Air Dates: January 6th to March 10, 2019 Sundays at 10:30 pm on NTV
Average rating: 11.5%
Director: Naoko Komuro and Yuma Suzuki Writer: Shogo Muto
Also goes by the title of 'Mr Hiiragi's Homeroom'
Main Cast:
Masaki Suda as Ibuki Hiiragi.... the slightly warped homeroom teacher
The Students, thirty in all so just listing a few of them
Mei Nagano as Sakura Kayano.... homeroom class president
Moka Kamishiraishi as Reina Kageyama.... committed suicide in October
Rona Kawaei as Kaho Usumi
Haruka Fukuhara as Suzune Minakoshi
Mio Imada as Yuzuki Suwa
Ryota Katayose as Hayato Kai
Jin Suzuki as Kaito Satomi
Tsuyoshi Furukawa as Ken Sunaga
Kaito Mifune as Ren Nakao.... Hiiragi's first victim
The rest:
Kippei Shiina as Makoto Gunji.... detective who is leading the case
Yoshihiko Hosoda as Ryoichi Miyagi.... Gunji's partner
Kohei Otomo as Toru Igarashi.... superior of the two above detectives
Bengal as Koichi Ichimura.... principal of Kaio high school
Akane Hotte as Mizuki Morisaki.... teacher who had a crush on Hiiragi
Seiichi Tanabe as Yamato Takechi... annoying teacher who is also an author
Kenichi Yajima as Takahiko Sagara
Whew, this may be the biggest cast ever for a regular drama as there's twenty more students and a few other teachers. There's no promo videos for each episode but will have something different at the top of all the posts. The show begins on the date of March 1st and by what was told to us in the first episode the events take place until March 10th, the day the students were supposed to graduate....
Those above two screenshots were from the first minute of the show but it's actually from the last minute(?) of the final episode, what took place for him to fall off the school's roof? That person we see is named Hiiragi, he's an art teacher at the Kaio high school and also presides over the homeroom of the third year Grade A class. He's held that position since October of the previous year, the former teacher had a mild breakdown which forced her to leave and we'll soon be finding out the incident which led to the breakdown was anything but mild.
The story mainly revolves around Hiiragi and his class though there are some minor characters you'll see enough in the many screenshots. Hiiragi is in the middle, on the left is the obnoxious teacher Takechi. He's written a book which hasn't been that successful though he now feels as he's god's gift to the world and most teachers go out of their way to avoid him. The woman in the screenshot is another teacher who is Mizuki, she has such a crush on Hiiragi but always gets turned down by him when she asks him out. There are a few other characters who we'll meet as time goes on but over 90% of the time the story deals with Hiiragi and his class of 29 students.
As mentioned in the beginning the date is March 1st, on the 10th the seniors in Hiiragi's class and the other seniors from Kaio high school will be graduating.... that is, the ones who are still alive! Before that above announcement we see a bit of Hiiragi though zero about his much older past. There are many flashbacks in this series and one we saw was of him receiving a delivery of boxes. Not sure if many students of the school respect him for as he was pushing the cart down the hallway two students ran by and kicked the boxes to the ground.
In school Hiiragi is known as 'Bookie', hasn't been said why but it could be because the students think of him as a bookworm. In the above middle pic you can see what was in the boxes, they were miniature robots which gave out the warning 'Invaders found! Invaders found!'. For now we don't know what Hiiragi needed them for but that's another thing we'll soon find out but for now the peaceful lives of his classroom students is about to come to a unexpected end with his announcement.
'Hostages?' the students were thinking, was it some sort of joke? That statement brought a mild uproar to the homeroom but most felt it was some sort of gag that Hiiragi was pulling on them until they attempted to leave the room. They tried but were unsuccessful as he had installed special locks on the doors, only Hiiragi could open the doors via his special watch which held a few other features to the dismay of the students.
'Okay' the class murmured, 'we're locked in but why are you doing this to us and when can we leave?'. Hiiragi doesn't go into details yet but says all the students will be his hostages until they can solve a mystery, one that he was about to explain when he was rudely interrupted. A few of the male students were furious over this 'gag' and attempted to attack their teacher to show him whose boss. Hiiragi showed his students that he and only him alone is the boss as he sent four of the students sprawling in a matter of seconds.
