Honey and Clover (Live Action) 06
ハチミツとクローバー (Live Action Dorama) Ep. 06

SPOILER Summary:

Morita has locked himself in a room and threatened suicide as Ayumi and Takemoto try to get him to open the door. Shouda-sensei arrives and learning of this, aids in the attempt. Hagu-chan arrives and has a plan. Inside the room, Morita opens a bottle of pills and pours some out, pondering them. However, he begins to smell something and hear the sound of meat frying. Thinking someone is cooking yakiniku, he opens the door, only to discover it was a trap with Shouda-sensei providing the sizzling noises and Hagu-chan spraying a can of yakiniku scent. Turns out Morita is upset over his friends still not having thrown him a party after two weeks of his return to Japan. Since the pills were vitamin C pills, the group finds excuses to leave immediately.

Takemoto goes to a job interview where he thinks about his conversation with Hagu-chan regarding Morita before Morita left for New York. At the job interview, he does poorly in the group interview. Meanwhile, Morita pays Hagu-chan a visit, having been told by Takemoto to consider her feelings. She tells him she’s glad he’s back from New York.

That night, Takemoto is back in his room with Mayama and Morita looking over the scores of job rejection letters Takemoto has received. Mayama marvels, saying that with so many interviews, one would think that at least one company would have accepted him. Lohmeyer-senpai pays a visit and talks about how in losing, one can win, which is what he feels Takemoto should do. He cites how one plays dead when faced with a bear so that one might win life. He cites the race horse Haru Urara, who’d lost so many races in a row, only now to be considered a national treasure. However, when Takemoto asks if he should keep getting job rejections to be a winner, Lohmeyer-senpai pretends to be dead.

Miwako is in the hospital, having thrown her back, but she’s embarrassed at how this will sound. So she has Mayama come up with a better sounding condition that still accurately states her condition, but without the stigma. She makes Mayama promise not to tell the others that she threw her back, but he does and Nomiya laughs, and takes over her projects to make sure they get done. Mayama leaves the hospital and Rika-san sees him from a distance as she goes to pay Miwako a visit. They talk about work and while Miwako is confident that Nomiya can cover her absence, she wonders if Rika-san can truly continue alone. As Rika-san leaves, she sees the attending physician who treated her injuries after the accident and inquires about her welfare.

Takemoto goes by Hanamoto-sensei’s place where Hagu-chan is looking at an article written about her. Takemoto finds it neat that people are writing about her and that she’s becoming known in the art world. For her part, Hagu-chan would prefer to be in the country and left alone just to paint. Morita and Hanamoto-sensei come by and Morita teases Takemoto about not having a job. Hanamoto-sensei still has a job lead (making custom furniture) and tells Takemoto that just going to the interview doesn’t mean he has to take the job.

Hagu-chan is at a press conference about her art with Morita in attendance. Teramobori-san pulls him out to talk to him. He’s not happy with Morita’s poor showing in a recent art event that Hagu-chan won. Morita notes that Teramobori-san is now calling him “Morita-san” instead of “Dai-sensei.” Teramobori-san responds by telling Morita that he’s now known as the loser who ran away from New York and that an artist who wins no prizes is no one.

Takemoto goes to interview with the furniture maker and it is a somewhat strange interview. To make things odder, the young owner, Usui, wants Takemoto to help him make a delivery. Takemoto agrees and when he returns to the campus to see Hanamoto-sensei, Takemoto is informed that Usui was impressed with Takemoto. As a result, Usui has offered Takemoto a job. Takemoto isn’t sure and asks Hanamoto-sensei if being a teacher was something he really wanted to do. Hanamoto-sensei informs Takemoto that the number of people who love what they do is pretty small and the number of people who do what they really want to do is even smaller. Hanamoto-sensei had wanted to be a painter, but in the end he became a college professor and he’s glad for the job.

Mayama finishes his day at Fujiwara Design and upon returning home, he and Takemoto discuss Takemoto’s dilemma over some drinks. Mayama thinks it is incredible to be needed by someone. Morita comes home and fills the common are with a ton of junk and summons Mayama to assist him. Morita asks how he’s doing with the widow, which Mayama isn’t interested in discussing. Morita finds this amusing and compares Mayama’s dealings with Rika-san with Takemoto’s dealings with Hagu-chan.

