Abunai Houkago ~ あぶない放課後
This is the best picture I could get from Google to show how old the show is. While everybody's raving/bitching (depends on which blog you read) on Lucky Seven (I need sub for this one, don't think will do justice if I just review it without further details on the story itself and I also need episode 2), I'm taking Doraemon's time machine to go back in time when Nino's still a Junior and Arashi did not exist yet. If I'm reading from Nino's filmography from Dramawiki, it looks like this drama is his first leading drama aka his starting point, and I have this in my stash since quite some time ago. So, is this old piece of work any good? Worth your time? Let's take a look.
The meaning of the title has nothing to do with the story. My impression is that they use the title because it sounds cool, absolutely have no idea the corellation between the title and the story. We have a genius student named Katsuyuki Natsuki who had a crush with Kyoko-chan but still didn't have the courage to confess his feelings. Meanwhile, at his home, his mom remarry without his knowledge and now he's forced to live with his new dad and brother, and had his privacy being constantly invaded. His step brother, Haru, is a total opposite of Katsuyuki. He's an outspoken, energetic and even mischievous compared to always try to act cool but often end up misunderstood Katsuyuki. So will Katsuyuki confess by the end of the drama? Or there's a change of event in the middle?
First of all, we need to remind ourselves that this drama was aired wayyy back in the late 90s era (not even 2000 yet), and the main leads were Juniors aka no Kanjani, no Arashi, and also why they needed V6 to do the OST (I love 'Believe Your Smile', been humming them, singing them in Karaoke since it's released, but nope, I have no clue that it's an OST until now *not a very on mode fan obviously*). Having said that, it's quite obvious that you'll feel the conversation script is rather choppy and quite incoherent sometimes especially if it's just dialogue between the kids, and off course Juniors acting skill are still at Junior level as well. For those of you who watch Shounen Club, Johnny's World, whatever program they have, you'll know what I mean. So, to me, all these aspects are quite amuzing to watch and find myself laugh for no apparent reason aka the scene was not that funny but I laughed because of those choppy dialogues and the kids are acted awkwardly and staggered along the way (not sure it's intended, but it sure was funny to the point of cute).
For a Junior drama, I find that the characters are colorful (again, do ignore the acting in this drama, if you focus in that, granted you'll drop this drama, hands down). Katsuyuki is supposedly a cool kid, but in the end, he's the brattiest of them all. He whines, yells, grumbles, nags, and yells somemore, to basically everybody in the drama. His imagination is fantastically amuzing, as well as his dreams, and oh, he talks in his dream too. Haru, though mischievous, is a more cool headed kid, in some aspect more mature than Katsuyuki, but he often blabs too much, which I guess it's in his character because he just wants to make his points accross, whereas Katsuyuki will just nag it out and nobody gets his actual intention aka the effect is worse LOL. Then we have the love interest, Kyoko-chan. Though I find that her character along with the drama is losing her own stand and just ends up being swayed around and just be there as Katsuyuki's love interest, but the drama somehow needs her because Katsuyuki's actions are basically reactions to Kyoko-chan's remarks/pouts/stomping, etc, and it's very amuzing. I do love the dad's character. He's a hippie novelist turns house dad and he definitely can handle the bratty Katsuyuki and response so cooly to all those bratty yelling and remarks (heck, if my own kid (if I have any in the future) talks like that to me, I'll definitely smack him upside down).
Off we go to the storyline, well, it's a very extremely light drama with no requirement to think at all since the plot of each episode is so obvious, and each case is solved within each episode. Thankfully, this drama is not playing out the kids playing detective plot, instead, the kids just happened to be involved and just running around try to solve their highschool adolescense drama, not some criminal case ala detective conan. Their so called cases ranging from fake fortune teller framing and blackmailing female students (you know how those high school girls and the fortune telling stuff from shoujo manga, yeah, it's exactly like that), teenage pregnancy (who's the pregnant girl?), female students are dieting and their reasons, to test paper thiefs, definitely no murder. But I do find 1 annoying point that keeps on repeating episode after episode, the extra female students. Katsuyuki is bratty but his arguments makes a total sense, he's just stating out the reality oh so blatantly, and those female students are most of the time living in their own denial and makes Katsuyuki feels guilty for talking too much, and me: *rolling the eyes, and pat Katsuyuki*.
Fangirling wise, oh the chibis are so cute! Chibi bratty Nino is cute (though his face clearly DOESN'T change much since then, oh the envy!)! And here we can see the Neen bratty character that we all know from the current Arashi variety shows acted out in chibi form. Chibi naughty Subaru is cute! I think that's enough for new fangirls to watch this old drama until the end.
So, if you have way too much time, nothing to watch because you're bored with the current drama selection, in the midst of waiting for the new episodes of the latest drama installment, or you'd like to watch something extremely light at heart and brain with some funny and cute moments to go awww, you can consider this drama.