Otona Joshi (2015) [J-Drama]

Nakahara Aki and her good friends Osaki Moeko and Sakata Midori are three 40-year-old women who “bring good luck to the men they are involved with, but cannot be happy themselves”. Aki is a single career woman who works for a company that designs romance apps. She has been living with Yamaoka Shinji, a musician six years her junior who is trying to make his debut, and her beloved cat Chikuwa. Although Aki is a sensible person, in a romance, she will do more than her best for her partner and find difficulty attaining happiness. She cannot voice her true feelings to Shinji and only opens up to Moeko, a flower shop manager, and Midori, a divorced mother of three boys. The three of them never miss a chance to have a girls’ night out and complain to one another without hesitation. Aki belongs to the mobile content department and has been appointed to lead a team to create a romance app for women around 40, with her younger subordinates Kudo Miwa, Tachibana Saori and Maekawa Ryosuke. Even Kurita Junichi, her company president and a well-known playboy, has high hopes for this project. One day, Aki comes up with the idea of asking the scriptwriter Takayama Fumio, who has had numerous romance drama hits, to oversee the writing of the game. She checks up on his whereabouts and visits the cafe that he hangs out at. However, as soon as Takayama sees the proposal, he tells her, “At that age, one won’t even feel choked up with emotion” “I would not call a 40-year-old a woman” and does not listen. Aki gets mad with his attitude and ends calling him a “narrow-minded, adolescent man”