ハチミツとクローバー (Live Action Dorama) Ep. 03

SPOILER Summary: Takemoto is suffering in the heat of his room and seeing Hagu-chan’s ring, he remembers how Morita kissed her on the beach. However, when she calls from a pay phone and invites him to have soba with her, he’s revived again. He races over to Hanamoto-sensei’s place to find Ayumi (Yamada) there as well as Hagu-chan. Morita and Mayama also show up but because Hagu-chan didn’t expect five people (Morita apparently being the unexpected guest due to Hagu-chan trying to avoid him) , there’s not enough for everyone. However, she offers to share hers with Takemoto, which he happily accepts. During the meal, Morita lets it out that he kissed Hagu-chan, which Takemoto tries to keep him from doing. That lets Morita know that Takemoto’s interested in Hagu-chan as she flees.

After Morita deals with Teramobori-san on his latest piece, Miwako from Fujiwara Design comes by the dorm and accidentally steps on Takemoto’s hand after he looks out his door from the floor. She knows him somehow and Takemoto discovers the color flier stating he loves Hagu-chan, thus how Miwako knew Takemoto when she saw him. She tells him he needs pink curtains in his room to improve his love life before proceeding to Mayama’s room. Mayama won’t let her in, choosing to meet with her in the common room. He asks Takemoto to make tea, which they don’t have. However, when Takemoto returns to his room, he notices that a package from his mother contained both tea and pink curtains.

As they all sit, Morita comes in and starts hitting on Miwako, who puts him in his place. She makes a job offer to Mayama, who politely rejects it. After she leaves, Takemoto can’t believe that he turned down a position at Fujiwara Design, since they are a hot, small company to work for. Mayama doesn’t want to talk about it. Takemoto gets a call from Hagu-chan, so he flees to his room to talk with her. However, after he starts to ask her to watch the fireworks at the summer festival with him, Hanamoto-sensei is on the line, asking Takemoto to do a job for him for which he’ll be paid. Meanwhile, Miwako tells her co-workers that she failed to recruit Mayama.

At the Yamada residence, Ayumi cares for a plant where the stem of one is broken, but hadn’t died yet. Her father states she should break it off, but she doesn’t want to do that, feeling bad for the plant. Her father says that if she doesn’t get rid of the bad part, there won’t be new growth. As such, the next day, Ayumi sees Mayama making a half-hearted effort at looking for job postings. They talk briefly before she lets him know that she’s decided to give up chasing what she can’t have. As such, she won’t chase Mayama forever and she walks off with Mayama watching her leave.

The job Hanamoto-sensei has for Takemoto is taking several chairs to Rika-san’s house. After loading the small, flatbed truck, they take off. Takemoto sees Hagu-chan and Morita together, Morita having gathered Hagu-chan to go get supplies, and begs Hanamoto-sensei to stop, which doesn’t happen. Morita and Hagu-chan are in the art store and Hagu-chan doesn’t feel comfortable with Morita. Afterward, they stop at a tacoyaki stand where only Morita eats after Hagu-chan paid for it. He starts making loud negative comments about the food, leading the stand owner to come out and confront him. When the man returns to his stand, Morita tells Hagu-chan that the man will now make good tacoyaki. However, she’s only interested in fleeing, which she does.

Takemoto is working hard on bringing the chairs up to Rika-san’s place and getting them cleaned up. After he finishes, he overhears a conversation between Rika-san and Hanamoto-sensei regarding Mayama. Meanwhile, Hagu-chan comes to the school campus to find Ayumi swinging
an aluminum baseball bat. Hagu-chan soon picks one up to swing as well since Ayumi says it makes her feel better. Shouda-sensei (?) shows up for some swings as well since his wife is away. Takemoto comes home to find Morita wanting to borrow ¥1000 from Mayama. When Takemoto reveals he was at Rika-san’s place for work, things get chaotic and in the end, Mayama is begging Takemoto for ¥5000.

Lohmeyer-senpai arrives with a large number of watermelons, which makes the three stop their chaos. Its time for the Japanese summer game “suikawari,” where the object it to be blindfolded, find and smash a watermelon with a large stick. Takemoto’s room gets chosen for this fun, much to his dismay. Lohmeyer-senpai says that suikawari is practice for love, to naturally Takemoto is interested. As Morita and Mayama direct Takemoto to a watermelon, he stops himself from smashing the object in front of him, thinking that he’s being tricked. Sure enough, it was his small boombox. Takemoto moves on and takes a swing, only to be stopped by Lohmeyer-senpai. He has words of wisdom for Takemoto, who’s removed his blindfold, and with his words, he seems to glow. As such, Morita gets blindfolded, then proceeds to smash every watermelon in the room.

Hagu-chan has gone to the Yamada residence where Ayumi’s father and fellow district comrades are drinking and eating yakiniku. When he learns of Hagu-chan’s trip with Morita and her feelings about it, she says that what she’s feeling is love, which Ayumi can’t believe. To back his story up, he recounts first dating his wife and the negative feelings he had then. This makes Hagu-chan start thinking about things differently. Back at the dorm, Morita tells the annoyed Takemoto that he set things up for him and Hagu-chan to see the fireworks together (Morita having invited Hagu-chan previously) at the place where he’s working on his next art piece.

The following day, Mayama confronts Hanamoto-sensei about him taking Takemoto to Rika-san’s place instead of him. Hanamoto-sensei tells Mayama that he can’t support Rika-san by just being with her all the time, and recounts the accident she had that led to her husband Harada to have to catch a later flight for a business trip in which the plane crashed and he died. Hearing this, he ultimately decides to pay a visit to Fujiwara Design, where he asks for a job. Nomiya isn’t interested in letting him into the team, but Miwako overrides him. However, she warns Mayama that if his work isn’t up to par, she’ll fire him.

Takemoto goes to buy a male yukata for the forthcoming summer festival. However, at the festival, he finds that Shouda-sensei (?) has the same yukata as him, and gives him the “OK” sign about it before passing a corn dog to Takemoto. Hagu-chan and Ayumi are also in yukata as they start to watch fireworks from the Yamada residence. They go to get tacoyaki from one of the festival vendors, which happens to be Lohmeyer-senpai. He tells them to serve the tacoyaki warm as cold tacoyaki will cool a relationship down. Hagu-chan thinks to Morita’s attempting to get better tacoyaki with her and so she leaves Ayumi to go to where he is. Takemoto also leaves his spot for watching fireworks to go to where Morita said Hagu-chan would be. Hagu-chan gets there and Morita has Takemoto come out before leaving. Takemoto starts to talk with her, but she’s watching Morita leave. Realizing his words would not reach her, he shuts up to deal with the pain in his heart.

Thoughts: I love this dorama. I never thought a Japanese dorama could entertain me so, but this has. Yeah, it is somewhat different than the anime or manga (I do wish that Rika-san’s injury would have been the same), but the heart is still the same and that’s key to me in this case.

I understand that this TV series is only going to be 11 episodes in length. I guess that would account for the fact that it was early spring in episode 2, summer in episode 3, and looks to be winter in episode 4. Man, blowing through this so quickly seems like it could go to fast, but as I reflect on the three episodes to date, I think it will be fine.

As to this episode specifically, I never liked Hagu-chan being interested in Morita in the anime. I always wanted her and Takemoto to hook up in the anime. Naturally, knowing how things went there, it sucks seeing something similar here. As such, it sucks to be Takemoto. “No Hagu-chan for you!”