Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.
3-nen A-gumi
(3年A組: 今から皆さんは、人質です/Sannen A-gumi: Ima kara minasan ha, hitoshiji desu / Class 3-A: From now on, you are all hostages)
MyDramaList rating: 8.0/10
Hello everybody! Winter is already upon us, it’s getting colder and wetter and I personally try to keep myself as warm and cozy as possible. It’s almost the end of the year, which means I’m doing my best to finish some final watch list items within 2022! This one had been on my list for a while too; I guess I saw Suda Masaki was in it and thought it would be worth it. And let me tell you, it was. Big-time. I’ll try my best to write this review as watching this show was a rollercoaster journey for me and there’s so much to unravel that halfway through I was already thinking, ‘how the heck am I going to write this review?!’ But I’ll give it my best shot. You may notice already that I rated this show higher than any drama I’ve watched this year. It’s without a doubt one of the best Japanese dramas I’ve seen in a very long time. So let’s go and “Let’s think!”
3-nen A-gumi is a 10-episode Japanese drama series that focusses on Class 3-A of Kaiou High School. On the first of March, ten days before the third years graduate, 3-A’s homeroom (and art) teacher Hiiragi Ibuki, nicknamed ‘Bukki/Bookie’ (played by Suda Masaki) locks his classroom and announces to his students that for the next ten days, they will be his hostages. Thinking that it’s some weird joke, the students laugh it off, but then Hiiragi actually sets off a bomb that barricades the exit of the third floor. The rest of the students and teachers are able to evacuate the building immediately, but class 3-A is stuck.
As the 3-A students are now properly alarmed, Hiiragi tells them that now he will start ‘his final lesson’, starting with the question, ‘What makes this class different from other classes?’ As it happens, about half a year earlier, one of the students from 3-A, a popular girl named Kageyama Reina (played by Kamishiraishi Moka) committed suicide. As the best member of the school swimming club, she was caught in a scandal that claimed she had used doping during one of the tournaments, and a video was uploaded online to prove this. From this point on, she was shunned at school and everyone just assumed that this was what drove her over the edge. However, Hiiragi seems convinced that this wasn’t the real reason for Reina’s suicide and he urges his students to work and think together in order to realize what has truly happened.
With a class full of initially reluctant students, including several with lingering attachments to Reina and others who have other secret/indirect involvements in the case, Hiiragi starts out quite aggressively, using serious threats and force to snap his students out of their negligent way of thinking. He even starts out by saying that if they don’t give a correct answer by 8 PM every day, he will kill one of the students, and it initially seems like he means it, as he indeed ‘stabs’ one of them at the end of the first day and drags the body away to the art supply room, after which it isn’t seen again. Whenever the students try to overpower him, he sets off another bomb or makes another threat to keep them at bay.
However, as the days progress and they peel off layer after layer to Reina’s suicide case, it becomes more and more clear to the students what exactly Hiiragi is doing, what his motives are, and what the true meaning behind his actions is and they start acknowledging and respecting their teacher. After all, as it turns out, he is only trying to protect them and open their eyes to the reality of the society they live in. His ‘final lesson’ is designed to teach them the most important lesson of all before they graduate.
As I mentioned in my intro, I consider this drama to be one of the best Japanese dramas I’ve seen so far. I went into it without any expectations in particular, but when I came out I found myself being deeply moved. I even cried at some point. Even though I’ve only spent maybe two weeks finishing this show and the special, it really feels like I’ve been on the entire journey with the characters. I think that’s a very good aspect of it, it really made me feel like I was in that classroom with them and went through the same emotional rollercoaster as the students.
Besides the classroom scenes, we also follow some storylines happening outside of the school, such as the police team that is in charge of the case. One detective in particular, Gunji Masato (played by Shiina Kippei) is determined to take action. As a former teacher himself, he has experienced the loss of a promising student and that’s why he feels connected to this case.
On the other hand, there’s the other teachers, who set up camp in the school gymnasium as they have to deal with some practical issues such as soothing the students’ parents. Teacher Takechi Yamato (Tanabe Seiichi) uses the situation to his advantage to make appearances on TV shows and even manages to obtain a certain degree of popularity and fame – the TV items he appears in soon no longer have anything to do with the hostage case and he’s just starting to build a franchise.
Another very important aspect of this series is the app ‘Mind Voice’ which is being used as a kind of online platform in which everyone can anonymously post comments. Even though on the one hand it’s a fun way to get to know more like-minded people, on the other hand it can also become a viciously aggressive platform, especially when it comes to spreading rumors.
This app played a big part in Reina’s case as well, as the video of her taking doping was posted there and as a result, everyone started bashing Reina for it online.
Let me start by giving some more information about Hiiragi, and then go through the ‘assignments’ one by one. I will already reveal the whole plot from the start, otherwise it’ll take way too long to analyze everything.
When we meet Hiiragi in the first episode, on the day he decides to execute his hostage plan, we still don’t know anything about him. He sometimes mentions something about himself, or what he used to do, but he never reveals anything specific about his past, which leads one to quickly believe that he might actually be a crazy or dangerous person. He doesn’t seem to have any real sentiment towards his students when he starts his ‘lesson’, and this disconnection just makes him feel all the more unpredictable and scary. One minute he might seem nice enough, but then the next he’ll still tell the students that he’ll kill another one of them if they don’t get the assignment right.
So, what’s Hiiragi’s real story? Hiiragi only started being a teacher a couple of years before the whole thing went down. Before teaching, he used to be a suit actor in a tokusatsu superhero franchise. I think the best known example of this is the Kamen Rider series (look it up if you’re interested). Anyways, basically he played a villain character who’s catchphrase was ‘Let’s think!’ At the time, he was dating the daughter of his studio’s director. His girlfriend, Sagara Fumika (Tsuchimura Kaho) also used to be a teacher, but she quit after a fake video was spread about her on Mind Voice and the online comments mentally scarred her. She is currently sitting at home, trying to recuperate. Her father, Hiiragi’s former studio boss, Sagara Takahiko (Yajima Kenichi), is taking care of her. When the hostage situation is featured on the news, he tries to keep Fumika from watching it, as he knows that she’ll feel responsible – what happened to Reina is similar to what happened to her before.
