Start Date: April 27, 2014 on TBS, airs at 9:00 pm
Main Cast:
Toshiaki Karasawa as Mitsuru Hosokawa, president of the Aoshima Company
Yosuke Eguchi as Kotaro Sasai, vice president of the Aoshima Company
Tsutomo Yamazaki as Takeshi Aoshima, chairman of the Aosima Company
Teruyuki Kagawa as Kiyofumi Morota, president of Japanix
Kanji Ishimaru as Fumio Mikami, head of the Aoshima HR department
Asuka Kudo as Kazuya Okihara, temp worker at Aoshima and potential star pitcher
Rei Dan as Arisa Nakamoto, Karasawa's secretary
Toru Tezuka as Masaomi Daido, new coach of the Aoshima baseball club
Had been holding off with this latest recap as I was waiting for episode 4 to be subbed, it's the kind of drama that's easier to review two episodes at a time but sadly this show is getting subbed slowly so will just do a quickie recap here before I forget everything that happened.
Coming into this episode the Aoshima company is starting to fall upon hard times, first their bank is looking to withdraw the financing they've given them for decades, some of their customers have canceled their contracts and behind the scenes a few of their rivals are looking to bankrupt the company.
President Hosokawa has very few options to save the company, he's managed to keep their main bank happy enough where they'll still be backing them but major changes need to be done before that can happen. First major change is in the workforce as Hosokawa has ordered an 80% reduction in all temp and non permanent staff. It's going slowly but they're getting there with the layoffs but that's also put the morale of the company at such a low ebb plus everyone now has to work much harder to make up for the staff reduction.
Internally the company is slowly getting there but there's some major forces affecting them now that are from outside the company, the biggest one by far is that they're getting sued by one of their rivals. Five years before the Aoshima company had perfected a color filter which was approved by the Japan patent department but now out of the blue one of their rivals has said the plans for the color filter were stolen from them and are bringing them to court demanding a 20 billion yen settlement.
But it's just a ruse their rival is doing as the Aoshima never stole any of the plans and their rivals know it but that's not the point for the lawsuit. Bringing Aoshima to court could take up to 2 years to settle, meanwhile during that time the legal fees will bankrupt Aoshima but unfortunately there's nothing they can do about it. They do try to settle before the court case begins but through a few devilish behind the scenes maneuvers by their rivals the attempts to settle the case blows up badly in Hosokawa's face, looks like there is no chance to save the company.
There looks to be one way out for the Aoshima company and it happens in the last minute of this episode as Hosokawa is about to meet with the two rival presidents and to plead his case when Morota of the Japanix company drops a huge bombshell.... he tells them there is no way for the Aoshima company to survive and they should merge with their two main rivals! And that's where this episode on a cliffhanger, sure there will be no way Hosokawa will agree to a merger but perhaps he can use that to his advantage, everything he's attempted to save the company has failed so perhaps he can use their proposal to his advantage.
This is also a semi baseball drama but in this episode the Aoshima team didn't play a game but right at the end of the show they're about to play their first game in the Tokyo District Tournament, one loss and the team will be permanently dissolved. Fairly good episode but one that actually left us with many more questions than answers which is why viewing two shows in a row make it so much better but that's not the case, it's only a 9 episode series and seven have already aired, don't know as if yet how long it's going to take for the remaining shows to be subbed. So far would recommend this drama but perhaps you might want to wait until the subbing gets done then before you start on it, also in the next post have quite a few more screenshots from this episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment