mayoraasei | saki boku episode 1 (10.1%)

The full name of this is "先に生まれただけの僕" (Saki ni Umareta dake no Boku), which translates awkwardly into "I, who just happened to be born earlier". There is one Chinese website which has translated this title nicely: "先生而為師". The kanji for "sensei" is literally "born earlier", and in Japanese as well as in older Chinese expression, it is the honorific for teachers. "I am your sensei, hence your teacher" and "I am born earlier, hence your teacher", not quite the same as the original phrase but certainly captures the pun in it.

I consider myself pretty objective when it comes to Jdorama reviews even with my favourites (I rip into Kame's dramas every year without fail), so you can stop reading now if you were after a gushing review.

I had high hopes for this drama. On paper, it appears they put a lot of effort into the staff and cast. The script comes from the same guy who adapted the popular Galileo series, as well as a number of reasonably well-received series for KimuTaku in his heyday. Sakurai Sho is supported by 2 girls (Tabe Mikako and Aoi Yuu) who are both more respected for being actresses than being celebrities. The rest of the cast is rounded out by comedy veterans or up and coming names.

How do I put it? It's...unexciting, and I suppose that's characteristic of the director, who just came from Yutori desu ga, nani ka? - a series that's critically acclaimed but had a mediocre rating of about 8-9%. It doesn't have the hot-blooded ludicrous hallmark of the Hanzawa Naoki team, who has successfully turned what should have been a boring bank setting into riveting melodrama. After succeeding in translating that across into the police setting earlier in the year, the production team is once again replicating it this season in Riku Ou - a drama that on paper sounds particularly snooze-inducing (a small company trying to make running shoes) yet still managing to pick up the highest rating thus far outside of NHK.

What the first episode of Saki Boku suffers from is how long it's taking to build up the story. To its credit, it never feels like it drags, but at the end of that one hour there is no clear direction as to where the series is going. I'm not saying the Hanzawa Naoki implausible high-strung emotionality is the right way to go, but ratings show that this is the sort of fast food entertainment that audiences lap up. Saki Boku demands its audiences to be patient without hinting that it's going to be worth it, and that's a hard ask of audiences who are not fans.

The central conflict is that between money and public service - in much of the developed world, public services (education, health, police, etc) is nominally free, but actually comes at a huge hidden cost. However, there is an inherent danger in running a service like a profit-making business, as it can create inequality and inequity in the community it's supposed to provide for. The school in question is a little bit different as it is a private school, but it comes with the same problem of trying to provide a self-sustaining service without compromising its principles and becoming a commercial enterprise purely catering to "clients".

The other interesting issue the first episode raises is that children, even teenagers, are not small adults. There is a lot of research out there to say that parts of the brain (in particular the executive function) does not mature until the mid-20s. Taking an adult approach to problem-solving can backfire, because it is not perceived in the same logical way that the adult thinks it goes.

Unfortunately, it is not in the series' character to make these things easy for the audience to pick up and reflect on. It is very much a slice of life, and it lets the audience pick their own version of the story. In the first episode, there is no good side or bad side, there is no right way or wrong way, and I suspect it's the easy black-and-whiteness that makes the Hanzawa Naoki formula so popular, and the lack thereof that makes these slice-of-life comedies struggle.

The first episode also doesn't quite make the characters memorable, through no fault of the actors. It's hard to say at this stage what Narumi is actually feeling about education as a whole. Sho's acting is considerably better than his previous outing in Kazoku Game (although I think the weirdness in Kazoku Game was mostly intentional or due to the direction). Aoi Yuu is in command from the first appearance and doesn't falter. Tabe Mikako is barely even seen and at this stage I can't imagine her having a big role in the story. Takashima Masanobu turns up the camp as usual, and while he brings a stifling terror to his scenes, the tone is so different to the rest of the series that it is at once jarring and difficult to believe.

It's not at all a bad story, but it takes patience and might be hard to stick with unless you're a fan.