Hiiragi’s past with the superhero franchise is teased and revealed bit by bit throughout the story. First and foremost, he still uses the catchphrase ‘Let’s think!’ in every single lesson. He also at some point mentions that he used to dream about becoming a superhero actor. And then we also get to see short scenes of the franchised show as a kind of foreshadowing for tricks he uses during the hostage situation. For example, some time after he has ‘killed’ the first student, there’s a snippet from the show in which the villain’s hand is severed (all special effects, of course). Not long after, a couple of students confront Hiiragi to prove that he actually killed their classmate, and Hiiragi throws them a severed hand, claiming it’s their classmate’s. Of course, this is a fake hand. He pulls a similar trick later, when he takes away five students to allegedly kill, and causes another explosion, leaving some severed arms and legs among the debris. These arms and legs too turn out to be fake. As it happens, Sagara Takahiko is one of the people who helped Hiiragi to prepare for this big plan – he provided him with a lot of props from the show itself.
Just in-between, I didn’t believe it for a second when Hiiragi started saying he would kill the students. Even when he ‘stabbed’ that one student on the first day, I just didn’t believe it was real. First of all, practically, from the teasers of this show there was nothing about any of the students dying and I’d only ever seen really positive reviews so I just didn’t expect it to be ‘that kind of show’. Secondly, from the start it just didn’t make sense to kill the students, as the whole purpose was to have the class work and think together. It would be purely for shock value to kill them, and it just didn’t make sense why he’d do that. So I didn’t buy it from the start. I did waver after the first episode though, because it did make me go like, ‘…. no way, right?’, but then when the thing happened with the severed hand etc I was like, ‘yeah, right’. That really confirmed to me that it had be fake. No matter how crazy Hiiragi may have appeared, he also acted way too relaxed for someone who just killed a kid. Also, even after telling the police that there were now 28 students left, he still asked them to bring a total of 30 rice balls to the school because the kids were starting to get hungry. In the end, it was just another way to spread a rumor on Mind Voice and make the people believe different things.
Anyways, as he was working as a suit actor, his girlfriend confided in him that this one other teacher at her school kept trying to bribe her. This teacher, none other than Takechi Yamato, was known for recommending students for a sports scholarship to this specific sports college, Gosho University. He was after one of Fumika’s students, and asked her if he could take care of that student, but she knew something was up and kept refusing, even after he started offering her money. When she told him she would sue him, he threatened her and not much later, a fake video popped up on Mind Voice featuring her and a student of hers going somewhere together. I don’t even really know what was suggested through the video, maybe that she was meeting her student in private or something, but in any case, it completely ruined her. The online hate comments made her resign. Hiiragi heard about this, and that Takechi was behind it, and a few years later he applied for a job at the school that Takechi was working at, Kaiou.
It was around this time that Hiiragi was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Despite his initial intention to keep an eye on Takechi, this diagnose spun Hiiragi’s life upside down and he started to live his life indifferently, not really caring about his revenge anymore. That is, until Reina came to him with her problem. He discovered that Takechi had been doing the same thing all over again, he wanted to recommend Reina to Gosho University, but she knew about his suspicious connections and refused, threatening to sue him. Takechi couldn’t have this and again, not much later, a fake video popped up about Reina using doping, and again, it blew up on Mind Voice.
Fully realizing that Takechi was the culprit of this, and that he was doing it repeatedly, ruining people’s lives with posting fake videos, Hiiragi decided that he had to take action before this would happen again, starting with his own class, the students that abandoned Reina in her darkest moments because of their own negligence. It’s not only to get back at Takechi and make him go through the same thing, but also to teach his students to become more aware of the consequences of their actions, to become more responsible and open-minded. Even though it wasn’t any of the student’s personal fault that this happened to Reina, their negligence did help to get the situation where it ended, it did lead Reina to commit suicide.
As Hiiragi reveals in the end, he had three main objectives.
The first one was to make Takechi realize his own crime by making him go through the same pain that he had inflicted on Fumika and Reina. Hiiragi actually made a fake video in which Takechi was seen entering a building with Reina on the day she committed suicide and uploaded it on Mind Voice, before revealing that it had been edited. However, because of that fake video, everyone on Mind Voice turned their target on Takechi and started bashing him online, causing Takechi to become just as paranoid as Reina before she decided to end her life.
By the way, this was depicted quite cleverly by suddenly showing some scenes literally through the eyes of Takechi. I first didn’t fully understand what this meant, but it was just to show that, ever since Hiiragi diverted the public’s attention to him, he was starting to become more and more paranoid and started hallucinating. He started imagining everyone looking at him as if he was an enemy, he heard the Mind Voice comments out loud as if they were being said by everyone around him. In the flashback of Reina’s suicide we see that Reina was suffering from the exact same mental symptoms.
The second objective was to inform the world about the violence on social media. By using fake videos and changing the situation a couple of times, Hiiragi wanted to make everyone realize how easy it was to get people online excited with only uncertain information. He announces Mind Voice to be the true murderer of Reina. She ended up taking her own life because of the cyber bullying she had to endure after the fake video was uploaded. Even though these commenters didn’t even know her and just mindlessly went along with the hype, they were actually oil to the fire that drove Reina over the edge.
The final reason was that Hiiragi wanted to teach his students the importance of individual and critical thinking. He didn’t want them to become adults who turned a blind eye when people around them were hurting, because that’s what happens in current society – we turn a blind eye because people hurt all over the world, it’s become a normal thing. He wanted to teach his students to be responsible for their own words and actions, to hold back and think, to first make sure whether it’s really the correct thing to do before making a decision that could influence someone’s life. As I mentioned before, even though they weren’t personally responsible, there were definitely some students who could’ve done something before it was too late.
On the final day, Hiiragi holds a livestream on Mind Voice in which he confronts all the SNS users of their contribution to Reina’s death. It’s additionally painful as you can see that even throughout Hiiragi’s passionate speech, the mindless and hurtful comments just keep coming. It doesn’t seem like anyone is taking him seriously and they keep telling him to die and stop blaming everything on them as ‘this is just a safe online space where we can say what we want, don’t put all your accusations on us’, bla bla bla.
The only thing that Hiiragi wanted in the end was to make people aware of their harmful behavior online, how just mindlessly going along with any kind of information, even without actual sources or truth, just for their own entertainment, could lead to a young and promising person like Reina taking her own life.
Let’s go about the 10 days of the hostage plan one by one.
On the first day, the assignment that Hiiragi gives his students is to come up with the reason why Reina killed herself. He also assigns one student in particular to answer him by 8 PM. If that student can’t tell him the correct reason by then, he’ll kill one of the students. The student he points out to answer him is Kayano Sakura (played by Nagano Mei).
