ハチミツとクローバー (Live Action Dorama) Ep. 11 (finale)

SPOILER Summary: Morita takes Hagu-chan to a rooftop, where she thanks him for getting her away from the hospital for a time. He tells her his feelings for her before they return to teh hospital, where Hanamoto-sensei and Takemoto had been looking for Hagu-chan. Hanamoto-sensei is not happy with Morita’s stunt. Back on the campus, Ayumi is surprised in the pottery lab when Nomiya comes by to see her, letting her cry over Mayama. Over in another part of campus, Teramobori-san pays Morita a visit, desperate for a piece of art to sell and wanting Morita to finish his graduation piece. So, Morita tells him to sell one of his large, completed pieces which pleases Teramobori-san greatly.

With Hagu-chan struggling with rehab, Takemoto checks out several books from the library on rehab. He then draws a map of Japan where he maps out his trip and takes it to Hagu-chan. As additional rehab (on top of what the hospital has her doing), he has developed several phases of therapy. The first being that she will take a brush and use it to follow his route 500 times, marking each time she completes it. The next phase has her placing stickers of an orange to cover a large section of the map. The third is to past some 4-leaf clovers on another large section of the map. Finally, she’s to color in what’s left. She does all this and as she makes progress, he recounts his story to her, all of which makes her happy and confident she’ll paint once more.

Back on campus, Morita teases Shouda-sensei about not doing anything since all he seems to do is watch over students. However, Morita would prefer that to the teachers who don’t care. Meanwhile, Mayama sees Rika-san off to Spain with the promise that he’ll follow her as soon as the Visa paperwork is done. Takemoto picks up work on his graduation piece and decides to call Shin-san, who assures him the temple restoration job is still his if he wants it after his graduation work is complete.

Hagu-chan is released from the hospital and Mayama’s Visa work is complete. So, Morita, Takemoto, Ayumi, Mayama, and Hagu-chan have a party to celebrate both events. Sometime after Mayama leaves for Spain, Nomiya returns to Tokyo for a meeting and sees Ayumi and Miwako. After giving Miwako a present, she beats a hasty retreat to leave Nomiya alone with Ayumi. She confesses to him that she’s not doing well, so he drives her to a scenic spot on a river(I think the Sumida River) looking at Tokyo. She’s honest about still being hung up on Mayama but in the end, Nomiya tells her that being alone won’t get her over Mayama. With that he takes her hand and they walk off together.

Morita disappears much to the distress of Teramobori-san, who becomes more distressed when he learns that Morita is taking a trip around the world with the money saved up from all the art Teramobori-san has sold for him. However, he leaves messages with his friends, including his graduation piece, which he leaves with Hagu-chan along with a proclamation saying they are eternal rivals. Hagu-chan comes by to see Takemoto’s completed graduation piece and feels he will be great at temple restorations. They walk across campus where she promises Takemoto to keep working hard so as not to lose. Takemoto seems like he wants to say more and she seems to expect it, but instead, they have a drawn out goodbye.

With his stuff already packed up and moved out, Takemoto takes the last of his things and leaves his dorm room, where he’s seen off with a final word of wisdom from Lohmeyer-senpai and an invitation to return anytime. Takemoto gets on a bus to head to his new job’s project site when he sees Hagu-chan looking around. He gets the bus to delay and let him off and she hands him a bento and a promise that they will meet again some time. With that, he gets back on the bus and Hagu-chan waves and she watches him leave. He opens the bento and finds honey sandwiches, each having four-leaf clovers inside, some with as many as three. He eats them and cries, thinking of the coward he is, but then he wouldn’t have come this far without Hagu-chan.

Thoughts: Well, its over and I give props to the writers for making the ending a bit sad, as it was in the anime. Secretly, I had hoped for the writers to make a little change so that Takemoto and Hagu-chan were a defined couple in the end, but alas, that was never in the cards. I suppose that’s just as well.

Overall, I felt this was a pretty good adaptation. There were things dropped (the whole sub-plot involving Morita, his brother, and their father’s business), things added (lots more Lohmeyer-senpai), but the spirit remained and that was the important thing. The actors became Takemoto, Hagu-chan, Ayumi, Mayama, Morita, etc. for me whereas in a show like the live-action You’re Under Arrest, those never did jell with me.

The only real problem was that the writers rarely took time to properly introduce characters (the female sensei was NEVER named that I heard and I think Shouda-sensei was mentioned by name only once as exampled) and expected people to be well versed in the original manga (or anime) at times. That’s just bad writing and had they done a better job at making sure non-fans could more easily get into the series, I think it would have been even better.

With Viz cornering the Honey and Clover market (anime, manga, live action movie), I figure they’ll try to score this as well. I seriously doubt I purchase it should they do so, unless they change their subtitle adaptation policies (which they started with the manga adaptation, so you never know).