Burn the House Down Ending Explained: Written by Arisa Kaneko and directed by Yuichiro Hirakawa, the Japanese drama-thriller-mystery TV series iBurn the House Down (御手洗家、炎上する) stars Mei Nagano, Asuka Kudo, Taishi Nakagawa, Yuri Tsunematsu, Michiko Kichise and Kyoka Suzuki, alongside others. The series, with 8 episodes, has a runtime of around 50 minutes each and is based on the Manga series Mitarai ke, Enjou Suru by Moyashi Fujisawa.
Burn the House Down Plot
Anzu Murata’s entire world came crumbling down 13 years ago when she, her mother and her sister were forcefully thrown out of their house after their house burnt down. Convinced that her ailing mother, then accused of being the perpetrator, is actually innocent, she infiltrates her once-home, now inhabited by her father’s new family, to find justice and reveal the truth about her stepmother’s real face.
Burn the House Down Ending Explained
Burn the House Down starts 13 years ago, when Anzu, her sister Yuzu and their mother had to restart their lives thanks to their house burning down and their father divorcing their mother and deserting all three of them. 13 years later, the sisters’ mother is in the hospital with amnesia, and Anzu is full of hatred for the woman she thinks committed arson in order to steal her mother’s life. Makiko, now married to their father Osamu, is living in their once-home with her two sons and bragging about it everywhere. She has the life that they once had, and, the biggest stab in the back is that she was once her mother’s “best friend”.
Filled with rage, Anzu infiltrates the Mitarai house as a housekeeper using fake credentials and plans to find evidence of the crime that was committed a decade ago. Anzu remembers the evidence that they had – security footage showing someone wearing her mother’s sweater running away from the backdoor after the fire started. Armed with only this information, Anzu starts to scour the house to find the sweater. Unfortunately, winning Makiko’s trust ends up being a difficult feat; on top of that, she has to juggle her elder son Kiichi’s odd and violent behaviours in Burn the House Down.
However, with dedication and a lot of planning, she is able to win both mother and son over, along with the youngest son Shinji. Kiichi promises to help Anzu out with her search, having become tired of being a recluse at home and running from the past that still haunts him. Anzu is able to find the cardigan, but the evidence is still not good enough. As they try to find out more, they come across her mother’s and Makiko’s blogs from the past; Kiichi also gives Anzu his mother’s old laptop, from which they get more information about Makiko.
Unfortunately, Yuzu, in order to try and help her sister, gets manipulated by Osamu, who, upon not finding the cardigan in the wardrobe (due to Makiko’s quick thinking), brings his wife to chat with Yuzu. The latter is forced to tell some of the plans to Makiko and takes the blame so that Anzu’s cover isn’t blown. Annoyed by her father and Makiko, Anzu goes to meet Osamu in Burn the House Down, and the midst of her confrontation, finds an unlikely ally who vows to keep her identity safe.
In the middle of this mess, Shinji’s collegemate, in order to win the big ticket, tries to woo Shinji but gets stopped by Makiko. She smartly records her confessing that she isn’t who is shown to the public, which the college mate leaks online. It results in Anzu, now promoted to Makiko’s manager, threatening her and shutting her up. As Makiko thinks she is safe, she suddenly finds old stories surfacing online. She is left alarmed and starts to scramble to find the culprit, fearing the public finding out who she really is.
She asks Anzu to look into an old acquaintance in Burn the House Down, who holds the key to her old life being exposed and, in the meantime, brings Yuzu to the house to berate her for trying to destroy her life. Yuzu is confused, and so is the rest of her family, and just when Makiko is about to harm Yuzu, Anzu comes in to spill the beans – that she is the one who orchestrated all of this, not the old acquaintance. Her real identity further devastates Makiko, who agrees to apologise to Anzu’s mother for everything that she has done.
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Unfortunately, the next day, Makiko holds a press conference and doubles down on everything – telling the press that everything that they heard on the tape was fake and that, although she has done some bad things in the past, she will continue to be who she is now. When Osamu tries to protest afterwards, she convinces him to take her side as well. However, just as she is about to have her last laugh, a flood of pictures starts to upload to her Instagram account, showing how she is not who she shows herself to be on the internet and that everything that she claims to do is actually done by a housekeeper.
This puts the final nail in the coffin, and Makiko realises that there’s nothing that she can do that will pull her reputation up from the gutter. Devastated, she goes to confront the only person she could think of who could know her enough to hack her social media – Anzu’s mother Satsuki. Satsuki and Makiko have a conversation with each other wherein the former calls her out for her deplorable behaviour and the years of mooching off of her. In the end, they both declare that they hate each other.
At the Mitarai house, Makiko is devastated at the turn of events, and the police arrive to arrest her for the arson case 13 years ago, thanks to Osamu. Kiichi, too, made a run from their house the night before to live with Anzu, after realising that he will never be free if he lives there. At the police station, Makiko agrees to have caused the fire, but the police have their doubts. After she is allowed to go home, Kiichi, in the midst of his repentance arc, decides to turn himself in for committing arson.
As everyone is left shocked, Anzu and Yuzu go to meet Makiko, who blames them for her family’s misfortune. She tells them, however, that she always suspected Kiichi to be the one who committed the crime because he and his friends were into stealing and burning the crime scene down afterwards in order to run away from taking responsibility. However, when their table accidentally catches fire, and everyone scrambles to get it under control, it turns out that it is actually Shinji who had accidentally caused the fire.
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That night, Shinji had gone to the Mitarai house to return Satsuki’s cardigan that Makiko forgot to return and had come across a yummy stew on the counter. Greedy, he started to boil it in order to smell the delicious stew and accidentally started a small fire that he was unable to get under control. Panicking, he fled the scene, and that was captured in the video.
At the end of Burn the House Down, Shinji apologises to Satsuki and turns himself in to the police. Kiichi is let go, and he chooses to stay with Anzu and build a life with her. On the other hand, Shinji is let go as well, and he dedicates his life to working as a doctor with Osamu and helping people with the privilege that he has been handed.
Why did Anzu decide to take revenge after 13 years?
Unable to withstand the horrible way that their lives have become, coupled with Satsuki’s amnesia, Anzu decided to take revenge and prove to her mother once and for all that she wasn’t the one who caused the fire. This is only so that she can get better and stop living in guilt.
Why did Osamu forgive Makiko after the press conference?
Makiko is a master manipulator, and she reminded Osamu that she has been with him for all these years and has contributed to the hospital’s image and reach increasing. And she also does some weird thing with him on the bed, which might signify that she lures him with sex, but it was too weird to be sure. Either way, Makiko knows how to control Osamu, and she does just that in order to get what she wants.
Why did Makiko act the way she did throughout the series?
Makiko wanted what Satsuki had – money. She was jealous of Satsuki’s things, and the fact that she could buy anything that she wanted, and Makiko couldn’t handle it. Thus, after meeting her, she slowly started to become like Satsuki, as a way to take over her life and emulated her every move. And since she could manipulate anyone quite skillfully, she kept everyone under her thumb – she controlled Osamu to distrust his own wife and spread lies about Satsuki to him; she controlled her sons and kept Kiichi at home and forced Shinji to study something that he didn’t want to and controlled everyone to do her bidding.
No one could stand up to her because she knew everyone’s weakness and used it against them. However, Anzu knew this about her and was able to manipulate her by having a set plan and sticking to it.
Burn the House Down is streaming on Netflix. Have more questions? Let us know in the comments below!
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What is the song played during the credits?