Sakura was Reina’s closest friend. She was obsessed with her, as were a lot of people, to the point that she was actually secretly taking pictures of her. Her fascination with her might have seemed a little weird at first, but Reina actually thought it was interesting and asked Sakura if she wanted to be friends. They got along great, up until the point where the fake video was uploaded and Sakura was kind of cornered by her classmates to stay away from Reina, as this rumor would harm her too. However, until the end, Sakura wanted to stay by Reina’s side. She regrets now more than ever the period when she briefly left Reina’s side. Even though she knows there is more at play than just the fake video, Sakura goes along with her classmates’ pushes and tells Hiiragi that the reason is purely the doping accusation. That’s the wrong answer, and even after Sakura comes clean about her true feelings and regrets towards Reina, Hiiragi doesn’t go back on his word that he will kill someone. A very tense situation occurs when someone mentions then that he should just kill Sakura then, and Hiiragi snaps as he’s so frustrated with everyone’s negligence, even after Sakura basically had a mental breakdown in front of them minutes before. He then proceeds to seemingly stab one of the male students, and this is caught on an audio broadcast to the police, as Hiiragi has them listen in every evening.
The rumor that Hiiragi killed a student starts spreading on Mind Voice, and its users start attacking him online by calling him a murderer.
On the second day, Hiiragi specifies that it was someone in Class 3-A who posted the fake video of Reina on Mind Voice, someone who had also been posting really nasty and even intrusive comments about her online. Their assignment of the day is to figure out who this person is, or more ideally, for that person to come clean about it. During the day, there is a collision between Sakura and Usami Kaho (played by Kawaei Rina). Kaho, who used to be Reina’s best friend before she started hanging out with Sakura, still holds resentment towards Sakura for ‘taking away her best friend’. Even though, as we see through flashbacks, it’s clear that Kaho was only posing Reina around as her friend to make herself seem better. This made Reina feel like Kaho wasn’t sincerely being her friend because she cared about her, but more because her popularity rates would go up by being friends with the most popular girl in school. All Reina wanted was just to have a genuine friend who wasn’t idealizing her, and who didn’t care if she wasn’t as perfect or strong as everyone seemed to think. But she was let down, first by Kaho and then by Sakura, who also seemed to see her for this super strong person, which she wasn’t. At the end of the day, the real culprit doesn’t turn themselves in and just when Hiiragi makes a move to kill another student, Sakura steps forward to take the blame. She’s quickly interruped by Kaho, who then confesses to be the person who uploaded the fake video and finds a kind of redemption in her confession. However, despite uploading the video, she claims she wasn’t the person who actually made the video, she just found it as a DVD file in her bag one day and decided to upload it out of spite. As this was the right answer, no one was killed that day.
On the third day, the assignment becomes similar to the previous day: who made the fake video? This time, he also asks the police to cooperate by providing them with the fake video in question. See if they can figure it out. In this episode, some more information is revealed about Reina’s swimming team. Two students who were also from the swimming team are highlighted. Kumazawa Karen (Hotta Mayu) and Makabe Kakeru (Kamio Fuju). They got along fine, although Karen was a bit envious of Reina’s skills as she never managed to beat her. She also had a crush on Kakeru, but Kakeru liked Reina (and probably the other way around). One day, Kakeru got himself beaten up by a gang that was after Reina for pretending to be her boyfriend and his legs got messed up so bad he had to give up swimming. Karen blamed Reina for this, although deep down she knew this wasn’t completely true but she just needed someone to blame. Anyways, the fake video was taken in the swimming club’s locker room. We see Reina taking a pill from a pill bottle and after she leaves the camera person goes to check out the bottle by themselves to reveal it has a doping label on it. It’s visible that the person taking the bottle out of the locker is wearing a jacket that belongs to the swimming club and it has some stains on it. The police try to figure out where the stain came from by inquiring about what each of the swimming club members had for lunch that particular day, and come to the final conclusion that it has to be Karen. However, she denies it. And that’s when Satomi Kaito (Suzuki Jin) comes into light. As the most popular guy in class, Kaito has a fan club of girls in Class 3-A, but he actually also had a crush on Reina. He was rejected by her, and this instilled a grudgeful feeling within him – men are fragile when it comes to their pride. Think about it, Kakeru literally lost his physical ability to swim but Kaito just couldn’t handle a rejection. During the confrontation, Kaito admits to filming the video (he borrowed Kakeru’s jacket), but he wasn’t the person who edited it or put it in Kaho’s bag. Even though Kaito confessed, since the police’s answer was wrong, this time Hiiragi’s selects five students that he will kill, Kaito being one of them. This is when he fakes blowing five students up using those fake severed arms and legs.
On the fourth day, the assignment is to identify who suggested Kaito to make a fake video, as that’s what he previously confessed. A fellow student put the idea in his head to make the video. This time, the culprit confesses immediately. It’s Kai Hayato (Katayose Ryota), the alleged delinquent of 3-A. He easily announces that he was the one who edited the video, but Hiiragi doesn’t believe him. Yes, he was the one who told Kaito to take the video, but he wasn’t the one who actually edited it. After this day, an even bigger plot is revealed, namely the involvement of a dangerous gang called Berumuzu. It turns out that Kai was being threatened by the leader of this gang and made to do errands for him as he was financially struggling at home. With a sick mother and two younger siblings to take care of, Hayato had to give up his own dream of dancing to take care of his family. One time, a former dance crew member asked him to arrange a meeting between Reina and this ‘senpai’ of his, who was a big fan of hers, and he would get paid for it. When he brought Reina to the meeting point, it turned out to be kidnapping situation, but Hayato helped Reina escape. Despite being jealous of her as she was able to do what she loved to do while he couldn’t continue dancing, he didn’t mean for her to get actually hurt like that. In any case, to make up for that, the Berumuzu leader asked him to get him a video of Reina, and he did it, but he’s too scared to expose the gang because they would hurt his family if he told on them. The day ends in a heartful talk between Hayato and his best friend Ishikura Kota (Sakumoto Takara), urging him to confide in his friends when he’s struggling as he always has people around him who will help and support him.
While this was going on during days 2, 3 and 4, the Mind Voice users started getting excited and turned Hiiragi into a criminal online based on the leaked information about the increasing murder victims.
