"3 Nen A Kumi: Ima kara Mina-san wa, Hitojichi Desu" drama, episode nine recap

 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 September

Rina 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. The show began 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(are?) supposed to graduate....

 Intense ending to the previous episode but the first ten minutes had nothing to do with that event. What had taken place was Gunji entering Kaio high school as he heard his new supervisor was preparing to send in the elite SIT squad to capture Hiiragi and free the 'hostage' students. That squad was preparing to raid the school and via security cameras the students were watching the action but couldn't warn their teacher. Hiiragi and Gunji had faced off with guns pointing at each other, neither wanted to pull the trigger though Hiiragi eventually did but just shot Gunji in the leg to injure him. The pair were grappling on the floor with Gunji having the upper hand which was mainly due to Hiiragi's illness(cancer) sapping his strength. But to his rescue came the Super Hero(!!) Garm Phoenix, that was where the show ended and will get to what happened soon.
 Above are some screenshots from the first ten or so minutes which took place three years in the future. The 29 classmates were getting together for their third reunion but sadly there was no Hiiragi who was deceased, we won't learn how that happened until the next recap. All of the graduates seem to be doing well, few are now couples while one pair got married and have a child on the way. Some are attending university while Suwa has reached her dreams of becoming a model and has just been featured in another gravure magazine which is sort of true in life as she's played by Mio.
 But the main attraction at the reunion was watching the documentary of Reina. During her senior year Hiroki had gone around filming Reina and her quest to become a champion swimmer. If you read the previous recaps you know how that turned out as she did become a champion but was falsely accused of doping. Falsely because the video of her doping was a fake but it eventually led to her death but the question is still how? At first everyone thought Reina had jumped from a roof but now no student nor the police are sure of that, that remains the same until the episode's end.

 We met the above person in the last episode but didn't know his name, found it out in this show and it's Tanaka. He plays super heroes on Sentai shows and had met Hiiragi filming them as he usually played bad villains to Tanaka's hero. The pair remained friends even after Hiiragi quit to become a teacher and he knew his old friend wouldn't be in such a situation unless there was a good reason which there was, Reina's death. Just as it appeared Gunji was about to arrest Hiiragi Garm Phoenix appeared on the scene to save his old mate. Gunji was in disbelief  but squared off against the super hero as he felt there was no chance a TV actor could defeat a seasoned detective.
 Gunji was 100% off the mark with that reasoning as Tanaka made short work of Gunji, as that was taking place Hiiragi came to his senses and with Tanaka's help handcuffed Gunji. Now there is a true hostage who is Gunji, Hiiragi had notified Police HQ of the event and with no choice the new director Honjo has ordered the SIT squad to stop the raid. Gunji was taken to a storage closet with no chance of escaping, he did meet the the student Karen who told the detective all of the students were behind Hiiragi and are almost at the point they would give up their lives for him.
 What also took place near the end of the previous episode was that the video of Takechi entering a building with Reina had been edited. At first it appeared it truly was Takechi in the video, he had already been found guilty of ordering the fake video of Reina doping. But a second edit showed that it wasn't Takechi in the video but instead the student's teacher Hiiragi(!), it was the female student Runa who had made the discovery. But upon further inspection of the video it was determined that the girl in the video wasn't Reina, who was this girl and was the only purpose behind the video to frame Takechi or at least get him to confess about the video?

 Not sure how it happened but Hiiragi's ally Sagara uploaded the video to the Mind Voice site, Hiiragi had once worked at his studio which was the one that produced Sentai shows. Sagara's daughter Fumika had also been the subject of a fake video ordered by Takechi, it ended her teaching career and since then she's been virtually home bound. The only thing I can think of is that Hiiragi had access to all of the school's laptops which is what Runa used to edit the video. If that was the case he sent it to Sagara, the pair did have an agreement that it would be uploaded but because of the circumstances Sagara had to do it before the scheduled time.
 The public is quite fickle, we learn that in the final episode which I just finished viewing five minutes ago. All of them wanted to burn Takechi like one would at a witch trial but now he's quickly become forgotten as Hiiragi is at the top of everyone's most hated list on the SNS. That was his goal but he wished he had more time but that's not to be as he has less than a day to finish his final 'lesson' and to explain to the world why he's done what he's done. For Hiiragi's final class lesson he told his faithful students everything and I mean everything, what his illness is, why he's held them hostage, about the fake video and a few other tidbits.
 A little over a year ago Hiiragi had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, knew he had cancer but the exact term wasn't used until the next show. Hiiragi had suffered with the disease many years prior but it was supposedly cured, somehow it returned and he doesn't have much longer to live. Hiiragi has told the class he knows who killed Reina and it wasn't Takechi, he did admit to filming the fake video to push Takechi into a corner to confess about creating the doping video. But as Hiiragi finally told the class who did the evil deed of killing Reina the video.... went silent(!), the students heard who the culprit was but not us viewers as they kept us in suspense.

 That second screenshot above was quite dramatic as Hiiragi quickly took a knife out of pocket, laid his hand on the blackboard and stabbed himself violently in that hand. Hiiragi's 'lesson' or goal has switched slightly during the second half of this episode, he still wants his students to find out the truth about Reina's death but also wants to teach them the difference of right and wrong in these modern times, beginning with the evil SNS and it's main site Mind Voice. Hiiragi does get a bit too preachy during this and the final episode talking about the evils of the internet but it's all to help his students who listen to his every word and really want to change for his sake. That stab wasn't too deep as Hiiragi seemed fine as he just wanted to prove his 'points' but there may have been a better way.
 Getting closer to the end, have really done a much better job at keeping these recaps at a manageable length. After a few other comments to his his students Hiiragi has announced his lessons for them are now finished, his wish more than anything else is that they'll heed his words of advice for the future. As we saw at their reunion in the beginning it seems as though they have.
 It may be Hiiragi's final lesson but he's not through with his plan as he still has to deal with the police plus Gunji is still his hostage. He had originally announced to the police that he'll reveal his findings to them at 8:00 am in the morning however it's still night. But Hiiragi's health is rapidly fading, almost had the feeling Hiiragi felt he wouldn't live much longer so he wanted to get his final plan in motion before the scheduled time. Hiiragi notified the new police director Honjo that he's going to bring his hostage to the school's roof immediately. He wants the world and police to listen intently to what he has to reveal to them.
 Final paragraph and all of these events take place in the last two minutes. Hiiragi has escorted Gunji to the school's roof, he's holding a machine gun which Hiiragi fires off to prove it's not fake. What happens next is anyone's guess and is continued in the next episode. Before Hiiragi could begin his speech a single rifle shot went off hitting Hiiragi in the chest  and putting him seemingly down for the count. We get a look at the crowd and it appeared Honjo didn't order the shooting, if not who fired the rifle and is Hiiragi down for good? The students are still trapped in the classroom, they watched the entire incident and are stunned to no end. As they watched the scene on the laptop Sakura strolled into the room not knowing what's happened, as the show came to it's conclusion the last words spoken by her was 'I killed her' referring to Reina....

 Love Hiiragi's smile in the second screenshot, he does look like a demented character. Was going to finish this recap first before viewing the final episode, wrote up about half of this and couldn't wait any longer. Don't think I've ever viewed a drama with so many twists in the plot, whatever you think may happen in the final show doesn't and what a wacky ending. That recap is the next post and do highly recommend viewing these screenshots to understand things a bit better.