The Japanese drama Romantics Anonymous is a full package of cute romance and drama. The chemistry between the two leads is why the show is so good and feels almost realistic, but of course, the story, a remake of a French film of the same title, makes it super entertaining. Romantics Anonymous tells the story of a girl named Hana, who becomes anxious in social situations. She also can’t make eye contact because of her scopophobia. On the other hand, is Sosuke, a rich young man who finds himself the CEO of a chocolate shop that’s been well known for years. Hana’s an anonymous chocolatier at Kenji’s shop, but when he dies, she needs to go out of her way to speak to the people at the shop, telling them who she is. Will she manage? What happens to Le Sauveur after the death of Kenji? And how do Hana and Sosuke get to know each other? Let’s find out in this recap of season 1.
Spoiler Alert
What Happens When Kenji Dies?
We’re introduced to Hana when she’s most in her element, in the middle of an indulgent montage where we see her whipping up La Sauveur’s bestseller, Pure Kenji, which holds pride of place at one end of their famous Rainbow Palette. As she drops the chocolates off before hurriedly getting away on her scooter, we see one of the employees come rushing out with a rose meant for the “anonymous chocolatier,” but he doesn’t make it, and the manager tells him off for trying to scare her off. Judging by the reactions on the chefs’ faces after they try the Pure Kenji, though, you can’t blame the guy for trying to meet a legend.
Kenji is the owner and head chef at Le Sauveur, a chocolatier, and the only person Hana can be herself with. She’d tried to compete at an international chocolatier competition back in the day, but her severe scopophobia had kicked in, and she’d run off to hide in a corner, even though everyone at the competition had complimented her chocolate. This was when Kenji had stepped in, offering her his card and asking her to come work with him in Japan. We don’t really know how long it took for her to truly open up, but with Kenji, Hana never felt anxious to be looked at; she could exist freely with him, and they helped each other become better chocolatiers.
Kenji still wanted Hana to open up and experience more of the world, taking on an almost paternal role for the Korean orphan. The story really kicks off when he sets Hana up with her longtime crush, a cool bad boy bartender, jazz musician, and kendo practitioner named Hiro. We later find out that she fell for him when she almost died in a road accident, assuming he was the one who saved her life. The trouble is, Kenji thought it was best not to tell Hana what his plan was; he just asked her to meet him at a fancy restaurant called Cielo for her birthday. The moment Hiro turns up, she freaks out and makes a run for it, pretending to be a waiter and leaving her coat behind.
Hana makes her way back to Le Sauveur in the freezing cold, hoping to apologize to Kenji for letting him down, but what she sees is shocking. Kenji had died at the counter, while he was busy making her a special birthday cake. She calls emergency services and does everything she can to make things better, but it is already too late. This kicks off a series of events, not just in Hana’s life, but for everyone at Le Sauveur and also for Futago Confectionery, headed by Sosuke, the son of the CEO. While Hana’s just lost the only person in her life she could open up to and look in the eye, Le Sauveur’s lost its heart and soul, leaving everyone feeling aimless, but Sosuke sees an opportunity. He approaches Kenji’s widow, acquiring a 51% controlling stake in Le Sauveur, essentially taking over.
This isn’t taken well by many people, the staff at Le Sauveur most of all. Kenji had been running the place for 30 years, and the personal touch was a big part of why they loved it there, beyond just the delectable chocolate platters, that is. With a penny pusher taking over, the special touch was under threat, and we see this immediately with him asking the chefs to stop outsourcing the Pure Kenji to the anonymous chocolatier, seeing it as an unnecessary expense. This infuriates the longtime manager at Le Sauveur, and we see her marching away from the store, much to the sorrow of the rest of the staff. Hana sees an e-mail in her inbox demanding that she come in for an in-person interview if she wants to continue working with Le Sauveur, and her anxiety almost overwhelms her.
How Do Sosuke and Hana Become Friends?
