Dragon Zakura & other recent dramas
I'd had the Dragon Zakura DVD set for a while, but never got around to watching it (too many other distractions). A little while ago, while waiting for a ProDai episode to download, I felt like checking out a few episodes of this series in order to see how Yamapi and Nagasawa Masami fared in this earlier drama where they both appeared. Hah, few episodes indeed... I got completely sucked into marathoning the series and finished watching all 11 episodes of it in a day and a half.
Dragon Zakura is a school drama set in a school that is set well below the average. None of the students are expected to amount anything and the school is teetering on the edge of bakruptcy. Into this situation arrives Sakuragi Kenji (Abe Hiroshi - who is pretty hot, and whoah, he's older than me!!!!), a former a race gang member (not a gangster, as he's always reminding people), now a lawyer. He has been asked to resolve the situation regarding the financial situation of the school.
His own practice isn't doing that well either, so he comes up with the idea of forming a special prep class in the school in order to get 5 students there accepted into the prestigious Todai University by in the next year's exams. He is mainly thinking of his personal advancement in the beginning (if he succeeds, he'll be famous!), but by the end of the series, he is also very involved in his students' lives as well.
Sakuragi ends up bullying, blackmailing or cajoling the 5 people who finally enter into the special class. Rebellious Yajima Yuusuke (Yamashita Tomohisa) is basically bought into attending the class, because Sakuragi pays the debts his father left behind him when he abandoned Yuusuke and his mother. Yuusuke's girlfriend (Aragaki Yui) and Hideki (Koike Teppei), who is in the same band where Yuusuke plays his trumpet (!!!) join the class just because he's in it.
Mizuno Naomi (Nao-boo, played by Nagasawa Masami), Yuusuke's best childhood friend joins the group because Sakuragi used her as an example of the students whose lives he could transform. She was hesitant at first, but after getting too many disparaging comments about her abilities, she finally decided to try if she could change her destiny.
None of the students are particularly smart or even that interested in studying, but they all want to prove that they can do better than what is expected of them.
To my surprise, I've found that I've quite liked all the Japanese schoold dramas I've seen (Gokusen, Nobuta wo Produce and now this), because in all of them, the basic plot seems to be that there is a group of misfits or outcasts who are somehow brought together and finally unite into achieving a goal that initially might seem impossible or unimaginable.
That is true for this drama as well. As I said, none of the students are geniuses or anything like that. They are just average students (or even worse), but they are given an intense prep course on study techniques, on the ways to give good exam answers, and, or course, on some subjects on which they initially weren't that good. Actually, quite a lot of my enjoyment in this series was on seeing the different learning and study techniques in practice. I've never wanted to be a teacher, but I still found all of this very intriguing.
The interpersonal relationships also play a great part in this series, though this is no romance drama, where relationships are the central issue. In the beginning, Kousaka (Aragaki Yui) is jealous of Naomi, because it seems that Yuusuke always meets with her whenever he has some problems and, of course, they are childhood friends, so very close to each other.
It's easy to see that Naomi would probably like to be closer to him than just a friend, but he is (at least for now) committed to Kousaka. Still, there is no telling what the future might bring since they are all still very young at this point. Kousaka originally joined the class just because her boyfriend is on it, but with time came to find her own enjoyment in learning new things and started to appreciate the chance she had been given.
Hideki's case is pretty similar. He originally joined the class just because his best friend was in it, but with time decided to show his father that he wasn't just some stupid worthless bum, like he thought he was, and decided to do his best to get into Todai.
Other fun or interesting characters were the disbelieving school teacher (Hasegawa Kyoko), who was drafted into helping Sakuragi in his task and heartily disapproved of his methods, and the shopaholic director, who tried her best to avoid trouble and had no clue on how to run a school.
I highly recommend this drama to everyone. I, at least, really enjoyed watching it.
The shopaholic school director
Sakuragi Kenji
Naomi and Yuusuke
Yuusuke
The special class
Ino
Kousaka, Hideki and Yuusuke
The special class and it's teachers
Yamapi in DZ
Nao-boo, Okuno ("the twin") and Kobayashi (who wants to become Todai's "idol")
The teachers, Sakuragi and Ino
x-posted to my journal.
