"Takane no Hana-san" drama: Episode ten 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 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 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 .... Episode eight .... Episode nine

 

 We've finally hit the end of this show and have a trio of recaps for this series today. At the end of April recapped the first two episodes, the subs for the third show were done and then the person doing them dropped the project. So never thought I'd be able to finish the recaps but did find out another person picked this drama up and their subs are so much better than the ones for the first three shows. This will end up being the easiest drama I've ever recapped, not all that much seems to happen in this show but then again there's been no filler and the story has moved right along.

 The links to the previous episodes are right above, you don't need to read all of them but it may be helpful to browse through the last pair as much did happen. The most important incident was at the end of the ninth episode when Hana finally gathered up the courage and told her seven years younger junior Yowaki that she liked him! To Hana's amazement he confessed that he had the same feelings towards her but not much else developed out of that scene which happened in the final two minutes. The main reason for Hana's 'love confession' was that the COP proposal the pair were working on was now complete and Hana wouldn't be able to be so close with Yowaki ever again though he will still work under her at the Mitsubachi Confectionary company's planning department.

 COP stands for Cool Japan Okashi, that final word means sweets and it's to promote Japanese candy and snacks to other countries with a cultural theme. Other companies will also be vying for the huge contract but by the end of the eleventh episode we don't know if Hana's proposal was the winner. But the president and board of directors really liked the idea which was to introduce a new sweet called 'Five Story Pagoda Donuts' which you can see above. That's from a presentation that Hana and Yowaki had to give to the executives, her segment went smoothly as Hana is so adept at speaking in front of others. That's not the case for the timid Yowaki who followed Hana to explain more about the project and it was mainly his idea, his presentation was bombing terribly in front of the directors.

 At first Hana and the others in the audience thought Yowaki sounded like an elementary school boy and he truly did. Hana couldn't let their hard work go down the drain and jumped in to save the day for Yowaki. She quietly gave him a few pointers on how to act and in a miracle Yowaki gave an even better presentation than Hana. The president and board of directors were quite impressed with him and the project, as you can see above they're going to move ahead quickly and get a patent. Guess even if the idea isn't the winning one for the COP contest the company could sell the Pagoda donuts in Japan.

 Now that the presentation was a success and is over with what's to become of Hana and Yowaki after their confessions of love? Neither has an idea where to go next, can understand why for Yowaki as he is a bit of a nerdish man but Hana is quite stunning yet at 32 years old has never had a boyfriend. You can see what happens above, to Hana's disappointment Yowaki has told her they shouldn't start dating or at least not yet. Yowaki knows he's no comparison to the kind of person Hana is, he's vowed to make himself a much better person and until he does Yowaki feels the pair shouldn't date. After Hana let it sink in she could understand the reasoning behind it, she's waited 32 years to have a boyfriend so what's a bit longer?

 Following that scene things were back to normal in Hana's unit. Though she likes Yowaki immensely she still can't stop berating him for his inane new ideas for projects, kind off humorous how Hana can constantly scream at Yowaki all day long yet will never raise her voice at anyone else. We didn't see much of Charada or Ichigo during this show but the pair did eavesdrop on that conversation after the presentation. However Ichigo is about to play a much more important role in the story and she was the key figure in this episode's final few minutes. At first she was using Yowaki as a pawn to try and bring Hana down but over time has really become so fond of Yowaki, her heart is still broken by being rejected by him two shows ago. 

 Since then her consumption of Sake has really increased and did make a comment in the last recap how Ichigo was rapidly becoming an alcoholic. She realized that too and in the second to last screenshot above Ichigo knew she had to change and dumped all of her Sake down the drain. Ichigo works in the General Affairs department but has never been thrilled with what she does. Ichigo has noticed how much fun and job satisfaction Yowaki has working in the Planning department. So in the last twenty seconds of this episode Ichigo marched into the president's office and asked for a transfer to Planning which was approved on the spot! So that move will change things dramatically in Hana's unit as Ichigo can now be able to spend more time with Yowaki, was that the main reason she wanted a transfer? That'll be explained more in episode eleven which is the next recap.