From here on, Hiiragi’s health starts deteriorating fast and he starts passing out more frequently. While he’s unconscious, the other students, now convinced their classmates are still alive, start searching for them, but when they find them, the six students refuse to even leave the school anymore as they are now in the loop of Hiiragi’s intentions. Another student, Aizawa Hiroki (Hagiwara Riku) turns out to have been acting as a spy for Hiiragi, as he was instructed to secretly post updates about what was happening inside on Mind Voice to stir up the public. Hiroki was making a documentary about Reina while she was still alive, and Hiiragi asked him to assist him in the whole plan and use all the footage he’d shot so far. Hiroki was the only one who knew about the hostage plan in advance. During a conflict between the students whether they should or shouldn’t stay in the school, it is also revealed that Suwa Yuzuki (Imada Mio) was actually dating Berumuzu’s leader. She wanted to become a model, and he became sort of like a sponsor figure to her, enabling her to get certain modelling jobs etc. After learning about her boyfriend’s involvement in Reina’s case, Yuzuki comes clean about this relationship and hands over a pendant belonging to her boyfriend, which contains a USB file with a list of all the fake video requests Berumuzu has received. From that file, they learn that it was one of their teachers that requested the fake video on Reina.
After this information and the fact that Hiiragi didn’t actually kill any of the students is revealed, the Mind Voice users start praising Hiiragi and even call him a hero.
After it’s revealed that one of the teachers is behind the fake video, the students are left to speculate who it could be. Which teacher would do something like this? Here, Minakoshi Suzune (Fukuhara Haruka) speaks up. As a former member of the swimming club, she was allegedly forced to quit by coach Tsuboi (Kamio Yu). It seemed like he didn’t approve of her dating as it interfered with her swimming practice and he quite harshly kicked her off the team. Suzune has always had lingering resentments about this, and is quick to point her finger at Tsuboi for ‘probably doing something similar to Reina’. She asks one girl who managed to keep her cellphone even though they were supposed to hand them all in to take a video of her accusing Mr. Tsuboi and post it on Mind Voice. During the final confrontation of the day, Suzune is cornered as Mr. Tsuboi’s innocence is revealed. Her mom had called him in on the results from a checkup she’d gotten at the hospital. The hospital informed him that Suzune was suffering from a serious heart condition triggered by excessive physical exercise. This is why Tsuboi, although unnecessarily harshly, had to throw her off the team, only because he knew she would be harmed if she continued swimming. As Suzune was not aware of this she immediately regrets making the confession video, only to be relieved when Hiiragi tells her he stopped the other girl from posting the video just in time. He doesn’t let her off easy though, because this is exactly the lesson he means to teach: to think and find true proof before posting something online that could be extremely harmful to someone’s life and reputation.
I personally found this one of the most intense confrontations, when Hiiragi nearly assaulted Suzune and pushed her up against the wall in order to get it through to her what her video could have caused. Even though I get the importance of that lesson, he did really manage to get it across in a very forceful way. Again, I guess it was the only way to make his students become truly aware.
At the end of the day, on Hiiragi’s order, Sagara Takahiko uploads a video on Mind Voice that shows a man guiding a student looking a lot like Reina from the back inside a building on the day she committed suicide. Hiiragi announces to the others outside that he has now cornered the teacher who ordered the fake video, and identifies Takechi Yamato as that teacher.
As soon as Hiiragi reveals that Takechi is the teacher responsible, the Mind Voice users turn their suspicion toward him.
From the moment Takechi is being accused of being the culprit, there are two students who refuse to believe his involvement. These students are Seo Yudai (Mochizuki Ayumu) and Uoyama Hana (Tomita Miu). The reason why they defend him is because they too were benefitting from Takechi’s generosity to recommend them to Gosho University. As two students with limited opportunities, this recommendation means the world to them, as they’re finally being given a chance they otherwise would never get. While Hiiragi urges them to then try and prove Takechi’s innocence by themselves, we get to see how Takechi slowly starts crumbling under the comments that are starting to spread about him. The truth about Fumika’s experience with Takechi is also revealed and Yudai and Hana are forced to come to terms with the fact that despite his ‘benevolence’ towards them, Takechi truly meant no good. They may just as well have become the next victims of his shady recommendation scheme.
Even though Takechi is first under suspicion because of the outfit the person in the video is wearing, as it matches something Takechi has worn on TV before, but at the end of this day, a picture is released that zoomed in on a reflective mirror near the entrance of the building and shows that it’s Takechi coming out of that building.
When this is revealed to be actually Takechi, the Mind Voice users start cornering and attacking Takechi online.
I have to say that I was personally still suspicious, because even though Takechi seemed to be guilty of something at this point, I was still interested why he reacted so confused and why he kept saying that wasn’t him in the video, even though there was now ‘proof’ that it was him. I kept thinking there was still something not totally right. Either that or he had an evil twin.
On the eighth day, while Takechi was becoming more and more paranoid as his confession to ordering the video with Berumuzu was broadcasted online, two students belonging to the video editing club (or something similar) realize something is up with the video. Horibe Runa (Mori Nana) and Nishizaki Soma (Imai Yuki) discover that the video was edited, and are able to peel off the layer that was placed over Takechi’s face – revealing it to be actually Hiiragi himself.
In a flasback, it is revealed that Runa and Soma had previously discovered that Reina’s video was fake, that the bottle label – which actually contained regular vitamin supplements – was edited with a label that suggested doping meds. However, Soma urged Runa to keep it quiet and leave it at that as the rumors had already run their course. Truthfully, Soma was actually the person who contributed to the spreading of the doping rumors on Mind Voice. Publicizing that it was fake would just harm his own credibility. However, now both of them felt equally bad about not stopping the rumors or revealing that the video was fake before and are determined to not make the same mistake again after realizing the true repercussions. Runa stops Soma before he posts the video revealing Hiiragi to be the true culprit and this is when the whole class finally starts doing what Hiiragi had wanted all along: they start discussing the whole thing together, they think together critically and carefully, and use their imagination to come to a conclusion on what to do. At the end of the day, Hiiragi is cornered by Detective Gunji, but is surprisingly saved by his former suit actor collegue, who actually dressed up as the superhero character Garm Phoenix to save Hiiragi and help him to now take Gunji as his hostage.
In the meantime, the Mind Voice users are still relentlessly criticizing Takechi online despite there being no real evidence.