Other stuff I've recently watched have included episodes 9 and 10 of Proposal Daisakusen and a rewatch of Mars. Comments about Mars can be found here and here.
Dragon Zakura is a school drama set in a school that is set well below the average. None of the students are expected to amount anything and the school is teetering on the edge of bakruptcy. Into this situation arrives Sakuragi Kenji (Abe Hiroshi - who is pretty hot, and whoah, he's older than me!!!!), a former a race gang member (not a gangster, as he's always reminding people), now a lawyer. He has been asked to resolve the situation regarding the financial situation of the school.
His own practice isn't doing that well either, so he comes up with the idea of forming a special prep class in the school in order to get 5 students there accepted into the prestigious Todai University by in the next year's exams. He is mainly thinking of his personal advancement in the beginning (if he succeeds, he'll be famous!), but by the end of the series, he is also very involved in his students' lives as well.
Sakuragi ends up bullying, blackmailing or cajoling the 5 people who finally enter into the special class. Rebellious Yajima Yuusuke (Yamashita Tomohisa) is basically bought into attending the class, because Sakuragi pays the debts his father left behind him when he abandoned Yuusuke and his mother. Yuusuke's girlfriend (Aragaki Yui) and Hideki (Koike Teppei), who is in the same band where Yuusuke plays his trumpet (!!!) join the class just because he's in it.
Mizuno Naomi (Nao-boo, played by Nagasawa Masami), Yuusuke's best childhood friend joins the group because Sakuragi used her as an example of the students whose lives he could transform. She was hesitant at first, but after getting too many disparaging comments about her abilities, she finally decided to try if she could change her destiny.
None of the students are particularly smart or even that interested in studying, but they all want to prove that they can do better than what is expected of them.
To my surprise, I've found that I've quite liked all the Japanese schoold dramas I've seen (Gokusen, Nobuta wo Produce and now this), because in all of them, the basic plot seems to be that there is a group of misfits or outcasts who are somehow brought together and finally unite into achieving a goal that initially might seem impossible or unimaginable.
That is true for this drama as well. As I said, none of the students are geniuses or anything like that. They are just average students (or even worse), but they are given an intense prep course on study techniques, on the ways to give good exam answers, and, or course, on some subjects on which they initially weren't that good. Actually, quite a lot of my enjoyment in this series was on seeing the different learning and study techniques in practice. I've never wanted to be a teacher, but I still found all of this very intriguing.
The interpersonal relationships also play a great part in this series, though this is no romance drama, where relationships are the central issue. In the beginning, Kousaka (Aragaki Yui) is jealous of Naomi, because it seems that Yuusuke always meets with her whenever he has some problems and, of course, they are childhood friends, so very close to each other.
It's easy to see that Naomi would probably like to be closer to him than just a friend, but he is (at least for now) committed to Kousaka. Still, there is no telling what the future might bring since they are all still very young at this point. Kousaka originally joined the class just because her boyfriend is on it, but with time came to find her own enjoyment in learning new things and started to appreciate the chance she had been given.
Hideki's case is pretty similar. He originally joined the class just because his best friend was in it, but with time decided to show his father that he wasn't just some stupid worthless bum, like he thought he was, and decided to do his best to get into Todai.
Other fun or interesting characters were the disbelieving school teacher (Hasegawa Kyoko), who was drafted into helping Sakuragi in his task and heartily disapproved of his methods, and the shopaholic director, who tried her best to avoid trouble and had no clue on how to run a school.
I highly recommend this drama to everyone. I, at least, really enjoyed watching it.
The shopaholic school director
Sakuragi Kenji
Naomi and Yuusuke
Yuusuke
The special class
Ino
Kousaka, Hideki and Yuusuke
The special class and it's teachers
Yamapi in DZ
Nao-boo, Okuno ("the twin") and Kobayashi (who wants to become Todai's "idol")
The teachers, Sakuragi and Ino
x-posted to my journal.
Other stuff I've recently watched have included episodes 9 and 10 of Proposal Daisakusen and a rewatch of Mars. Comments about Mars can be found here and here.