Miss Marty

When I got this drama, I thought it was going to be a very straight forward "girl has crush on her teacher" style story. And I wanted to gaze upon the lovely Sanada Hiroyuki. Instead, it is a much deeper story and contains some rather "shocking" events. The theme song, the lead girl- Mayu's- downright STALKING of her teacher, and the cartoon CATS she keeps drawing irritated me at first. The English teacher-- my first exposure to rock star-actor Kyoumoto Masaki--is beautiful... but only on the outside it turns out. His character's storyline continues over into the 2003 version of this drama. If you've only seen that one, you've gotta see this one! I grew up in the USA, so I didn't have much prior knowledge of Japanese high schools. I learned a lot of culture from this. I confirmed with some Japanese friends that things really were much like that 10+ years ago in terms of how open (or closed) girls were about their emotions and bad things that happened to them. Essentially a sad story, and of course over the top (hey, it's a television drama, how realistic could it be and still entertain?), but "Koukou Kyoushi" has some memorable characters. If you're used to Sanada Hiroyuki playing an action hero, like I was, you'll be shocked to see what a wimp he can play too. This is a pre-cell phone era drama centered on the lives of two best friends at high school. Both have dark secrets in their lives, and both turn to teachers to help them. The first time I watched this series, I did it all in two marathon sessions, one night until I fell asleep, and then continued as soon as I woke up. It's very addictive. You'll really want to know what happens next.