Air Dates: April 9th to May 28, 2022 on WOWOW, Saturdays at 10:30 pm
Subs were done by Deedlitmurata at DA, episodes are 25+ minutes in length
Also can be known by the title Young People Nowadays....
Main Cast: Wrote much of this up after only viewing the first show, some characters we didn't get to meet or know too well so will be updating this as time goes on.
Takashi Sorimachi as Hajime Ishizawa.... Chief of the Sales Department 2 at Mitsuhashi Shouji Trading company. He's a man close to fifty who is a bit quiet at the office yet the employees there dread Ishizawa and go out of their way to avoid him..... save for the rookie worker Ayumi! Ishizawa doesn't understand the younger generation so well which is a reason he's too quiet even though he's the chief of sales. Ishizawa has been with the company for almost 25 years and he also started out as a regular office worker. Ishizawa is also divorced and the rumor was it happened because he had an affair with a temp worker.
Haruka Fukuhara as Ayumi Mugita.... Has only been at the company for a month and wonder why she's there? Ayumi went to college for Humanities and said she's very bad at numbers which she's proved over and over which in the beginning infuriated her senpai Funaki. But Ayumi never stops trying and the chief Ishizawa for some reason has grown quite fond of her.
Kaito Nakamura as Shun Funaki.... Works a bit closely with Ayumi at the office and at first was always upset with her performance until Ishizawa set him straight. Funaki's problem is that he's a perfectionist and expects others to be too, will his ways come back to haunt him?
Takashi Fujii as Ryoji Ebisu.... Chief of Sales Department 1 who had been trained by Ishizawa twenty years ago. He's a very strict man to work for and most employees dislike him though Ebisu does try to help everyone hut has a hard time communicating.
Masato Hagiwara as Hiroshi Kazama.... Is still at the company but unsure what his current position is, he's been Ishizawa's best friend for many years.
Ayame Misaki as Sanako Inukai.... Female worker at the office who oversees the work of Ayumi and Funaki.
Atsushi Shinohara as Hideki Kora..... Older male worker at the trading company who refuses to ever work overtime. In the sixth episode Kora resigned from the company after he won a writing contest as his dream had always been to be a screenwriter.
Ami Tomite as Hitomi Mugita.... Ayumi's older sister who also lives in Tokyo but the pair seem to have grown up far from the city.
Karen Otomo as The Mysterious Woman.... That's what she's called as she may never have a name? This woman is in her early twenties and Ayumi was wondering is she having an affair with her boss? The answer to that is no as we learned in the fourth episode her name is Mii-chan and is the daughter of Ishizawa.
On the right is Funaki but the more important person is Ishizawa on the left, that saying "Jeez, young people these days...." is one he utters quite often in an episode.
Links to the previous recaps:
Episode one .... Episode two .... Episode three .... Episode four
This was a much different episode as we only saw Ayumi(Haruka) in the opening two minutes and the final one, we saw zero of Ishizawa's present day staff. In that opening scene it was 6:00 pm at the Mitsuhashi company and all were heading home from Ishizawa's sales department. All save for Ayumi who wanted to stay late and work on a project. It was for the Tanuki company who made coil products, her first sales proposal back in the second show was turned down by that company's director though it was a solid piece of work. Ayumi has heard that contract is still open and wants to give the account another shot so she's preparing to work late yet again, To date Ayumi had made zero new sales and she's was getting a bit down as is she contributing to the company? Ayumi asked her chief Ishizawa "Am I being useful?", that brought back some painful memories for Ishizawa who was asked that line once before sixteen years ago, he proceeded to tell Ayumi the entire tale.
Ishizawa and his best friend Kazama have been at Mitsuhashi for close to 25 years, back in 2006 after being at the company for nine years both were promoted on the same day to be section chiefs of the two sales departments. On that day, which may prove to be fateful, we met two key characters from Ishizawa's past and what he learned during that time has carried over to this day. In the below top screenshot and also one above is a director of Mitsuhashi whose name is Kido, he seemed like a decent chap at first but ended up being such a conniving man. The other main character for this show which as mentioned took place sixteen years ago is a man named Inagaki, he's in two screenshots above and a few below. Inagaki is a young man who has worked with Ishizawa for a few months and now his mentor will be his new chief in Sales Department 1. After a week getting accustomed to their new positions Ishizawa and Kazama were brought in for a meeting with their director Kido, that's the top screenshot. These two friends will be rivals for a while as Kido has announced that a new project has just come to Mitsuhashi, it could be a lucrative contract and which one of their teams can do the best proposal?
Inagaki was working round the clock too and his major task was to find a dependable factory who could supply the parts and labor cheaper than Kazama's proposal. Which he did as Inagaki found a place called Fujikata Daiiichi Factory which could do this project for Teito at a lower cost plus their reputation looked solid. So it was a GO! for Ishizawa and when he submitted his own proposal it was chosen to be the winner by the director Kido but the good times didn't last for long. This Fujikata factory was anything but reputable and they flubbed up their end of the deal badly by giving Teito parts that destroyed their existing work, who is going to take responsibility for this catastrophe? After the contract was signed between the two companies Inagaki took time off because of health issues and after a week still hadn't returned to Mitsuhashi, makes sense Inagaki did that as he was so exhausted after that grueling contest. But there's something else going on as Ishizawa couldn't reach his worker and why why was Inagaki avoiding his boss? Eventually Ishizawa was able to contact his most trusted worker and a brief meeting was set up for that night.
That meeting with Inagaki didn't accomplish much as he was so disappointed in his new chief Ishizawa. Even back then Ishizawa was saying his famous 'Geez, young people these days...' line which aggravated Inagaki to no end! But even though Inagaki made a major mistake on the Teito project Ishizawa still wants him back but doesn't appear Inagaki wants to return to that kind of working atmosphere. The following day Kido confronted Ishizawa about this major mistake which could cost them the contract with Teito who they've worked with for many years, Kazama was also at this meeting. Kido accused Ishizawa of lying on the proposal about Fujikata being a solid company as Kido had checked and they were anything but one! Plus Kido added in that Inagaki had complained to the Personnel Department about the way Ishizawa was working him to death, what's Ishizawa going to do to clear this matter up? He told Kido he had no idea the info about Fujikata was all a lie and his mate Kazama stood up for his friend too but to Kido that only solution at this stage was for Ishizawa to resign!
Right at this moment is when Inagaki made his dramatic entrance to the meeting and spilled the beans about Kido which to us viewers came out of nowhere. The director was behind this evil scheme as it was Kido who had told Inagaki to fudge all the details about Fujikata on the proposal as he knew that company would flub their end of the deal and he could bring Ishizawa down! Don't know why Kido suddenly began to hate Ishizawa, it was shortly after his promotion to chief but what a devilish thing to do and Kido actually hurt his company more in the end run. Ishizawa ended up apologizing as this matter seemed to be settled, sadly what happened shortly after is that Inagaki ended up resigning. Because of that Ishizawa had vowed to himself to treat every employee on his team with the utmost respect and to not overwork them, he learned his lesson the hard way. So that was the end of the story Ishizawa told Ayumi as he said never think of herself as being a useless person on his team. That story was also the end of this show and glad we had a different kind of episode, one that was needed to learn more about Ishizawa's past and the recap for the final episode is the next post which I haven't viewed yet.
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