Even though the students decided not to post the fake video, Sagara Takahiko does. The video revealing it’s Hiiragi, not Takechi, coming out of the building spreads on Mind Voice and guides everyone into a new direction. At the end of this day, Hiiragi reveals all his main objectives to his students and promises to set them free the next day. He needed to make himself the enemy of the nation before he could step out to reveal himself to his main audience: Mind Voice.
As soon as they see it’s Hiiragi in the video instead of Takechi, the Mind Voice users immediately switch their target to him again and resume attacking Hiiragi online.
During the night of March 9, Hiiragi tells his entire story to Gunji, and the next morning he goes up to the roof to finally confront the true culprit: the Mind Voice users. He reveals that the video in which he appears was, in fact, also a fake video that he made and he used this as yet another example to tell the Mind Voice users that they go along so easily with unreliable information. He gives an overview of all the tricks he used to sway them throughout those ten days (I mentioned these observations in bold in the above paragraphs) and urges them to realize how many times in the past few days they actually changed their opinions. Just by relying on unreliable information, how many cruel things have they posted, how many people have they insulted? The whole reason he started this incident was because he wanted to bring to light this brainless behavior of the people online.
While he’s giving his speech, with the help of Gunji the students manage to break their way out of the bombarded obstruction in their hallway and make it just in time to save Hiiragi when he nearly throws himself off the school roof. This final action of his is partly to show Sakura that she needs to let go of her guilt. In fact, Sakura was there when Reina jumped off the building. She witnessed for herself how Reina couldn’t take it anymore but she grabbed her hand when her friend jumped. She grabbed her hand, but Reina urged her to let go. Sakura didn’t want to let go, but after it happened she made herself believe that she let go of Reina’s hand because she truly believed it would put her friend at ease. Anyways, by doing the same thing with Hiiragi, grabbing his hand after he’d jumped, and getting help from her classmates in pulling him back up, Hiiragi convinces her that she was never at fault for anything, as she truly wanted both Reina and him to live. Hiiragi is consequently arrested and the students are finally able to get out of the school.
A few years later, Class 3-A has a reunion in their old classroom to watch the documentary about Reina that Hiroki finished. It is revealed that by then, Hiiragi has already passed away, despite making it through one more year before succumbing to his cancer.
I think I was able to go through all major events, because there was so much happening in just those 10 episodes. I haven’t even gotten to all the stuff that was happening in the police department, but I think these were the most important things. The one final thing I want to mention was that Hiiragi had not been planning this whole event alone. I mentioned he’d gotten help from Sagara Takahiko before, and that Hiroki was also an insider to the plan, but Hiiragi also had help from an insider at the police station, Officer Igarashi Toru (played by Otomo Kohei). Igarashi is revealed to be Fumika’s biological father, even though she herself doesn’t know that because Sagara Takahiko has always cared for her and raised her as his own daughter. In any case, he agrees to help out with the plan after Hiiragi emphasizes that this is not simply a revenge action against Takechi – it’s to make sure something like this never happens again.
So all in all, yeah, a lot happens. There’s a lot of intense events and collisions between students in the classroom, as well as many funny and heartwarming moments. I personally lived for Hana’s infatuation with Sunaga Ken (Furukawa Tsuyoshi) and the bonds that were formed between all the students. As said before, even though several students were highlighted throughout the assignments, every single student had a distinct role and personality. Everyone was mentioned by name at least once and it was very clear who stood by who, who was friends with whom, this was given value at any given moment. I’m talking about simple things like the Kaito fangirls sticking up for him, students running to their friends after finding them safe and alive and how there were regular romantic tensions as well, and also at least one couple. It was really well-structured and it was also very clear how every single student changed from episode 1 to 10. I genuinely feel like I have to watch the whole thing again after finishing it, to see even more clearly what Hiiragi was doing from the start. But comparing how negligent and careless the students’ way of thinking was in the beginning to the final episodes when they finally truly understood what Hiiragi was trying to teach them, that in itself was already a really powerful message. Hiiragi managed to open the minds of 29 people within 10 days, and all he wanted was for the Mind Voice users to come to their senses in less time. If only it worked like that.
But I really liked the ending. Even though, as Sakura also points out during that reunion, nothing has really changed in society, and nothing has really changed on Mind Voice, we are shown one single person, someone who had been appearing as a Mind Voice user several times before, excitedly adding to the harsh comments. We see that, under the narration of Sakura wishing that Hiiragi’s message may have at least reached one single person, this person changes his mind. We see him typing out a hate comment on Mind Voice but then deciding not to post it. And I think that was a very powerful way to end the series, because it just concluded Hiiragi’s objective. He did manage to at least reach one person with his message. And you know what they say, it all starts with a single lit candle.
So besides all the drama that happened within the classroom itself and the police office, we also see how the other teachers are coping with the situation. In the beginning, I wasn’t really sure what to think as Takechi’s behavior was so ridiculous. From the start I didn’t fully trust him as he was the first person to avert his gaze and smile to himself while muttering ‘This is starting to look interesting’ when the whole hostage thing just started. He immediately jumped on the opportunity to promote himself as being the most representative teacher of this age, which was on the one hand amusing but on the other hand it really made me go, ‘Is this guy for real?’ Like, it was crazy how an opportunist would arise in this situation, especially when word got around that Hiiragi was actually killing the students. But in the end, it did explain a part of his character. He was conspiring with the principal of Gosho University to get as many recommended students as possible, but most of his recommended students would quit after a year or so because they couldn’t take it. When people started finding out about his connections and openly obstructed him from gaining more recommendations, he started conspiring with Berumuzu, asking them to help him corner certain people for going against him. He was living his life entirely on his own terms, treating students as mere commodities. As long as he could get money out of recommending students, he didn’t care if they actually made it or not and for that he definitely deserved to be locked up. The other teachers, despite not being very useful in the whole solving of the case at all, are positioned to be the spectators that exist outside of Mind Voice. Even though Mind Voice is everywhere and it’s being used as the main outlet of information from the classroom, the other teachers have more practical things to deal with, such as the students’ parents and they also have to cooperate with the police when they’re there. There are a few moments when they are involved in the assignments, and in the assignment of figuring out which teacher requested the video of Reina, they are also highlighted, especially Mr. Tsuboi. Even though the teachers mostly attributed to the more comical side of the show, it was definitely expressed that they cared sincerely about the school and the students. The principal showed great compassion to Takechi, even after discovering what he’d done, and he also helped Suzune realize that Mr. Tsuboi had always been thinking about her wellbeing. Honestly, all the characters were highlighted in their own way without it becoming too much, and that was a really strong aspect of this show.
