Takane no Hana tells the story of, unsurprisingly, a "flower out of reach". If you haven't gotten the idea of who that metaphorical flower is within the first five minutes of the series, she chants "I am a flower" repeatedly in the last episode just so you're sure.

At the center of the series is a sweet love story of the celestially beautiful heir to an ikebana empire (Momo played by Ishihara Satomi) and an older, poor, "ugly" and humble bicycle repairman (Pooh-san played by Mineta Kazunobu). There is no real sexual chemistry between the two actors, and the trope of a beautiful woman falling for a man "far beneath her station" is a tired one indeed. However, the performances of the two actors are superb and are the primary reason to watch this series. This is largely Ishihara's series and she rocks it. Pooh-san is presented as pretty much saintly having never having had a girlfriend because he had to take care of his bed-ridden but now recently deceased mother. He altruistically helps the people in his neighborhood and is presented as a hidden intellectual genius (he never looses on his shogi app!), but that character trait is largely irrelevant in the end though it does come up now and then.

Surrounding the love-story is a bizarre succession drama in a cutthroat world of flower arranging that does not and could not exist in the real world. The people in that world routinely plot and scheme in ways that take this series immediately to soapville and the "villains" are so over-the-top that you will check to see if this was adapted from a manga, but, no, sadly, it's not. Your enjoyment of this series will probably hinge on how much you can ignore the succession drama or appreciate ironically its machinations. There is a heavy metal boy band ikebana troupe managed by the main antagonist, and, honestly, there is probably a better series than this one to be written around the story of that group and the conflict between modern marketing techniques and the traditional business model of this Japanese art form. But this series decidedly does not go there.

The direction of this series and its aesthetic is Lynchian in a good way. The shot-selection, palate, art-direction and song selection are all well above average. The themes of the series are much less dark than Lynch's material but it is similarly populated with a lot of charmingly quirky tertiary characters that do bring a delightful vividness to this otherwise unrealistic world.

In the end, this is a fable of artistic self-discovery for the main character Momo. Ishihara confidently carries the series on her tiny shoulders and is given ample opportunity to display a wide range within the character's journey. She has the hardest job of convincing us that Momo would choose Pooh-san, and she does achieve the goal of reaching that seemingly out of reach flower.