Kamen Teacher first episode impressions

Alright, I am going to see about trying to catch up with my drama viewing finally. Hopefully I can at least do so with the late night NTV dramas first.

I have to say I am glad that this was an hour long episode. I was not very impressed with the first half of it and was not sure if I was going to like watching this until the second half kicked in. Most of it stemming from the fact that things were presented so black and white during that first half while the second went past that and started to highlight all the gray that the story should be exploring to keep it interesting.

Araki Goto (Fujigaya Taisuke) is a character who on the surface is rather straight forward and fits the shounen hero trope well. But thankfully he is more than that as we see that he is someone carrying guilt over his past actions as a Kamen Teacher as well as trying to find another way to deal with the mission he has been given. The fact that he is just so earnest in everything is endearing and I am cheering for him.

The students that it looks like that are going to be the main focus belong to a group called the M4, made up of Shishimaru (Kishi Yuta), Kotaro (Maeda Goki), Ryota (Yanagi Shuntaro) and Bon (Kyomoto Taiga), and then the one positioned above them, Takehara Kinzo (Kikuchi Fuma). Outside of Bon, who got some focus this episode there is not much to say about the rest as they just fill the usual yankee stereo-types for a school drama. But if Bon is anything to go by then they will break out of that and become much more interesting characters as they all get their turns facing the Kamen Teacher.

As I have already mentioned Bon gets the focus in the second half of the episode where we learn about why he became who he was and refused to believe in friendship. Kyomoto plays the role well and I do hope the character does not just get pushed to the side as the series goes on.

We also get Takada Sho playing the character pivotal to Bon's story, Imai Satoshi, and it is always nice to see him in something. Especially as he does seem to be the next Johnny's on the actor-track as he does not seem to be doing anything else these days.

There is not much to say about the love interest of the series, Ichimura Miki (Oomasa Aya), as she seems to mainly be there to give Araki the information he needs to understand what is going on with the school. There does seem to be some hope for her, in the fact that we at least get the feeling that she is someone who would like to be more like Araki with the amount of hope he has for his students, but had given up. Hopefully that gets to be explored more and she gets to become an actual character and not just a convenient plot device.


So basically the second half of the episode saved the series for me so far. I have my hopes returned that this is going to be a good watch and eagerly await to get into the rest of the series. Which I am going to go do right now because I do also need to make sure I can catch up with my drama viewing as I have the means and the time now.