Quick Review #65: Sensei wo kesu houteishiki - Autumn 2020

Title: Sensei wo kesu houteishiki / 先生を消す方程式

Rating: 3 / 10

Recommended for: 

Those who are fans of Suzuki Osamu's style of writing, are fine with far-fetched and overly dramatic stories OR want to see very different performances from Tanaka Kei and Yamada Yuuki

POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!

Liked:

- The first three episodes of this drama were quite interesting in the sense that it was not a very typical school drama. While there were some traits in Yoshitsune (Tanaka) which resembled other unconventional teachers in various school dramas, his behaviour stood out for its creepiness and hinted at a grand back story to match the suspense built up. The drama was also easy to watch as each episode lasted less than half of a typical episode's airtime and there were only 8 episodes - that amounted to about 4 full episodes of 45 mins. If you are short on time and want something which isn't too "serious", this can be an interesting pick for you.

- The drama was like an arena for the cast to fight it out in terms of pushing the craziness of their characters to the max. Tanaka was clearly the star in the first arc while Yamada took centrestage in the second arc. As such, if you are fans of them, I think that you would be in for a treat as you watch them "unleash their madness" on screen which is quite unlike what you would have seen from them thus far.

I've not watched a lot of Takahashi Fumiya's works but his acting this time was also very different and stood out among the main student characters in this drama. This is still worth checking out even if you aren't a fan or know much about him.

Disliked: 

- Prior to watching this drama, I was unaware of the scriptwriter for this story. That was probably why I didn't associate this with Suzuki Osamu at all when I watched the first three episodes of this drama. If you have watched his dramas especially those in recent years made by TV Asahi, you would get the drift and be able to manage expectations accordingly.

To be honest, the beginning of the drama did start pretty promisingly as I noted above. However, things simply went haywire from the second arc and I couldn't help but think that if it had been bad from start to end, I would not be so disappointed. 

The main problem was, the drama lost its direction and tried to incorporate a little of everything to the extent that it was neither a school drama, suspense story or horror flick. The dead coming back to life as zombies due to a lightning strike which always hit precisely where it should? A teacher being able to manipulate the students into becoming bullies so easily while being undetected by the school management and colleagues? Perhaps there were some pieces of the story which were not presented or explained explicitly so it felt like there were many parts which couldn't be explained properly or make much sense. As such, this further aggravated the "nonsense" factor of this drama to the point that unless you are willing to close one eye or even both eyes, it would be hard not to roll eyes at the ludicrous plot. This was such a pity because the two lead actors really went all out but I wonder if they felt that their efforts were in vain and let down by this story.