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

 

 Air Dates: April 10th until June 27, 2021 on TV-Tokyo, Thursdays at midnight

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

Main Cast: Most of the action takes place at the Mitsubachi Confectionary company in Tokyo.  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. 

 Previous recaps

Episode one .... Episode two .... Episode three

Episode four .... Episode five .... Episode six

Episode seven

 

 One more batch of three recaps after this pair today, it'll be done within the week. Mentioned how this was supposed to be an eight episode series but was extended to a dozen shows which was both good and bad. Of course the best part was having seeing much more of Rika on the screen and she has impressed me with her acting. She doesn't look like a woman who would be so good at comedy but she is. However with more episodes a bit more filler was needed and some of the middle episodes dragged just a tad, perhaps ten episodes would have been better? But the ninth show was the best to date, that's the following post and it does set the stage for an interesting and romantic(?) conclusion.

 Seemed for the first five shows the two main characters Hana and Yowaki had 80% of the screen time. But that's changed and I think it was a wise decision to get the other two characters Ichigo and Charada involved in the story, many screenshots of them above. For so long Ichigo's main purpose in life was to bring down Hana and we never did learn exactly why, was Ichigo that jealous of her? Ichigo is the only person at the Mitsubachi Confectionary company who knows that Hana has a crush on her junior worker Yowaki and has done everything in her power to prevent them from getting together. She really didn't need to work all that hard as though Hana is 32 in age she has zero experience when it comes to romance and would never be able to reveal her true feelings to Yowaki.... yet! But over time Ichigo herself began to have a crush on Yowaki which baffled her as he's not the greatest of catches and usually men are climbing over each other to get a date with Ichigo.

 Charada had noticed Ichigo's growing passion for Yowaki, two episodes ago he vowed to set the pair up but all of his attempts have failed. That's mainly because both Ichigo and Yowaki are way too shy with the opposite sex and would never reveal their true feelings. One more attempt was made this show to make them a couple which ended in failure but is this 'Romeo' Charada helping them out because he wants to see them together? NO is the answer as Charada has an ulterior motive for getting them together, that would mean Charada would have no competition for Hana who he thinks has a crush on him. That's far from he truth and Charada has noticed that Yowaki is finally beginning to look at Hana as a sexy woman instead of a boss. One night Charada called Yowaki to a bar for a quick meeting, you can see what his intentions are in that above screenshot!

 We don't see him for the rest of this episode but Charada has really been changing. While always too much of a 'Romeo' who thinks every woman wants him he's always been a friend to most and is the best tech worker in Hana's Planning department. But it seems like his secret obsession with Hana has been making Charada a bit bitter towards the world, especially to Yowaki who he's grown slightly jealous of. That's because he was chosen to be on the COP project even though Charada is such a whiz at computers and is much more serious about his work. But of course Hana was going to choose her crush to work with her and as a result deep down Yowaki is developing feelings for her.

 COP stands for Cool Japan Okashi with the last word meaning sweets. Back in the fifth episode Hana was chosen to lead the project but would have only one assistant, Hana knew she put her feelings above work but had to have Yowaki be her partner. And after three episodes the project has made no progress, it's to draft a proposal for the company to promote Japanese sweets overseas. We knew Yowaki would be somewhat useless in the beginning but worse than that so hasn't Hana. She can't stop daydreaming about her crush and it's been getting worse with each show, it's become so bad Hana hasn't done anything for the project and the deadline is rapidly approaching. So while nothing was accomplished this episode on the project it's the main story for the next show.

 A show is only 23 minutes in length and it ended off with Ichigo being rejected for perhaps the first time ever. It was a Sunday and she had been out with her best friend at a cafe, the pair split a yummy looking crescent moon pancake smothered with strawberries. Ichigo had then noticed on Yowaki's food site, which has only seven followers(!), that he too had that dish at the same cafe and wished he had been able to enjoy it with someone. That really stirred Ichigo's emotions, after leaving her friend she guzzled down two mini bottles of Sake to build up her courage and headed to Yowaki's apartment. He was baffled on why she was there until Ichigo mentioned the pancake and said she had loved eating it too. Yowaki is just too innocent to believe and had no clue Ichigo was hitting on him, he didn't even invite her into his place.

 So as you can see above Ichigo finally broke the ice and said that she liked him!!!! That startled Yowaki who may be smart but doesn't have much common sense. Ichigo is such a cute young woman who seems like she'd be a nice catch, for some reason Yowaki couldn't notice that and said he wasn't interested as Ichigo fled in tears after that rejection! Later on Yowaki texted her to apologize but the damage was done, he said in the message he was interested in another woman and of course Ichigo knew it was Hana. As the episode ended she was sitting in front of a convenience store pounding back more Sake and have noticed that Ichigo is slowly becoming an alcoholic. That wraps this recap up, next post is the one for episode nine which was one of the best shows.