Cast:
Abe Hiroshi, Yamashita Tomohisa, Nagasawa Masami, Koike Teppei, Aragaki Yui, Nakao Akiyoshi, Saeko
Summary:
Dragon Zakura is a series which concentrated on school themed dramas. Main person here is Sakuragi Kenji(Abe Hiroshi), a former motorcycle gang (but a certain teacher kept insisting he's from a gangster) turned lawyer. He was called to a certain high school to answer the school's problem in bankruptcy, primarily caused by the head director's impulsive shopping habit. He then boldly claimed that he will produce five students who can get into Toudai (Tokyo University; One of Japan's top University). The thing is, the school is known to house the most stupid, idiotic and lazy students ever found in Japan. Most of the students have an average score of 36.
Rating: 9/10
Review:
I placed this series as the last one to watch since I knew that it's a story with common classroom settings, so I was expecting those from the types of Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO) or Gokusen but then I was really blown away by this series! It's funny, endearing, educational and outright silly! I love it!
The summary is quite simple when you first read about it but that's not really the case, especially the way they made the series so interesting that I can say it's a mixture of Gokusen and GTO. Gokusen in terms of having students eager to change and going to the extreme when it comes to change and GTO for the funny, hardcore antics Sakuragi attempt to help his students. He's definitely not as nice as Yankumi from Gokusen.
Let's concentrate first on the casts. I can positively say that Dragon Zakura had a set of powerful casting. They had Abe Hiroshi as the ever confident and witty lawyer named Sakuragi Kenji. The students were played byYamashita Tomohisa (JPop band: NEWS), Koike Teppei (JPop duo: WaT), Saeko and Nagasawa Masami. The cast are not newbie when it comes to drama series and some even garnered awards for films and drama. It's evident that each character was really into their parts and acted in a really realistic manner. Actually, each character have a complex chemistry/bond among them. It's unpredictable if it's love or hate. But friendship is eventually there.
As I mentioned before, I was expecting something like a group of uncontrollable students under a caring, loving teacher (Gokusen-like) but then, this series is quite an opposite of it. Rowdy students met their match in the persona of a sadistic-like mentor. It's a bit GTO-like since Kenji doesn't use nice words to address his students. Call your students "IDIOTS!" if you can. There's a time where he bribed a student to join his class and even extort money from the director. A bit ruthless since he never let the students stop their work even if they're tired but truth to be told, this style of his made them realize what they wanted in life and gave this drama a refreshing change. The conflict is the social bias of smart students against stupid ones but looking deeper into the series, it also shows the social injustice in modern Japan.
Teachers you ask? The types of teachers Kenji got to teach the students are definitely one-of-a-kind. One's an old Math demon who taught Kenji the ping-pong question and answer exercise; An Einstein looking Science teacher who used graphical illustration and cartoon drawings to portray Physics to the students; An English teacher who also owns a pub taught English in a fun manner through dancing and singing and other variety of fun ways; and a Literature teacher who uses manga (comics) to teach Literature to students.
Meet the teachers! From Left to Right: Literature teacher, Physics/Science teacher, English teacher, Math teacher
Other interesting stuffs? To those who are about to take heavy examinations such as an entrance or acceptance exams, listen well to their styles! There are various ways for you to learn and they even give various techniques to learn things the fun and interesting way. It also teaches viewers very effective time management techniques.
Another thing that I liked about the series is that they vividly depicted a certain situation in Japan where most students are aware of but doesn't take any part in changing it. The weak will be trampled by the strong. To overcome this, the series showed that one have to be intelligent and smart in order not to be deceived by the so-called strong ones. One line that Kenji said that left an impression in me is "If you don't like the rules, why don't you change them?" They really concentrated on the fact that studies are very important if you want to live in our society.
Dragon Zakura: A tale of frustration, discipline, goal setting, success, failure. You will be laughing hard, boiling mad, weep like there's no tomorrow and even think like the other cast of the series. Want a school drama series with a smart twist? Watch Dragon Zakura!
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