If people only knew what was really going on. That was one of Hiiragi’s main arguments. If only people had known about what was fake and what wasn’t. Despite not blaming his students personally or directly for Reina’s death, it wasn’t strange that Hiiragi felt the need to be forceful with them, as they really did need to be taught a lesson, and this was the only way to make them fully realize what they had done and what they should have done. Sure, his approaches were very intense and I still don’t fully see the need of him pretending to kill people in order to get their attention, but it also proved how desperate he was in gaining the attention that was needed to face this problem head-on. His harsh lessons every single day were what was needed for the students, for ALL students, to fully realize what kind of consequences their mindless words and actions could have on the people around them.
Before going on to my cast comments, I want to briefly talk about the special, which I watched right after the main show. I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the characters yet, that’s how much impact this show had on me. The special is called ‘Class 3-A: From now on, this is everyone’s special graduation ceremony’ (3年A組: 今から皆さんだけの、卒業式です/3 Nen A Gumi: Ima kara minasan dake no, Sotsugyoshiki desu). It takes place on March 10, right after Hiiragi has been taken away by the police. The students are all back in the classroom and Hiroki suddenly discovers a video file on Hiiragi’s laptop that remained after all the other files were deleted. It’s called ‘Graduation Ceremony’ and it’s a video that Hiiragi recorded somewhere during the past ten days. Through the video, he orders Hiroki to take out the box of graduation certificates under his desk and he orders Sakura to go to the art room to start preparing some things. Then, he starts calling out all students’ names one by one, in alphabetical order, to comment on their personality during the past ten days and to ask them to tell him their dreams for the future.
In-between, they move to the art room which Sakura has been instructed to decorate just so that it seems like an actual graduation ceremony and they also find drawings that Hiiragi has made of each and every one of them, every single student’s smiling portrait.
Can I just say that I nearly bawled my eyes out during this special? It’s only two episodes, but the way every single student is given one last moment in the spotlight, one last chance to remark on their experiences and to voice their ambitions for the future was just so wonderful. It really highlighted how much attention Hiiragi had paid to each single student during those ten days, in-between all the dramatic events. He remarked something about every single person’s character and behavior and it was immensely emotional.
Despite it being a special, and while I believe that some people may have chosen not to watch it, it really felt like an important point of closure to the whole series, because graduation was something that it had all led up to. In any case, I’m very glad I watched it, because it just made me love every single student more, even the people who hadn’t been featured that much before. I thought it just showed so much respect to each actor, as well, it give them all equality and didn’t make one character seem more important than the other.
Okay, so let’s move on to the cast comments now! For the students, I’m not going to mention every single one of them but just some that jumped out to me in particular. That’s not to say that they all performed really well! I was very impressed with the overall acting skills in this drama, it never once became annoying for me.
If Suda Masaki was one of the main reasons why I started this show, he definitely proved me right. This man is PHENOMENAL. I’ve loved him in every single thing I’ve seen him in (and he is in a LOT of things), but here he really blew me away. Things I’ve seen him in include Rich Man Poor Woman, Shinigami-kun, Mondai no Aru Restaurant, Tamiou, Love Song, Jimi ni Sugoi! and Todome no Kiss. His versatility, his acting range is almost scary good. Because even when he legit freaked me the heck out a couple of times, I never stopped smiling behind my screen because I was enjoying his acting so much. The most amazing thing, and I’d really have to rewatch this show to make sure of that, was that he was so good at hiding Hiiragi’s true feelings. For example, at certain moments his eyes would shoot fire, while later it’d be revealed that in those moments he felt really bad for scaring his students so much. And the look in his eyes when he saw Fumika as soon as he came out of the school building, the way he looked at her truly broke my heart. Struggling to see his plan through to the end while simultaneously gradually succumbing to his disease made him so fanatic, so desperate, and he may have come across as a crazy person at times, but this was the first time we actually saw him look into the eyes of someone he loved so much. Seriously, his performance gave me goosebumps. Suda Masaki is incredible and he proved that one more time in this show.
I’ve seen Nagano Mei before in Itsuka Kono Koi wo Omoidashite Kitto Naiteshimau and Koe Koi. She looked really familiar to me, although it’s been too long since I watched these shows for me to really remember her performance there. Anyways, as she was the only student being featured in the poster I kind of assumed from the start that she would be a prominent character, maybe even the person that it all came down to. Much to my surprise, her involvement was already dealt with in the first episode, and from then on she just remained the most loyal student to Hiiragi, as she was convinced of his good intentions. She was also the only one to see through his facade during one assignment. At the beginning of the day he had said that they would play a game called ‘Believe it or Don’t Believe it’, and had explained that whenever he had his glasses on, he was speaking the truth, and when he had them off, he was lying. After going through a whole dramatic episode which left everyone completely distraught, she was the only one who remarked that he’d done exactly as he’d announced: he’d spoken the truth when he was wearing his glasses, and he’d lied when he wasn’t wearing them. The rest of the class just forgot about the game as Hiiragi’s acting was so believable, but because Sakura kept this in mind, she was able to see the truth in his behavior. I’d imagined Sakura to maybe be one of the influential or popular girls in class, but she was actually kind of an underdog. Until she became friends with Reina, even though she wasn’t bullied or anything, she seemed kind of a loner, also with her fascination with pro-wrestling and stuff that usually put people off. I thought it was really interesting how Sakura’s character gradually developed throughout the ten days. Her character also makes me want to watch the whole thing all over again, as I want to pay more attention to her behavior after understanding all that she’s been through. She was always soft spoken and introvert, but she never became a pushover and she never became annoying or anything like that. I think she performed really well.
I really thought I recognized Katayose Ryota from something, but it turns out that I don’t. I guess he just looks like someone then? He hasn’t even done that many dramas yet, according to DramaWiki. Also, he’s a member of J-Pop group which… I can’t say I’m surprised. Kai (I’ve been calling him Hayato during my review so as not to break the consistency of addressing everyone by their first name, but he’s mainly called ‘Kai’ in the show) first seemed to be this typical delinquent student, chilling in the back of the class with his buddies, goofing around. It’s mentioned in the first episode that he’d once gotten involved with the police before. At the time it just seemed like a remark to emphasize his reputation at school but later of course we find out it’s because he got involved in that almost-kidnapping case in which he saved Reina. I loved how there were all these tiny references and foreshadowing elements before you even knew that it would come back to be properly explained. Anyways, Kai was definitely a good guy. It didn’t take him very long to acknowledge the seriousness of what Hiiragi was doing and he just went along with it at some point. Also when he immediately confessed to being the person who came with the idea of making the video about Reina, he must have been so done with another excruciating day of discussions, poor guy. But I think it was a very major element for his character development that he was confronted with the fact that his buddies really wanted him to rely on them. All in all, I loved the fact that there were so many guys crying in this show, it gave me hope for humanity. Kai really learned his lesson and even though it definitely softened him, it still didn’t change who he was and I think it’s really great that he kept that consistency in his acting performance.
