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 more teachers. 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....
No need to rehash anything as I hope if you're reading this you viewed the above one. Hiiragi doesn't spend all of this time in classroom, actually he was absent from it for many hours and you can see the pupils taking about him a bit. Hiiragi did get transferred to be their homeroom teacher shortly after Reina committed suicide, was her death the reason he became their teacher? It may not be important but then again it could be as the students need to solve the question Hiiragi gave them to answer by 8:00 pm, 'why did Reina jump from the school's roof the her death?'.
A correct answer is needed for if it's the wrong one Hiiragi has vowed to his class that he will kill one of them, can he really be serious the students thought? As the students were by themselves in the classroom we learned a lot about Reina through some flashbacks that were thought in the heads of her two and only friends, Kaho and Sakura. Kaho had been Reina's friend first but for some unknown reason to Kaho Reina started to ignore her and began to hang out with Sakura.
There will be more about the relationships in the next episode and hope I don't add in what happened in episode two. Seems that Sakura and Reina hit off instantly which made Kaho quite jealous. But the more Sakura thought about she began to wonder were the two really that close? Seems through the flashbacks they really weren't and Reina had admitted the fact one day to Hiiragi. He also had taken a liking to Reina but mainly because he felt her loneliness and thought she was such an intelligent girl, he's also a talented painter and began doing a portrait for her.
The impression I got from watching the flashback scenes with Reina wasn't that Sakura was her friend but instead was in love with her! Sakura was into photography and often took pictures of Reina, all kinds of pics but mainly at her swimming meets where she usually won. One day Sakura thought she was alone in their homeroom and had spread all of Reina pictures out on her desk when who should appear in front of her but Reina, Needless to say Sakura face turned a hundred shades of red but Reina laughed it off, a few seconds after that is when Reina asked her to be her friend.
Reina's suicide had happened in October, no exact date was given. A few days before the tragedy Sakura had received a short note from her which is that bottom screenshot. In the note Reina told Sakura they could no longer be friends but gave no explanation for the breakup and Sakura never went up to her to ask the reasons. But during the long break when the students were thinking of why Reina killed herself Sakura took a stroll to the art room.
That's where Hiiragi mainly hangs out, he has some food there plus it's where he's been communicating off and on with the outside world. Sakura had confessed to receiving the short letter from Reina to Hiiragi who nodded silently. He didn't tell Sakura his thoughts at the time but was hoping she could try figuring out if the letter was actually a cry of help from Reina and if Sakura's non response was one of the reasons for her death.
As you can see in the second screenshot above the police weren't sitting around twittling their thumbs. A small SWAT team of four men had entered the school but with no plans on what to do, more on them later as they moved slower than a snail. It's getting close to 8:00 pm and Hiiragi has come back to the homeroom to see what answer the students have come up with for Reina's death. Sakura had been chosen as the person to give an answer and for now the class didn't have a good reason for her death.
But they began to talk about her more earnestly with Hiiragi in the room but it ended up with Sakura doing most of the talking. She admitted to the class what she had told Hiiragi, that a few days before her death Reina had given Sakura a note saying they were no longer friends. While Sakura was mumbling about the letter some students jumped up and said: 'What about the doping scandal?'. Seems as though Reina had been caught using performance enhancing drugs before her national meet, a race that she won but the rumors about Reina's doping quickly spread.
There will be much, much more about this doping scandal in the next episode but to Sakura it wasn't the main reason Reina killed herself. Of course she blamed herself for not being a good enough friend to Reina, she didn't put in that exact content but that was the answer she gave Hiiragi and the rest of the class seemed to agree. 'WRONG ANSWER' was Hiiragi's response to Sakura though he did applaud her for being an upright person with trying to pin the blame on herself.
With that incorrect answer to why did Reina kill herself does that mean Sakura will be the student who has to die? Not to Hiiragi who told the class he hasn't decided who should be his first victim. The pressure was just too much for the students who just couldn't stand around doing nothing, in a rage four of the male students attempted to jump on Hiiragi and pummel him. It's not the first time an incident like that will happen but the students should have thought before they leapt.
Hiiragi still has his watch on his wrist, the instrument that can detonate the bombs hidden about the school and he set one off when they students crept closer to him. This bomb wasn't in a different section of the school but it was a smaller one in the classroom's ceiling. It didn't cause much damage but it scared the students enough to back off and obey Hiiragi's instructions.
Plus that explosion sent a threat to the police, the SWAT team that had crept into the school finally had covered some ground. Though they weren't too close to the classroom they were close enough and Hiiragi knew about their presence because of the toy robots he had set up. They were programmed to start yelling out the warning 'Intruders Found' when others were nearby. The SWAT team had been close enough to make the robots begin their warning which was another reason Hiiragi had set off the bomb and soon the team was about to back off completely.
We've made it to the final segment which shouldn't be too long as we're in the final five minutes of this first episode. With the incorrect answer that means a student must die and how will Hiiragi choose his fist victim? He himself doesn't know but kept that fact to himself and decided to see how things played out. Lucky for him and unlucky for a student the decision was made rather easily. One of the boys, who was Ren, had finally hit his boiling point with this 'game' and attempted to rush Hiiragi with a knife he had hidden.
These students may not be the brightest as it takes them so long to learn things. The major one is that for now there's no way any of them can defeat Hiiragi in a one on one battle. Ren tried with his knife but was quickly thrown to the ground, with that maneuver Hiiragi was able to grab the knife away from Ren and held it inches away from him, should he or shouldn't he make Ren his first victim? Hiiragi didn't think too hard on that decision as he wound up and thrust the knife deep into Ren or at least it appeared that way.
With the other 28 students staring on in horror Ren lay there with a knife in his chest but the curious thing was that there was very little blood. The mystery on that continued on into the next episode. Ren's secret girlfriend Suzune ran up to save him but with no success. Now the students realize Hiiragi isn't playing games with them as it truly is a survival match which has reminded me a bit of the 'Battle Royale' movie and mangas.
Shortly after the stabbing Hiiragi placed a call to the police, he didn't talk but instead let them listen to the horrific scene in the classroom. Now the police also knew Hiiragi wasn't bluffing and the chief called the SWAT team off for now. The show ended with Hiiragi making another call to the police and it seemed to them that Hiiragi was holding his class for ransom. He wants every user of the 'Mind Voyage' site to donate 100 yen to a special fund. It may not seem like a lot but there are fifty million users and their donations would total 5 billion yen, was this the reason Hiiragi is holding his class hostage? That's unknown and remained the way through the second episode as this recap comes to it's close which was by far the longest one I've ever written.
Whew, definitely a long recap and thanks to anyone who made it through both of them. There really was no way to make it shorter as so many things happen and there was barely a second to catch your breath. Have viewed the second episode which was a normal length one at 46 minutes, that's the post below this one. It was another show that left you gasping as the intensity level actually increases and what a drama this could turn out to be.
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