"Takane no Hana-san" drama: Episode one recap

 

 Air Dates: April 10th until May 29, 2021 on TV-Tokyo, Thursdays at midnight

Based on a manga by Koji Murota, subs were done by Ariel_Nugie

Main Cast: Most of the action takes place at the Mitsubachi Confectionary company in Tokyo. Wrote this up after viewing two shows, sure some of the info will need to be updated after a few more episodes. Small cast as there's only four major characters.

Rika Izumi as Hana Takamane.... 32 year old planning department manager at the company. Though a bit older Hana has never been in a relationship and deep down has the maturity of a young teen when it comes to males. For some odd reason she has a secret crush on her young worker Yowaki who is kind of inept and unknown to Hana he also has a crush on her.

Yuki Ogoe as Tsuyoshi Yowaki.... About seven years Hana's junior but could pass for a seventeen year old. He is gung-ho about his work but Yowaki comes up with the oddest promo ideas which leads to Hana constantly putting him down.

Kenta Izuka as Genki Sarada.... Has the nickname of Charada. He's Yowaki's best friend at the company and thinks most woman in the world would die to date him which is far from the truth. Compared to Yowaki he is an excellent worker.

Kanon as Ichigo.... At ~21 in age is the youngest in the planning office, she's like Sarada as Ichigo thinks men would die to go out with her. She is insanely jealous of Hana's looks and really wants to bring her boss down which she's attempted a few times and all have ended in failures. 

 This was a pleasant surprise seeing Rika in the lead role. Have seen her two previous dramas where she did a solid job but her roles were just medium sized, not so in this series. An episode is just a little over 22 minutes in length so these recaps shouldn't be too long, may have to pad them out a bit. This first recap will mainly be introducing the characters though something very critical took place in the final minutes. At first was going to have two batches of four recaps, this series is eight episodes long. But that would have meant a four week gap after the first batch so what I'll be doing is a pair of these every other week, the third episode just aired so the next pair should be in less than two weeks.

 That's Hana in the above screenshots, she's such an attractive woman yet is also an incredibly intelligent one. Most men at the office have a secret crush on her(same as me!) but are a bit timid around her thinking she must have men swooning over her. That's far from the truth as at 32 years in age Hana appears to have never had a boyfriend and when thinking about males acts like a fourteen year old. That middle screenshot is of Hana at her apartment which does look like it would belong to a teenager. To top it off hanging on her wall is a small picture of a younger man working under her at the company named Yowaki.

 Not sure of his age but would place Yowaki at around 25, in real life he's 27 yet could pass for a male ten years younger. At the office Yowaki is gung-ho about his job which is promoting the company's lines of candy. But he is such a bumbler and Yowaki has come up with zany ideas such as butterfly tasting candy bars, sweets that look like grass and so many other out of this world ideas. But he must do some things right or else someone like Hana would have canned him long ago. But then again perhaps not as she does have quite a crush on the young man. But one thing Hana can't stop doing is berating Yowaki about his work, she constantly says she needs to stop that lest he ends up hating her but it's second nature to Hana yelling at her colleague.

 

 Just realized Yowaki is the only worker in the office that makes Hana lose her temper, seems like she runs an efficient unit. There's no way Hana can come out and tell Yowaki about the crush she has on him but perhaps a lucky opportunity came her way. Every day Yowaki has to get a takeout lunch and his mate Sarada was ribbing him about that, he has no girlfriend to prepare his bento(lunch)? Overhearing that was Hana and isn't the best way to a man's heart through his stomach? So that evening Hana pulled an all-nighter making two bento boxes for Yowaki, all night because she's such an inept cook.

 The best laid plans usually go astray which is what happened with Hana. To her dismay Yowaki had for the first time made his own lunch which looked so much more appetizing than Hana's! But she can never show a soft side and ripped into Yowaki, if he has time to make his own lunch then he'd better make time for better promotional proposals! Least the lunches didn't go to waste as Hana ate them by herself and seemed to me she was on the verge of tears. We've met three of the main characters, the final one is just above and below who is Ichigo. She's a very young OL at the company and one whose head is a bit swelled for she thinks all men will obey her every wish. That's not the case as Ichigo tried to con Yowaki into doing a project for her which he declined, he replied that she needs to do those things to learn the ropes as she silently stewed.

 Ichigo really can't stand Hana as you'll soon see, is she possibly jealous of her beauty and intelligence? Before those two incidents Hana tried one more way to get Yowaki to pay attention to her, it didn't work but every other man in the office was gaping at Hana. Hana has always worn a suit at the office but one day showed up wearing a very sultry dress, it had me swooning too! But to Hana's amazement that look didn't do anything for Yowaki as he prefers her very conservative style, is there nothing Hana can do that'll work out reeling Yowaki in? Have a feeling most of this short series will revolve around that but in the final few minutes work came over play for Hana. The Mitsubachi Confectionary company is releasing a new product, it wants the managers too all work on a solo project to promote it.

 It was due in two days and Hana worked around the clock on it finally finishing at midnight the day before it was due. She saved the project on her computer but when she arrived the following morning it was deleted, what scoundrel could have done such an evil deed? None other than Ichigo who knew what Hana was working on and as mentioned really wants to bring Hana down. Luckily she saved the project on a USB drive which was noticed by Ichigo, in a sly move she brought Hana some coffee only to spill it all over the USB drive and destroying the info! But Hana knows no quit and in fifteen minutes was able to type up a brief summary of what she created and would wing the rest in her presentation. That went over so well to Ichigo's fury, that scene ended this first episode.

 Shows like this are better suited to be in the 20-25 minute range, glad this one is. An episode minus the credits is 22 minutes but that didn't stop me from taking so many screenshots, 47 in all! That's why I couldn't combine the first two shows and the next posts is the recap for the second episode.