I need to mention Tomita Miu because I’ve analyzed her performance before in Switched. She was one of the few actresses that I’d seen in a drama before. I LOVED Hana. She was such a funny, lovable and relatable character and I was so happy that for once, there wasn’t ever a single mention of her being ‘bigger’. Honestly, in Asian dramas, when someone is ‘bigger’, it’s always pointed out at some point. But in Hana’s case, that was not important. She also wasn’t an underdog, she wasn’t bullied, she had enough friends and was liked by everyone. It was a very big contrast to her original character in Switched, and I really loved seeing this side of her. As I mentioned before, her infatuation with Sunaga threw me every single time, and also how they ended up together and during the reunion it was revealed that she’d confessed 12 times before he finally caved. I really loved her character and think she also got more than enough opportunity to show different sides to her acting. Go Tomita Miu!
I didn’t know Kamishiraishi Moka, but what I found so interesting in this show was that, even though all her scenes were flashbacks, it still felt like she was there. She was still a part of the class, her empty desk an eternal reminder of that. She still very much felt like an active part of the show, even during the hostage situation when she wasn’t even physically there.
I couldn’t help but feel that Reina was really lonely. Everyone at school looked at her as some sort of perfect human being, and when she tried to make friends with someone they’d also put her on a pedestal. I think Karen and Kakeru might have been the only people that didn’t act like that, especially Kakeru, who really liked her for who she was and not for her skills and reputation at school and swimming. It was painful to see how she kept being let down by her friends, she really just wanted a genuine friend who liked her for who she was and didn’t have so many expectations of her based on her reputation. She knew herself that she wasn’t a perfect and strong person, and she wanted people to acknowledge that. It was heartbreaking to see her break free of Sakura’s grasp as she was trying to save her – she had really reached her limit. On the other hand, although she was hurt by her classmates, she never truly blamed anyone for what happened to her. Heck, she even blamed herself for neglecting Kaho and writing to Sakura that they shouldn’t be friends anymore. It was scary that so many shady people had their marks on her, too. Like, that gang that just came to seek her out and beat up Kakeru just because they thought he was her boyfriend? She really became a victim of something beyond her power, even involving a gang leader that she didn’t even know of. I think it was really powerful when Hiiragi urged his students to understand that what happened to Reina could have happened to any one of them.
I’ve only seen Imada Mio before in Hana Nochi Hare, that’s probably why she seemed familiar to me. I liked Yuzuki’s character because she wasn’t a stereotypical kind of female character. On the one hand, I believe she was considered to be quite popular, she had many friends and she was aiming to become a model. On the other hand, she was also someone you shouldn’t mess with. She spoke up against the guys many times, not scared of anything. This was only confirmed after the revelation that she was actually dating Berumuzu’s leader, but she was still brave enough to sell him out, because she saw that it was not right what was done to Reina. Even though she didn’t even specifically like Reina, she wouldn’t wish that upon her and that made her a very humane character. I loved the scene where Hiiragi told her that she didn’t do anything wrong. I thought her character made a real impact in this show, as it didn’t just make her the scary popular girl, but you could also see her bonding with her friends throughout the whole thing.
The thing is, up until now I’ve always had a bit of an aversion against Fukuhara Haruka. I only know her from Good Morning Call but she kind of annoyed me there, to be honest. I think it’s mostly her voice and the fact that I can always see that she’s acting. Of course they’re all acting, but she just has it plasted on her a bit more obviously. And in the beginning, I also felt that from her in this show. She was initially highlighted because she was part of a couple and her boyfriend was the first person to get ‘killed’ by Hiiragi, but after they were reunited and her whole issue with Tsuboi came along, I’ve come to change my mind about her a bit. The confrontation part, where she’s literally pushed against the wall while Hiiragi was screaming at her and she just stood there and cried, her silent acting was really good. Probably better than any of her dialogue parts. (I found a great picture of this scene on MyDramaList, so I’ll just add it for reference.) It was the first time I saw her so genuinely expressing emotion without adding something extra to it. I found it interesting to see her as part of this show as I’d taken her for more of a typical romantic comedy actress, but that in itself was enough to make her stand out. In the end, I have to say I saw a new side of her and it has made me realize that she might be a better actress than I initially gathered.
Finally, I just want to give a shoutout to a couple more students that were mostly side characters but still really touched me in a way. First, Mori Nana, who played Runa. She really hadn’t been featured as much before, but when the episode came with her and Soma in which they revealed that the video was fake, her acting was so realistic I almost forgot it was acting. It really felt like how someone in this situation would actually talk and express her emotions, as if it wasn’t scripted, so that was amazing.
And then there was Sakumoto Takara, who played Kota, Kai’s closest friend who felt so hurt when he found out his friend had been carrying all those burdens by himself and who just came to hug him after his whole involvement with the gang was revealed. That was true friendship right there, and I remember just feeling so grateful that this series allowed such sincere expressions of emotions and feelings between men without it becoming something ‘soft or feminine’. And I just generally really liked Kota’s vibe, and also how he kept trying to get with Runa and she kept brushing him off, lol. My guy was just going for it.
Finally, I want to give one final shoutout to my boy Fuwa Kodai who was a sobbing mess throughout the whole show. Seriously, in every scene he was crying and also during the graduation special. I just wanted to give him a big hug.
Here’s to crying men/men showing emotion in Asian dramas!! I’m all here for it!
I don’t think I’ve seen Shiina Kippei in anything before, but I liked that they made him so sympathetic to the case. He was really handling from personal feelings, he’d lost a promising student and decided to become a police officer to stop these things from happening again. I think that he, if he’d also been in the loop of Hiiragi’s plan, would’ve agreed to help him out as well. He may have looked like any grumpy old man, but he definitely had his heart in the right place and I liked that after hearing Hiiragi out, he just went to help the students get through the obstruction. He was a nice and dependable character and I wish he could’ve stayed on the case through the end (he was taken off it at some point, I believe after they gave the wrong answer to an assignment).
