Latest view was from this drama which aired from January to March of this year, School!! In this drama Eguchi plays Seiichiro Naruse who was a 42 year old tunnel construction worker who was offered the principals job at his old elementary school by his old principal despite having no experience in the education field.
Accepting the position, Seiichiro also moves in with his old principal Takeichi(Kishibe) and his grandaughter (Kitano) who is also a first year teacher at the Shingu Elementary School. It is a very small school with only one class each of 4th, 5th and 6th graders. Seiichiro was not very well accepted at first by most of the staff, one reason was him not coming from a teaching background and another being at trying to implement new ways of running a school, all of the staff already had ideas on what ways the school should be run and were not very receptive of any changes, but as the series wore on they slowly changed their minds and at the end were his biggest supporters.
I've seen many school dramas and this was one of the better ones, Dragon Zakura and Nobuta wo Produce both top it but they were High School shows, this is the first elementary school drama I've seen. Couple of reasons why it was so good was lack of fluffiness in it, sure there was some and most situations ended with a positive resolution but they were done in a classy way, they were always believable thanks to good scripts and some fine acting. Another reason was the pacing, never dragged, even most of the better dramas have slowdowns at some point but School!! didn't, perhaps having only 9 episodes had something to do with it but the first and last episodes were quite long so in total running time they equaled 11 episodes.
And one other reason for what made the show such an enjoyable watch was the cast, it being a small school there weren't many teachers so the cast itself was a bit smaller than most dramas which let all the characters have their own storylines and get to know them better and to see how they changed their views on the education process.
Not a huge fan of Eguchi, sometimes he can be a bit overbearing but he wasn't so much in this drama, he did do a solid performance, while saying I'm not a big fan of his have to admit every drama he's been in has been a good watch such as Triangle and Namida wo Fuite. Kii(e) Kitano also was quite good in this, much bigger role than what would have been expected, her and Eguchi worked well together as they shared so many scenes with her usually being dragged along with Eguchi as he tried to save or help a student out.
Rest of the cast was good too, Nishijima played a stern, unsmiling teacher, he plays that part in so many of his dramas/movies, he's good at it but would like to see more variety in the way he acts. Tsukamoto also did well as a teacher, he usually always does a solid job, here he plays a teacher who tries so hard but gets taken advantage of by his students which was a big storyline for the first half of the show. Also most episodes featured one or more of the students in a storyline, whether it was because of them bullying, their home life, etc, they all did well though not a standout job by any of them but good enough considering their ages.
I'd rate this about an 8.8/10, nothing new or original but good storylines and solid acting may not make it a must watch but one most drama fans should enjoy, easy enough to find at any J-drama site. Said it's not a must watch but would be if you're an Eguchi or Kitano fan, speaking of her check out the next post for many, many shots of her from the show.
Yosuke Eguchi as Seiichiro Naruse
Kii(e) Kitano as Kanako Takeichi
Hidetoshi Nishijima as Iori Kirihara
Takashi Tsukamoto as Hitoshi Ohashi
Miwako Ichikawa as Yukie Okamoto
Keiko Horiuchi as Yuriko Yoshimura
Ittoku Kishibe as Mikihiro Takeichi
Broadcast period: January 16th to March 20th, 2011, ran on Fuji-TV with an average rating of 9.2%.
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