Hana ends up going to Le Sauveur to tell them who she really is, but a misunderstanding leads to the team believing she’s there because of the “help wanted” sign. Hana immediately assimilates as a waiter despite her scopophobia. She’s eager to join the team she’s been working with secretly, especially after she and Sosuke physically bump into each other and have a revelation. For some reason, Hana can look this man in the eye with no problems, and Sosuke, who seems to have avoided touching people so far, doesn’t even flinch when she grabs his hand. While working there, Hana is quick to point out things about the chocolates to customers, and Sosuke takes notice. When a crisis strikes, like the yuzu jam supplier refusing to work with them or a wasabi chocolate not being popular, Hana is quick to help.
Sosuke takes Hana to solve the issue with the yuzu jam supplier because she can help him deliver the message of why it’s so important to Le Sauveur. It’s a small bonus for her that Hiro’s going to be the one driving them there. But she can’t spend too much time focusing on him because they’re traveling for business. While Sosuke is a big corporate guy himself, he sees how important one piece of chocolate can be to anybody. This is why he doesn’t want to shut down Le Sauveur but improve it to make sure it stays as is. When they finally get to the yuzu farm, Sosuke exploits Hana’s Korean identity to get the owner’s wife to warm up to them and get them a meeting with her husband, who’s not due home for several hours.
While they wait, Hana tries to work up the courage to confess her feelings to Hiro, but she’s interrupted when someone named Irene calls from his bar and asks him to come for her. She’s drunk out of her mind, so Hiro has to rush off to deal with this emergency. This leaves Hana alone at the farm, which is also a hot spring, to feel jealous and alone. Of course, Sosuke is there too and almost creeps on her when she’s sleeping, still amazed by her “miracle touch” that didn’t gross him out. When the yuzu jam supplier does show up, he makes them a meal, and then he immediately apologizes for the terrible misunderstanding. Turns out, he’d cut ties with Le Sauveur after the manager left, thinking Sosuke, being a typical corporate brat, had fired her without cause. In truth, she’d resigned to seek treatment for a serious illness, and Sosuke had agreed to pay for all her medical expenses, which humbled the yuzu jam supplier and made him see Sosuke as an honorable man.
After working out the yuzu situation, Sosuke, who wants to get rid of the anonymous chocolatier, asks Hana for advice when they’re both in the hot spring. Essentially, their conversation encourages him to believe that secrets are sometimes important, so he e-mails Hana (not knowing she’s the anonymous chocolatier) that she should stay on and continue making the Pure Kenji. Both Hana and Sosuke go to the same counsellor, not knowing this. This counsellor happens to be Irene, the woman who drunk-dialed Hiro from the bar. This’ll lead to some complications later, but for now, when Hana and Sosuke realize they each have a fear to work on, they decide to “practice” on each other. For Hana, it’s making eye contact, and for Sosuke, he can somehow deal with Hana’s touch better than any other person. Sosuke’s fear of touch stems from childhood trauma, because his brother died in a quarantined facility, and this gave Sosuke germophobia. Technically speaking, this isn’t the first time he’s had this kind of interaction, but as coincidence would have it, the last time it happened, it was with Hana too. Remember how Hana thinks Hiro rescued her from a road accident? It was actually Sosuke at the time, she just never realized it. He experienced the miracle touch for the first time back then, but he didn’t know it had been her until Hiro tells him much later. Anyway, this is where Sosuke and Hana’s friendship begins.
What Happens Between Irene and Hiro?
