Gomen ne, Seishun | Mid Season Thoughts

Its been a while since I’ve watched a Kudo Kankurou drama. Unubore Deka being the last one, just about four years ago. There’s something that keeps me coming back to his works. They have a quality to them that’s uniquely “Kankurou”. Surreal and bizarre humor, endless pop culture puns, and odd ball characters are staples in his dramas and they help make his work stand out above the typical fair of Japanese prime time television.

Gomen ne Seishun, or Regret from my School Days (officially in English), is his latest work after the mega success of the NHK Asadora, Amachan. TBS hailed it as a returning of hero after years of absence. Here, after taking a country by storm with the story of a sea urchin harvester, Kankurou had returned to prime time television with a story about two unlikely teachers on opposite sides of the fence unwillingly coming to work together. The lead? Kanjani8’s Nishikido Ryo. The cast? Star studded. The production value? Through the roof.

TBS has basically given Kankurou carte blanche on this project and it shows. From writing the theme song, to penning the script, and directing the episodes… Gomen ne Seishun is clearly every bit of his vision from planning to execution. But is it as good as his other works? Can he really top the, now new, cult classic, Amachan?

I don’t know. While enjoyable, Gomen ne seems to take forever to watch. Every episode seems more like an introduction episode to the characters rather than any actual conflict with resolution. Each episode is told through the perspective of statue of the Buddhist goddess, Kannon, which is currently possessed by the spirit of Hara Heisuke’s, played by Nishikido, mother. But the narration sometimes gives off this feeling as if the story is still trying to get its feet off the ground rather than actually tell the story.

That aside, the acting is pretty good. Kankurou is good at pulling the most out of his characters — they’re over the top, but they’re not animated. They’re dramatic, but they’re not melodramatic. You can watch these characters be placed in these weird situations and their reactions still, in some way, still be within a realm of reality that is both enjoyable and funny. The camp factor is never really a factor in this drama. Between the eccentric students of, the now newly named, Seishun High School, and the equally bizarre teachers that run the school(s), nothing seems to be driven over the too over the top to not make you reel back and cringe.

Nishikido, as of late, had been coasting through a lot of his dramas and movies. Lately it seemed that it was more of Nishikido on screen rather than the character he was playing. But this time we can see Nishikido finally putting something behind his character. Heisuke is a bumbling fool, quick to cry and tends to not always say the right thing at the right time, but yet level headed to control the situation. From a family of lecherous men, he seems the be the only level headed member to keep some decency to the family name. It’s sort of fun watching Nishikido make so many weird faces, scream, yell, whine, and run around trying to repent for something he did 14 years prior. I don’t necessarily see Nishikido Ryo when I watch Gomen ne and that’s a good thing.

But, more so than Nishikido, I absolutely love Mitsushima Hikari in her role as the aggressive, off the handle, English teacher by the name of Hachiya Risa. You can see that she loves this character and it fits her so perfectly. Between her crazy conservative outfits adorned with keys, rosaries, and chains, she always seems like she has sadistic pleasure over keeping her students in check by screaming and threatening to kick their asses if they stand out of line. While Nishikido’s Heisuke can get a few chuckles out of me, I am in tears whenever Mitsushima’s Risa is in the height of her tsundere character.

Gomen ne seems to be Japan’s answer to America’s Wonder Years. There’s a lot of nostalgia about the good ol’ days of high school love and romance. Here, we have several characters undeniably tied to an incident that happened 14 years ago and when a chance to rectify those mistakes rears its head again, you can see the adults try to relive their youth through these kids. How can we move on from that terrible incident of 14 years ago and move towards a new and brighter future? How can we tactfully deal with the issue of young love and heart break? How can we apologize to our own youth? Gomen ne is less of a high school comedy romance and more of a social commentary on adults and their regrets spawning from their own days of young.

What if I hadn’t that… would things have turned out like this?

There’s so many stories going on in this drama that it could make following it hard. The overarching story isn’t so clear cut as your usual Japanese dramas. While we have Risa, now, madly in love with Heisuke… we still have the issue of Heisuke trying to find the courage to actually admit that he was the one that caused the fire and destroyed any attempts at a co-ed cultural festival. Then we also have the side story of Heisuke’s older brother, Ippei, having an affair with the school nurse, Donmai-sensei and the various in-and-out love stories of the students themselves. There’s also the storyline of the Principal trying to keep others from discovering his side job as the infamous host of the popular radio show, Gomen ne Seishun!, a popular call in show where he offers advice to teenagers calling in anonymously to apologize for their mistakes in love and other things.

My only advice would be to cut it out with the language lessons. It seems like a 90s sitcom, where the teacher gathers everyone at the end of the episode to talk about “Today’s Moral”. If we could shrink down the 15 minute lectures, Gomen ne could actually be extremely enjoyable. But until that happens, watching Seishun will become nothing more than a very tedious endurance test (episode times are not consistent, sometimes an episode going as long as an hour and ten minutes compared to the usual 45).

And that would be very unfortunate.