Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

This is an excellent drama that i highly recommend people catching.  It's pretty gutsy for a Japanese drama in delving into the dark aspects of the classroom.  The scenes can be quite gloomy and the minute you think the sky turns to sunshine, it suddenly fills back up with grayness and storm clouds.  Originally, I intended to watch the show just to see my favorite current Japanese actor Atsushi Itoh in a post-Densha Otoko role.  I was expecting a purely nerdboy.  But he turns out to move away from the withdrawn, shy, mousy character into someone with a louder voice.  He still exhibits some of his Densha moments with him occasionally acting clumsy or nerdy as a chemistry teacher.  However, his outbursts and desire to protect students attempt to deviate him from his previous role that everyone loved.

The standout performance, imo, is Miho Kanno who plays a cynical lawyer.  Her character is strong and forms the foundation and the drive to sue the school after learning that her daughter had died.  She initially blames the incident on school bullying and turns up an investigation to determine what really occurred.  But her act as a lawyer vigillante is more an act of motherly protection as she sees herself attempting to redeem her step daughter's dismissal.  Overall her character is extremely powerful, manipulative, intelligent, shrewd and caring simultaneously.  An exceptionally complex character who you can both relate to and jeer as she antagonizes people in the story in order to get down to the truth.

The other characters are very well played.  Familiar faces from Densha Otoko include the PE teacher and Chinese teacher.  The PE teacher makes a great balancing point to the other teachers, especially as his character grows into one who cares more about the situation than initially let on.

Let us not forget the children too.  Tomomi and Yamada-san play extremely complex characters.  Tomomi is a girl who is haunted by a secret while Yamada-san is a creepy little girl who utilizes her goth image on the side to attempt to attract attention to her own problems.

What is brilliant is that the show illuminates many faucets of everyone in their faults and strengths and how sometimes their strengths become their faults or vice versa.  For instance, Yahata's character is one who wishes to become like his idol Kimpachi sensei.  However, he later becomes cynical and corrupt from the nature of his school. 

Surrounding the strong characters though is the central theme of bullying in Japanese schools.  The key piece is how a lot of the story focuses around middle school, an age where kids are beginning to go through puberty, just experiencing sexual frustrations, more mature ways of thinking and yet exhibiting the innocence of youth.  This combination makes the story complex because at times you want to villanize some of the kids like Kaneyoshi.  But the truth is that no one is truly good nor evil here.  It depicts people as is, with their problems that complicates their lives and causes misunderstanding between each other.

The real tragic point isn't the death of the student Asuka.  The tragic point is like the novel Lord of the Flies how children are forced to lose their innocence as they move into adolescence.  The teachers are completed alienated from the lives of the students.  For instance, Itoh-san's character cannot directly relate with his students so easily and many resent him.  This alienation is a result of the difference in age groups and mentality.  As adults it's difficult to relate back to their lives, thinking that their problems are minor compared to our own.  However, to them their lives at that precious age is the world and things seem bigger than they can imagine.  Hence, the perpetual division of understanding.

There's definitely more to write about concretely.  This drama attempts to tackle so many issues on different levels.