On the other hand, Irene and Hiro are kind of a couple, but Irene struggles with interpersonal relationships, despite being a counsellor herself. The night after she drunk-dialed him at the bar, Irene ended up leaving her coat behind when she fled his apartment in the morning, bringing the number of women’s coats he’s collected to two. In spite of herself, she was disappointed that nothing happened between them that night, even though she’d told him before that she didn’t want to be with him. But, when Irene learns that her patients, Sosuke and Hana, don’t just know each other, but Hiro too, she realizes she’s kind of put herself in a big mess. Hana ends up not meeting Hiro on two separate occasions: the first time when Kenji tried to set them up (because of her nervousness), and the second time when Hana is meant to meet Hiro to pick up her coat but ends up sending Irene instead because Sosuke needs her for yet another company errand. Now, Irene and Hiro’s relationship is a bit odd, because Hiro feels they have a connection, but Irene doesn’t want to get too close to him. She cuts ties with him and then even stops being a counsellor to the other two because of the jumble, leaving the country to prioritize her own mental health for a bit. Finally, though, Irene returns after a year, when Hana reaches out to her (we’ll get to why in a bit). This is when Irene is ready to give Hiro another chance, finally free of any past traumas to trouble her. They start off as friends again, but of course, they’ll be more soon enough.
How Do Sosuke And Hana End Up Together?
Despite all his efforts, Sosuke’s cousin is eager to take over Sosuke’s father’s company. But Sosuke still believes in Le Sauveur, so he comes up with a final plan to save the place as well as his job, along with his dad’s. Sosuke suggests that the people of Le Sauveur take part in a global competition that is held in Japan to show off their master-level skills and make a name for the brand. But, to participate, they need the best chocolatier, and the one Sosuke is set on is the anonymous chocolatier. Now, Hana pretends she’s the spokesperson of the chocolatier, saying she can teach the team how to make Pure Kenji, which would make it easy for them to win the competition, but Sosuke’s cousin tells everyone that Hana never made a video call to anybody during the two-hour training session. This makes it clear that Hana is herself the anonymous chocolatier.
At first, everyone is mad at her for lying to them; it feels like a betrayal. Hana is left heartbroken, so she goes to find an island Kenji had a picture of, on which he apparently found his special cocoa. Hana makes it there, but what she doesn’t know is that it’s a place that’s been taken over by goons, and she’s in danger. Luckily, by the time she gets there, Sosuke has already tried to convince Hiro to bring her back, because she has a crush on him, but Hiro makes it clear that the man Hana really likes is Sosuke himself. Additionally, the team of Le Sauveur finally realizes that Kenji always brought together people who truly felt like outsiders in the world. Sometimes, you’re unable to express yourself, and you have reason to hide things, so they want Hana to return too, especially because they know she’s not a bad person; she just faced circumstances that pushed her to hide the truth. Ultimately, Sosuke saves Hana and brings her back just in time for the competition. They also learn that back when Kenji was on that island, the cocoa fruit was mostly spoiled, but he showed the people that they could still save the best parts of the fruit and use it to make incredible chocolate—the chocolate of happiness.
Do Hana and Sosuke Save the Company?
Romantics Anonymous ends on a positive note, not only because Sosuke manages to reach the hearts of the shareholders, but also because Hana and he end up together as well. Sosuke makes a wonderful speech at the shareholders’ meeting about how even one piece of chocolate can save a person’s life; at the same time, Hana wins the competition, making a similar statement about how making chocolate saved her life. Just a small piece can make such a big difference. The plan works, the company is saved, and Sosuke’s cousin also apologizes for his silly greed. At the same time, Sosuke’s father, who had a stroke before the meeting, is awake now, and Sosuke finally has the courage to touch him too. It appears that with Hana, he’s working around his trauma. At the same time, Hana now works at Le Sauveur with no hesitation and nothing to worry about; she’s comfortable with everyone there, and everyone is happy. At the end, Hana and Sosuke get married, but they run away from the wedding because of her anxiety; it’s okay though, because they’ve got each other.
The first season of Romantics Anonymous ends with two new characters, a counsellor named Ando and another Korean man (played by Song Jong-Ki), showing up to a new counselling session. This indicates that there’s something new coming up in this universe, but we’ll have to wait to find out what it is.
