"Imadoki no Wakai Mon wa" drama, episode eight(final) recap

 

 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 updated the info as time went 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 is 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

 

 As the heading says we've reached the end of this series and am often sad when a really good one ends. Haruka's other current drama "Shoujiki Fudousan" ends this week and have recapped the first five episodes. But going to wait on the final five as I don't want to OD on Haruka as this makes thirteen drama recaps I've written up in a month for her. So up next is one of three things and think I can't lose with any of them. First off it could be another drama that just ended titled which is "Nanji no na" and am looking forward to that show. But it also could be the Korean series "The Killer's Shopping List" which looks good to me and there's been such a decrease for Korean dramas this year. Lastly may do a few more movie reviews instead as I've acquired a dozen of them in the past month and with horror flicks being my faves that's what most are.

 So why this isn't a 'must watch' drama it's one I highly recommend. An episode is about 25 minutes in length but just as much happens in one of these shorter episodes as a 45 minute show which has so much filler, needless scenes and flashbacks. Will give my rating now which will be an 8.9/10 and for me that's pretty darn good. I seldom give more than a nine for a rating as if there's too many that high it kind of waters the rating system down, nine or more means it's the best of the best. Have heard rumors about a second season but couldn't find any info on it, if it does happen though it wouldn't air until next year and let's finally get to this final episode.

 Time has been flying for when the series began our 'heroine' Ayumi at only been at the Mitsuhashi trading company for a month. Now it's been eleven but it still appears Ayumi has not made one solo deal to date though she has been an important part in helping others with their proposals and contracts. Funaki just scored a huge deal with a company and the office gave him a standing ovation, that is save for Ayumi. She smiled and looked happy for him but deep down she was so jealous of Funaki and why can't she ever seal a deal? Noticing Ayumi's low state was her chief Ishizawa who rarely misses anything, a visitor is in the Mitsuhashi office and he asked Ayumi to escort him up to her confusion. That person in the lobby was an older man named Tanuki who owns the Tanuki Enterprises company which makes coil products.

 At the end of the second episode Ayumi, with Funaki's help, submitted a proposal with Tanuki for a new project his company was planning and to all Ayumi did a superb job. Deep down Tanuki thought so too and at first agreed to signing a contract with Ayumi which would have been her first deal but at the beginning of the third episode Tanuki backed out of the deal for 'no particular reason'. Another trading company did make a better offer to Tanuki but to date he still hasn't signed with anyone and Ayumi had been working on another proposal. The main reason for Tanuki not signing that original contract was that he was so disappointed Ishizawa wasn't there representing Mitsuhashi, those two have a long history. Tanuki is around seventy in age and prefers working with older men such as Ishizawa which he said at a meeting that took place in the beginning of this episode. But Ishizawa told this older man that the two of them won't be around forever, if they don't start training others and bringing in new blood what's going to happen to their companies in the future?

 Tanuki may be set in his ways but he's a smart man or else his company wouldn't have been so successful. So after thinking about what Ishizawa said about training younger people he realized what Ishizawa said was correct and has agreed to look over Ayumi's new proposal for coil products. That was the last we heard of that so we don't know whether Ayumi was able to make her first solo deal but bet in the end run it did happen. Short scene after that was with Ishizawa running a seminar for Mitsuhashi's new hires which happens each Summer. Ayumi remembered her first day which means she's been at the company for close to a year now. We've seen some flashbacks over the series of when Ishizawa was younger, though always a decent person he did have a mean streak. But that's disappeared over the years and guess when you become older you do mellow. This seminar went so smoothly for Ishizawa and for the first time no new recruits were frightened of him.... least not yet!

 On to the final scene and above you can see Ishizawa's best friend for 25 years Kazama leading the troops! He had scheduled a special meeting which Ishizawa wasn't at and it was kind of easy to pick up what Kazama's plan was. He told Ishizawa's team plus a few others that by 6:00 pm every daily task had to be done so this special project could begin though it had nothing to do with any new work. So everyone put it into hyper drive as they somehow did more in an eight hour stretch then they would do in a week, what was Kazama's secret project that had would begin at the end of the work day?

 During this hectic stretch for the team their chief Ishizawa made his return and was baffled by what was going on, he had never seen them work so hard. None of them asked for his help or advice on things, every project or task Ishizawa had ordered to be done was and early! So Ishizawa was feeling a bit left out as his team didn't seem to need him and were actually ignoring their chief. Thinking he wasn't needed for anything Ishizawa retired to his private office which was the building's roof(!) and was thinking about going home for the day. It was approaching 6:00 pm and the team's frantic efforts paid off as they finished their work and it was time for the special project to commence but this time the chief was needed. For that's because, as you can see above, his team and Kazama had worked so hard to have a secret birthday party for Ishizawa.

 So when he arrived back from the roof he was of course stunned and by this time Kazama had silently slipped away. That's because it wasn't Ishizawa's birthday(!) but it was the only way Kazama could think of to get the whole team together. Kazama can be a bit annoying but he respects everyone at Mitsuhashi and to him Ishizawa deserved a 'Thank You' party from his team. So that party for the most part brought us to the end of this very entertaining series and I've noticed quite often that less happens in the final show of a Japanese drama than any other episode. I do give too many details(?) but not all to keep these recaps somewhat brief which is why it's always a good idea to view the screenshots at the bottom of these posts and hope I can come back to recap a second season!!!!