Erika Toda: "Gakeppuchi Hotel" drama episode five recap

 Also goes by the title Hotel on the Brink

Air Dates: April 15 to June 17, 2018 on NTV 10:30 Sunday nights    Episode rating: 7.2%

Main Cast:

Erika Toda as Sana Sakurai, GM of the struggling hotel

Takanori Iwata as Naoya Ukai, guest who was the GM of a prestigious hotel

Ikkei Watanabe as Masao Tokisada, hotel's deputy GM

Kosuke Suzuki as Akito Tanzawa, hotel auditor

Minami Hamabe as Haru Horai, assistant newbie chef

Tomoya Nakamura as Ryuji Eguchi, gambling hotel chef

Ryo as Kozue Edagawa, hotel's bartender who drinks on the job

Daichi Saeki as Yozo Hattori, hotel employee who doesn't seem to have a position

Mari Nishio as Naomi Yoshimura, hotel roomkeeper
Daisuke Miyagawa as Nagayoshi Abe, hotel roomkeeper

Chad Mullane as Pierre Tanaka, foreigner who is the hotel's bellhop
Cookie as Taishi Otawara, front desk clerk
Rina Kawaei as Yuko Osanai, new hotel roomkeeper

 Still an enjoyable episode though things are starting to become a bit predictable, will get to that as the post goes on. But things are looking up as Rina is now a regular member of the cast and what a breath of fresh air she was as the new housekeeper Yuko. She was mainly in the first half of the show and shared so many scenes with Erika(Sana), second half of the show we didn't see as much of her and that's when things went downhill a bit.

 We did learn that Yuko is the daughter of the businessman Osanai who we met in the previous episode. He had been planning on building a new place near the Inversao Hotel which may have meant their doom but after he met and worked with the staff he changed his mind and didn't go through with building the new hotel. With such a rich father wonder why Yuko wanted to work so desperately in a hotel, she had been a guest in the third episode.
 As you can see by the above screenshot the main story for this show was a special wedding and one had never been held at the hotel. When I mentioned predictable above was talking about these special events that are arranged by the new deputy GM Naoya at the hotel. None of the staff seems to be aware that he's the mastermind behind all of them but at least the previous few were real. Giving the spoiler away early as the wedding in this show was a fake yet the staff wasn't aware of it until the end, us viewers had that feeling all along.
 Naoya told the hotel staff a very busy businessman wanted his wedding at the hotel, the only two who would be in attendance for the ceremony would be the bride and groom. The man would 'call up' Naoya a couple times a day with special requests, he never did say the name of the groom which may make sense as there was no groom.

 The real kicker is that the wedding will be held in five days and the staff had to arrange everything from scratch. Naoya had put the hotel's bartender Kazue in charge of the special occasion, seems many years ago she lived in Paris and had planned a few weddings. Though the work needs to be done in five days most of the staff is quite excited at first, of course that wasn't the case for the previous deputy GM Masao who you can see above as he hopes the wedding is a complete flop.
 Kazue never seems to be busy at the bar, she ends up drinking away the afternoons but can hold her liquor. This wedding has brought out another side of her and she's putting everything she has into it but she remains quite cool towards the hotel's GM Sana. The details haven't been fully explained to us yet why Kazue has such a disliking for her boss, think some of it may be that she was close to the previous GM who was Sana's father and felt she didn't deserve her position.
 Though Kazue is giving it her utmost effort things aren't working out so well and it's mainly due to the special requests Naoya said the groom wanted. All of the requests are upsetting the staff too as they can't fulfill most of them such as having a cake that's over ten feet tall plus finding a piano player at such short notice. Least the piano player problem was easily taken care of, of all people the front desk clerk Taishi was quite an accomplished player, looking at him you would have never thought so.

 Situations have a way of working out nicely in this show which is a slight drawback. The huge cake was able to be created as the new pastry chef Haru recruited her classmates from the cooking school she attended to help out. One other fake request was that there should be an emcee for the entire wedding to describe the proceedings. Akito the auditor was drafted for the position, he worked quite hard at creating a script and looks like he'll be a hit at the wedding.
 Many other oddball requests were made by the groom through Naoya, the staff kept grumbling about them but they all worked together to complete them. No doubt one reason Naoya attempted this scheme was to create better camaraderie amongst the staff and it did work out well save for Masao who wanted no part of helping out with the wedding.
 Yuko is a fireball who is seemingly everywhere in the hotel. She overheard a conversation Naoya was having with someone from the Baliston Hotel which is a very prestigious place and where he worked before. Yuko surmised he was planning on going back to work there and she became a spy for Sana to find out the truth. According to Yuko all the signs pointed towards Naoya leaving and perhaps even embezzling money which didn't end up being the case. When Sana confronted him about his departure he explained he was only making arrangements to get his belongings sent to the Invarsao, where did Sana come up with the idea he was leaving?

 Now that Naoya's premature departure has been settled it's the day before the wedding. In order to make sure everything will run smoothly there was a dress rehearsal, Kazue was the bride as the wedding dress fit her perfectly. Out of nowhere popped Osanai who would be the groom for the walk through, never did see him get together with his daughter Yuko though.
 For the most part the rehearsal went off without a hitch, Akito did an excellent job at describing the proceedings, Taishi's piano playing was top notch and Naoya was the cameraman. All went well until the end when tragedy struck the ten foot cake. The rehearsal had been set in the hotel's lobby and during the walk through the cake had been displayed. For some reason after the ceremony the weight of the cake became too much and it fell splat to the ground.
 Naturally Haru and Ryuji stood there dumbfounded, how did it break apart like that? But even worse than that is how will they be able to make another ten foot cake in less than a day? That's when Naoya finally spat out his confession, the whole thing was a sham and there wasn't going to be a wedding. The staff didn't quite know what to make of his statement, of course they were a bit disappointed as all had worked so hard but surprisingly none were mad at him. Few good things did come out of the fake wedding, one was that it showed the staff could work so well together. Another was that Naoya had taken pictures of everything and now the hotel can advertise itself as a place to hold a wedding, with that this episode came to a close.

 Going to do something different and just have one recap instead of two for today. Most dramas I watch have a continuing storyline so having two in a row makes the plot easier to follow. However this show doesn't have a storyline like that as nothing carries over from show to show so think for the next three episodes will be doing one recap at a time.
 Also there wasn't enough time to write up the recap for episode six which I've already viewed. Want to get started on the top twenty list tonight and wouldn't be able to so if I did the next recap. So that will be coming up in a few days and the next show is in the same vein, solid story but not one that made it a must watch. Been taking more screenshots than usual the last few episodes, probably because Rina has a full time role now, you could view them all instead of reading my writing and understand what went on completely.