai house, she works under the alias borrowed from her best friend, using her position as a housekeeper to move quietly through rooms that were once her childhood home. Every mundane task--dusting shelves, organizing closets, emptying trash--becomes an excuse to search for evidence. She pays attention to old documents, photos, and objects that might have survived the fire and were carried into this new house. She maps out Makiko's routines, noting when the older woman is distracted by filming or social events, and uses those windows of time to push deeper into forbidden spaces.

Her tactics are meticulous. She avoids any obvious disturbances, always returning items to their original places, leaving no trace that drawers have been opened or boxes briefly sifted through. She memorizes the locations of key storage areas and the patterns of Makiko's hoarding: the way she clings to certain things, the rooms she keeps locked, the stacks of belongings that have not been touched in years. All of those details point toward where long-buried secrets may lie.

Outside the house, Yuzu takes on a different role. Compared to Anzu's quiet intensity, Yuzu is more openly emotional and impulsive, but she uses that energy in strategic ways. She approaches Shinji, Makiko and Osamu's younger son, presenting herself as friendly, approachable, and genuinely interested in him. While her growing closeness to Shinji has a romantic undertone, it is also a tactical move. Through him, she can glean how the family talks about the past, what they say about the fire, and how they perceive Satsuki.

The sisters also rely on a tech-savvy friend, Claire, who serves as their digital operative. Claire is capable of breaching online accounts and bypassing cybersecurity, which allows them to look beneath the curated surface of Makiko's influencer presence. With Claire's help, they can pull old data, private messages, and hidden records that may contradict Makiko's public claims or reveal past actions she wanted to bury.

Communication between Anzu and Yuzu has to be cautious. Because Anzu is living inside the Mitarai house under false pretenses, they cannot simply meet openly or chat freely without risking exposure. Instead, they use prearranged meeting points or subtle, low-profile contact, sharing discoveries piece by piece. Anzu might describe the emotional atmosphere in the house, the way Makiko talks to staff, or new details about Kiichi, while Yuzu relays what she has learned from Shinji and any information Claire has uncovered online.

Emotionally, their teamwork is anchored by their loyalty to their mother. Each new clue they uncover is weighed against their memory of Satsuki: her habits, her values, the way she moved through rooms and handled everyday chores. When a piece of supposed "evidence" conflicts with that memory, they treat it as likely planted or misinterpreted. When something aligns with Satsuki's character, they pay extra attention--it might be a sign of her innocence.

Yuzu's presence also keeps Anzu from being consumed entirely by vengeance. When Anzu becomes too focused on Makiko as a target, Yuzu reminds her that their true objective is not just to punish someone but to free their mother from a false narrative. Conversely, Anzu's careful planning tempers Yuzu's impulsiveness, preventing her from making reckless moves that could expose them too early.

Together, the specific tactics they use--Anzu's covert search inside the house, Yuzu's emotional infiltration through Shinji, Claire's digital digging, and their careful, coded communication--form a multi-layered strategy. It is through this combined effort that they begin to peel away the polished veneer of the Mitarai family and approach the buried truth of what really happened 13 years ago.

Makiko Mitarai's public persona is meticulously designed: she appears as a poised, stylish, endlessly competent woman who manages a wealthy household while also thriving as an influencer. Her social media presence is filled with curated images--immaculate rooms, carefully plated meals, fashionable outfits--that project the image of a perfect modern wife and mother. That image is the armor she wears and the product she constantly sells.

Behind closed doors, however, her behavior reveals a far more controlling, brittle, and self-absorbed personality. With her sons, Kiichi and Shinji, she treats their lives less as independent journeys and more as extensions of her own brand. Kiichi, who cannot live up to her expectations and ultimately collapses into agoraphobia, is hidden away upstairs like an inconvenient flaw. Rather than confronting his suffering or seeking real help, Makiko allows the world to believe he is thriving abroad in a prestigious job, preserving her image at the expense of his mental health.

Her treatment of Shinji is different in tone but similar in function. Shinji, earnest and somewhat naive, is kept in a position where his success reflects Makiko's skill as a mother. She pushes him toward a respectable medical career and surrounds him with the narrative that he is the bright son of a remarkable woman. Affection is entangled with pressure; her approval is conditional on his usefulness to her constructed story. Shinji doesn't initially see the manipulation clearly because he genuinely wants to be a good son, but the more he learns, the harder it becomes to ignore.

With her staff, including Anzu in her housekeeper persona, Makiko is exacting and hierarchical. She expects obedience and discretion, enforcing rules--such as the prohibition on going upstairs--that maintain her control over what parts of the house and family are visible. Mistakes are met not with patient correction but with sharp criticism or cold dismissal. She speaks to subordinates with the entitled tone of someone who believes money and status entitle her to unquestioned service.

Her hoarding tendencies provide another window into her inner life. While she presents minimalist, tastefully arranged spaces in her online content, there are areas of the house that are cluttered and chaotic, stuffed with items she cannot let go of. This contrast suggests that beneath her polished surface she is both emotionally dependent on material things and terrified of losing control over the narrative of her life. The hidden clutter is like the unseen emotional debris she carries: unresolved guilt, fear of exposure, and memories she has tried to bury.

As the story progresses and Anzu's quiet investigation begins to destabilize the household, cracks form in Makiko's façade. Under pressure, she reveals a tendency toward psychological manipulation. She guilt-trips, gaslights, and redirects blame to protect herself. When confronted by uncomfortable truths, her first instinct is to preserve her image rather than address the harm she has caused. Yet she is not portrayed as a simple caricature of evil; her desperation and the sheer effort it takes to keep her life story "on brand" show a woman who has built her entire self-worth on external validation.

Overall, Makiko's behavior toward her sons and staff exposes a person who is fundamentally insecure and deeply dependent on admiration. Her influencer image is not just a job but a shield that must never crack. To maintain it, she ignores Kiichi's suffering, shapes Shinji's future to suit her narrative, and treats people like Anzu as expendable tools. The more Anzu uncovers, the clearer it becomes that Makiko's true character is defined not by the glossy pictures she posts but by the damage she leaves in the shadowed rooms she never shows to the world.