As you can see above Hiiragi says though he looks like an average weakling he's anything but one and through the first two episodes his students learn that the hard way. Hiiragi quickly realized the students weren't going to believe his story nor follow his instructions so he devised a way to get them to pay attention to him fully along with giving him and his class the privacy Hiiragi desires. After that minor scuffle with the male students Hiiragi showed the students his watch again, watch what magical things this instrument can do he bragged as he pressed a button. With that there were some loud explosions that rocked the school building, none of the other students or teachers knew what was going on as they raced to safety.
The rest of the school was able to flee the building safely, that is except for Hiiragi's class who were trapped inside. He had placed the bombs in strategic places throughout the building, some of the bombs were in the corridor outside of the homeroom. Their explosions blocked all of the hallways and for now it appears the students are truly trapped in their classroom save for a nearby bathroom and the art room where Hiiragi usually teaches.
All of the other the other students are safe outside the school but for a while no one noticed that Hiiragi's class hadn't escaped. Surprisingly it seemed it took the other teachers and principal about an hour to realize Hiiragi's class hadn't fled the building, during that time we finally start learning why he's gone off the deep end and the reasons for him holding his class hostage.
Now that a bit of order has settled in the classroom it's time for the students to find out why they're being held hostage by Hiiragi. There are currently 29 students in the homeroom but up until the previous October there had been thirty. The reason the class size dropped by one was because the 30th student, Reina Kageyama, had killed herself jumping off the school's roof. WHY? is what Hiiragi angrily wants to know, Reina wasn't the most popular student though she was an excellent swimmer who had won a national swimming tournament.
One thing I forgot to mention has to deal with the second screenshot from the bottom. Besides having bombs planted all around Kaio high school Hiiragi had also replaced the homeroom's windows. How it was undiscovered until now is a mystery but the windows are shatter proof plus you can only see outside, it's a mirror to anyone looking in. The windows are locked too and the only way to open them is by the special watch Hiiragi always wears.
Back to the question that Hiiragi posed to the class, why did Reina Kageyama jump off the school's roof to her death?'. Not sure what time it is but why don't we presume it's about ten in the morning. Hiiragi has given the class a deadline of 8:00 pm, at that time he wants the class to tell him why Reina committed suicide. Not all of the students but just one has to give the answer, that burden fell to the class rep Sakura who also happened to be Reina's best friend or it appeared that way at first.
If there's no answer or if it's an unacceptable one Hiiragi will be giving the class a penalty or actually one person will be receiving it. That penalty will be that one student of the 29 will have to die, that left the class gasping but there's no way Hiiragi would kill one of them.... or was there? The students have ten hours to think about that but more importantly to find out the true answer of why Reina killed herself, meanwhile Hiiragi's class has finally been discovered missing and the police had been called but the media were on the scene first.
Coming close to the end of part one of the recap. Took the amazing amount of 134 screenshots which is a record for me, this post will go up to #66 with the next post having the other 68 along with what happened during that time span, should be a much shorter post as the intro for the show is done. Think Segayama is a fictional name, looked it up but found nothing under the name.
The reason the police were notified was because of a phone call Hiiragi made to the teacher Takechi. Hiiragi told him he was holding the students hostage and there was no way anyone could break in. Needless to say the whole school staff were baffled about what was going on but also a bit frightened for the students. The leader of the case for the police is detective Gunji, he's in the bottom screenshot on the left. he's played by Kippei Shiina who happens to be one of my all time fave actors. For now there's zero the police can do except to wait for Hiiragi to contact them.
But while the crowd of police and teachers were milling about outside the building Hiiragi decided to show everyone he wasn't fooling around. Of course he wasn't as he had already set off a few bombs but to show them he can set one off at anytime there was another explosion but not in the school but at a shed not far from the group. Gunji hasn't even talked with Hiiragi yet but is furious with the madman and vows to destroy the teacher as part one of the recap comes to it's end.
What a breathtaking start to this drama, this first episode lasted 71 minutes and think I left off this one at the forty minute mark. Just viewed the second show and the pace is nonstop, can easily see this being my #1 drama of the year. Though the series aired at a later time on Sunday night the ratings were quite impressive and bet for many others it was also their top drama of the year. As mentioned part two of this recap is the next post.
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