Otomo Kohei also looked familiar to me, but I’ve also not seen anything with him before. It was a nice surprise that Igarashi was Hiiragi’s accomplice, and he managed to keep it up for quite some time (I didn’t like the guy who replaced him, lol). It was also funny that they made him to be Fumika’s biological father, but I wonder if that was just to give him a reason to work along with the plan, otherwise they would’ve had to make up a different reason why Sagara Takahiko would’ve known him. Anyways, it was good as long as he stood behind Hiiragi’s intentions. I think he was a nice character as well.
I’ve seen Tanabe Seiichi in several things before, he also has a very familiar face. I know him from Kimi ha Petto, 11-nin mo Iru!, Higashino Keigo Mysteries, Dear Sister and Boku, Unmei no Hito desu. I feel like he always plays sympathetic characters, so it was funny to see him as a two-faced character for a change. Someone who would smile and honestly not admit to doing anything wrong while he was literally commiting a crime. It gave a new layer to him as an actor, in my opinion, it was interesting to see. I’m glad that even though it seemed so unlikely that he would realize his own mistake, he did come to Fumika in the end to apologize, and with that one of Hiiragi’s objectives was concluded, at least, to make Takechi realize the crime he’d committed.
I realize now that I’ve seen Tsuchimura Kaho before in Koi ga Heta demo Ikitemasu, and I remember watching this but it’s also as if I unlocked a new memory, lol. Anyways, Fumika looked familiar. I was really wondering what had happened to her, and it was funny how in the beginning we as the viewers were also being led to believe different things, because in the beginning it really felt as if Hiiragi himself had been some sort of crazy abusive boyfriend or something. Even her father initially told the police that Hiiragi was a terrible person. In the end, that was all part of the plan, of course, because Hiiragi needed to be made into an enemy in order to get the whole nation’s attention. Anyways, I liked that Fumika wasn’t just written to be a helpless woman stuck at home, she really wanted to help however she could, but her father wouldn’t let her talk to the police. She managed to get away relatively unscathed as in, she didn’t have to lose her life, but you could still see how much it scarred her nonetheless. You may not see it on someone from the outside, but sometimes wounds of the mind are even more serious than physical wounds. Physical wounds can heal with some time and ointment, but there’s no bandaid to paste on such an untouchable thing as the mind.
I’ve seen Yajima Kenichi in Sunao ni Narenakute and Tantei no Tantei, so that’s probably what I recognize him from. I found his character really enigmatic, for some reason. I guess it’s just because he also held his true feelings about the case a secret at first. He had been an accomplice from the start, he supported Hiiragi fully but he also wanted to keep his daughter out of it by telling the police he had nothing to do with Hiiragi. He was a good ally to have, he ended up posting several important videos to Mind Voice on the instruction of Hiiragi himself. From that point on, when it was all revealed to be part of a bigger plan in which multiple people were involved, I became really intrigued of how it would be concluded. I also found him a really good fit for the director of superhero franchise, I don’t know why but his face looks like he could be character in one of those things himself, haha.
Okay, so now that I’ve concluded my cast comments, let me just conclude my thoughts. As I’ve already mentioned several times before, I thought this show was really good all in all. I was intrigued from the start and the deeper it went, the better it got. I love how they still managed to keep it light in-between the tense parts, because those bits for me were a constant reminder of that everything would be okay in the end, that Hiiragi wasn’t going to really harm anyone, and that everything would play out fine. Also, it made it more enjoyable rather than keeping it angsty and intense from beginning to end. The balance of light and heavy was what kept me on the edge of my seat. I remember that part when all the students kind of let their guard down after realizing they weren’t in any actual danger and they got their phones back etc, but then Hiiragi still announced to the police that he would kill 10 students if they got the assignment wrong and it was like, ‘…wait, we’ve established that he’s kidding, right?’ Hiiragi was just so unpredictable. Even when it would feel safe one moment, he could still snap or lash out the next and that really kept everyone on their toes.
The structure was really good, and it also had some surprising elements in it. For example, when an episode suddenly started from Takechi’s perspective, or when episode 9 suddenly started with the reunion a year later, even though we were still in the middle of the hostage situation. I thought those were interesting choices, but the dots were always connected by the end of the episode or the next one. I liked how small references and foreshadowings were made to trivial things that would only start making sense later – like, the fact that they thought all these tiny details out and came back to explain them later was really clever writing.
I liked that every single character was highlighted, among the students I really felt like no one was less than the other. I’ve never seen a high school setting drama in which every single student was given a proper character and position within the class, not just as filler characters. I think that was a really original and challenging setup, to really create a class of 29 students who all had to get their moment of redemption in one way or another. There was a really good balance of character types, from loud to more quiet students, from fighters to observers. Hiiragi treated every single student equally, no matter whether it was a boy or a girl, he treated them like people, and this was sometimes really merciless but otherwise it really felt like he saw them as the proper human beings that they would turn out to be after truly understanding his lesson. The graduation special just felt like a cherry on top of the cake that was the main show.
I was really impressed, I had not expected such a deeply layered show with such a powerful message at the end. And I also appreciate how it didn’t idealize anything at the end, after everything was concluded. The truth is that no matter who preaches this, and we all know it’s true, it will probably never change. People will always keep hiding behind their screens, they will always keep commenting hateful things without thinking twice about it or feel any guilt towards the person they’re targeting. So I find it promising enough when it manages to reach at least one person. It all starts with one person.
So yeah, I stand behind my ranking of this series, it just got better and better and it really has been one of the best shows I’ve watched in a while, especially within this year. I would recommend it very much. It has a great balance of psychological drama and comedy, it fits right into my alley. And I’m definitely keeping an eye out for more Suda Masaki dramas because this guy is a flipping genius.
So now I’m going back to something lighter again, there’s a limit to how much psychological heavy stuff I can handle in a row, haha. Anyways, I hope I was able to make this another worthwhile review and I’ll try to finish a couple more reviews before the end of the year. In the meantime, let’s not forget to take with us the message that 3-A provided us with.
Let’s keep thinking clearly and critically, let’s use our imagination and not let ourselves be swept away with the Mind(less) Voice(s), both online and in our heads. Whenever we come across a situation that seems off, let’s not judge too quickly.
“Let’s Think!” 😉