Meanwhile, Takemoto took the job and is thrown a party by the group, complete with sushi. Morita sulks because they threw Takemoto a party and not him. When they start to eat, Takemoto goes for the omlet slice, only to discover it is made of clay, a trap from Morita. Apparently, Takemoto is a nice guy and doesn’t immediately go for what he wants, so this was a lesson from Morita. Later, Takemoto calls home to tell his mother, but gets Kazuo-san instead. Takemoto’s step-father is very moved by Takemoto’s call and cries.

Elsewhere, Ayumi takes a call from Nomiya, where he orders 8 ceramic mugs, but due to the way he pronounces it (in Japanese), Ayumi thinks he orders 100.

Still elsewhere, Hagu-chan pays Morita a visit where he’s working on a new sculpture. Despite the fact that he lost, she says that this sculpture of his is the one she likes best. Inspired to paint, Morita tells her to do so with him rather than her room, which she agrees to. Back at Hanamoto-sensei’s room, Rika-san pays him a visit and they discuss the passage of time and memories as well as her desire not to forget her dead husband. She leaves and Mayama sees her, having delivered some food to the absent Ayumi, so he gives chase to the taxi she’s in, but she’s gone. He ponders calling her, but doesn’t. He pays Miwako a visit and asks her what he must do to be an adult and to support another person.

Ayumi is working to finish the project Nomiya gave her and sees the food gift Mayama left her. She’s happy about it but when she sees his jacket, she has to put it on. She thinks back on her feelings for Mayama and starts tearing up when Nomiya comes by. He’s impressed by her work, though he only wanted eight (hakko) and not 100 (hyakko). As a reward, he says he’ll treat her to soba. She agrees, and falls asleep in his car. When she wakes up, they aren’t in Tokyo any more but on their way to Nagano, where the soba restaurant is. She’s not happy about it initially, but once there, she finds the food good enough to eat a lot of. When they return to Tokyo, Nomiya asks her to teach him on how to make ceramics. He also asks if she wants him to give Mayama’s jacket back to him and follows by asking if it has to be Mayama (the man she wants).

The following day, Hanamoto-sensei gives Takemoto a new bicycle and he’s off to give his new boss a gift. When he arrives at Usui-san’s shop, his new boss is bowing on the ground, saying he can’t hire Takemoto since Usui’s biggest customer just went bankrupt.

Meanwhile, in Shouda-sensei’s class, he’s eating Cup Noodle when Morita pays him a visit and eats half of the ramen, to Shouda-sensei’s annoyance. Morita asks Shouda-sensei if one can fall in love with a person based on something they’ve made or done. Shouda-sensei believes this is possible since a part of that person went into their creation. Even the instant ramen has a part of the person who created it.

Somewhere on campus, the female sensei is giving Hagu-chan a difficult time because of Hagu-chan’s reluctance press forward with her art on a grand scale. The sensei believes it is Hagu-chan’s duty to enter these competitions or even go overseas if needed because so many people try and fail. So those with talent like Hagu-chan have no control over their lives, living obligated to the failures in the Japanese art world. Hagu ponders the path she must take as Takemoto slowly walks his bike home wondering the same thing. Morita finds him and tells him that he likes Hagu-chan.

Thoughts:

One thing I noticed last week is that the live-action series doesn’t tell us a thing about what Takemoto does in his studies. In the anime, we knew right off that he was into building things when he did the doll furniture for Hagu-chan, but that didn’t happen in the live-action. So while we were shown Mayama’s interest in interior design, Ayumi’s interest in pottery/ceramics, Hagu-chan’s interest in painting, and Morita’s interest in sculpture, Takemoto is left out in the cold. That’s unfortunate because it makes his job search have no real impact (at least to me).

It was nice to see Shouda-sensei get a non-comic relief part with his talk with Morita.

I also think the live-action version better brings out the Japanese societal obligation elements, both with how Hagu-chan was treated by the female sensei (unnamed thus far in the live-action title and I’ve been too lazy to look up her name elsewhere) and how Teramobori-san stopped referring to Morita as “Dai-sensei” when Morita left New York and then didn’t win an art competition.

The only place the live-action fails is in the rapid pace it blows through the source materials. So Nomiya’s making a move on Ayumi is more of a surprise in the live-action series whereas in the anime, it was telegraphed long before he took her to Nagano.