ehh ^o^'' I think I perfer the Jdrama better...I guess~~ but I had heard the animation of gokusen is well poorly done v.v''
Gokusen tv Review
Story & Characters
Yamaguchi Kumiko appeared to be a typical 20-something woman fresh out of college - active, eager, and cheerful. Her
goal was to become an amazing high school teacher, a dream encouraged by her late parents. However, when she gets
dropped into an all-male high school full of bullies, truants, troublemakers, and other rejects from the school system,
no one thinks she could stand a chance.
Yamaguchi Kumiko has a secret she'd do anything to keep hidden. She is, in fact, heiress to the Oedo group, the
local powerful yakuza, and within that bubbly exterior lies a headstrong woman who knows how to get her way. Knowledge
of her true identify could, if leaked to the wrong persons, be disasterous to her teaching career.
But how else is she supposed to get her class to (gasp!) behave?
Gokusen is a high school comedy that details the lives of Yankumi (as her students affectionately call her) and her
precarious balancing act between being a teacher and being the heiress to a yakuza group. Many people point to the
parallels between Gokusen and another high school comedy, GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka). However, as I've only seen
one episode of GTO I can't corroborate on that. However, Gokusen enjoys putting Yankumi in outrageous sitautions to
see how she'll come out on top, ranging from dealing with upperclassmen who are bullying her students to getting
her students to actually come to class. The plot thickens when one particularly clever student (Sawada Shin) starts to
realize there's something more to Yankumi than meets the eye, and starts to put the pieces together. Not to mention
Kumiko's hopeless crush on one of local police, who DEFINATELY cannot find out who she really is...
Rating:
Art
The art is, frankly, rather ugly. The anime designs are based off of the manga instead of the J-drama (yes, the live-action drama came before the anime!) and are rather... unflattering. A lot of characters including Yankumi herself have fat lips, and the style certainly doesn't fit the "large eyes small mouth" syndrome. Actually, it makes the characters a little more realistic, and puts them just a little more firmly in reality. There are no stunningly beautiful characters (although a lot of the high school boys have the hots for the only other female teacher in the school) but in a school full of almost-drop-outs, you really wouldn't expect there to be. The backgrounds are rather unremarkable. The members of the Yakuza are a bunch of older toughs, making this a shoujo show with no bishounen. (Gasp!) Also, it takes place at a school, and there's only so many ways to make a school, and so like most other high school shows this follows the same formula. Perhaps the most amusing art is in the ending sequence, which mimics the traditional woodblock print (ukiyo-e) style. Additionally, the faces characters make in various situations (of surprise, anger, etc) are quite amusing.
Rating:
Sound
The music isn't all that interesting either. Actually, I can't really think of any particular piece of background music right now, so it doesn't stand out, which is fine since this show is about character interactions which shouldn't require a lot of forboding or mood musics. The opening song is a rockish, fast-paced song that's light-hearted and matches the opening sequence which pretty much involves everybody running around a lot. The ending is highly amusing as in order to match the traditional ukiyo-e art style sequence, it features an equally traditional enka style song. I don't know about you, but all enka sounds alike to me (except whether it's a guy or a gal singing), and this song is no different. However, it's rather fitting as yakuza tend to be highly traditional, and frankly it's a nice change from the typical pop songs you'd expect to hear from a show as this. The voices are solid, but I can't think of any really stellar performances. Perhaps my favorite role is Kenichi Suzumura as Sawada Shin (he also plays Ayumu Narumi in Spiral as well as Shiki Tohno in Tsukihime and Kudou Shin in Macross Zero) and Risa Hayamizu does a good job switching from Yankumi's "schoolteacher" voice (spunky and rather ditzy) and her "yakuza" voice (dead serious in a "I'm gonna kick yer butt" way).
Rating:
Presentation
Gokusen turned out to be a very enjoyable show for me. Initially I was rather turned off by the opening animation (which
seems utterly pointless) and the art (which I mentioned as being rather ugly,) although the ending had me in hysterics
because of the mix of enka and ukiyo-e. However, it was the story and character interactions, and the process of
learning more about each character's history, that pulled me in and kept me watching to the end of what felt to be
a very short 13 episodes. Most of the show is spent in short (2-3 episode) mini-story arcs, and it's always amusing
to see how Yankumi will get out of whatever situation she gets thrown into. Her lapses into Yakuza slang are fun because
in the next moment she'll turn back to her ditzy personality and try to shake it off. The show is moderately
rewatchable because of the shortness of the series and the pacing is pretty quick, without too many fillers. If you like
high-school hijinx, this is a good show to watch, and it even has a little bit of action in the form of numerous school
(and yakuza) fights. Otherwise, the focus on character interaction is what I go for, and this show dishes out in
heaps.
One final note: This show is being released in North America as "The Gokusen" and is due out in the near
future. The cover makes it seem like they're making this show a parody of "The Godfather".
Rating:
Final Verdict
6.6667 (above average)
Reviewed by Tama-Neko, Oct 17, 2004
Comments
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broken-dreamz Mar 26, 2005
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nainoi Sep 27, 2009
Thank you for review.
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