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.
Chugakusei Nikki
(中学聖日記 / Chuugakusei Nikki / Junior High School (Hijiri) Diary)
MyDramaList rating: 6.5/10
Hello everyone and welcome to a new review! When my Spin-the-Wheel app picked out this series, I was initially very excited because it had been at the top of my watchlist, meaning that it had been there for a long time. I love switching between older and newer shows, so it was nice to get to watch something I’d been looking forward to for a while. Having said that, I have to admit that this show put an end to my wholesome-drama-streak (which lasted four shows) and took me back to getting frustrated out of my mind, lol. Before I started on it, I saw it had really high ratings and positive reviews on MyDramaList, but I guess it just didn’t hit me the way it was intended. As such, this review will probably be written from an unpopular opinion. I’m writing these reviews from my mindset and my personal watching experience, so I always try to stay true to my own opinions. That’s part of the reason why I started writing reviews. Anyways, I still want to share my views on this, so let’s get started!
Chūgakusei Nikki is a TBS J-Drama with eleven episodes of just under an hour each. I watched it in full with okay English subtitles on KissKH, which for some reason keeps switching domains (while watching this it changed from .do to .co to .is and back to .do). The story is based on a manga series by the same title, created by Kawakami Junko. It’s about a young and aspiring teacher, Suenaga Hijiri (played by Arimura Kasumi), and her ten year younger student Kuroiwa Akira (played by Mizukami Koushi). At the beginning of the story, Hijiri has just started as a homeroom teacher at Koboshi Junior High, in the region of Tokyo. As becoming a teacher has always been her dream, she couldn’t be happier, even if it means being apart from her boyfriend Kawai Shotaro (played by Machida Keita), who lives and works in Osaka. Being as young and pretty as she is, she immediately starts attracting attention from her teenage students and this even leads to gossip blogs and rumors that involve her and her love life. Despite this and the reprimandations she gets from the school staff (because of course she did something to cause it) Hijiri firmly holds onto her teaching dream and thoroughly enjoys her job. However, things change when one of her students, the initially slightly problematic fifteen-year old Akira, confesses his love to her. While at first she’s just happy that he doesn’t hate her and she doesn’t take his confession as more than a compliment/innocent teenage crush, she gradually finds herself noticing him more and more, and even starts feeling jealous when she sees him with girls from his class. Aware that these feelings aren’t appropriate, she tries to push them back time and time again. She even accepts Shotaro’s marriage proposal so she can start mentally preparing herself for their wedding, as a distraction. But the wavering of her feelings doesn’t go unnoticed, and when she ultimately gives in to Akira’s advances one night, she immediately gets the brunt of it through Akira’s mother Aiko (played by Natsukawa Yui) and Shotaro, who she ends up separating from since she can’t bring herself to enter a marriage with him like this.
The story then jumps three years into the future, to when Akira is eighteen and Hijiri is working at a small local kindergarten outside of Tokyo. But if she thought her taking her distance from the past would be enough, she was dead wrong. The situation from three years ago keeps coming back, people keep seeking her out and confronting her with what happened between her and Akira. Akira himself manages to track her down, which brings his mother to her doorstep again with threats that become harsher and harsher. Even when Hijiri decides to throw away everything she has to admit her lingering feelings for Akira, will things work out? Will their love overcome society’s judgement?
As mentioned in my introduction, this will be a bit of a negative review since I have a lot of frustrations about this show. I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but that’s just what I do: I share what I felt while watching a show, even if those feelings weren’t great. I always try to see the good in things, but sometimes the annoyance just takes the upper hand and there’s nothing I can change about that.
Just to be clear, despite my qualms with the story I do think this show had a genuine message and very good acting. As such, my issues don’t lie with the cast or the cinematographic quality whatsoever, just with how the story was structured and how certain plots felt off or odd to me.
All in all, I appreciated the concept. A forbidden love between a teacher and an underaged student, who would keep fighting to be together no matter what odds they faced, either until their love got accepted by their respective families or until they eloped together to get away from society’s disapproving eyes. We’ve seen the classics, love conquers all. In most cases, we see the main leads gradually fall in love and deepen their feelings for each other, until it reaches the boiling point of sacrificing things to be together. The reason why shows like Hana Yori Dango – which deals with social class rather than an age difference, but still – are so popular is that they first build up the relationship between the main leads so well. They go through all kinds of stuff and face countless situations that bring them together, building up their relationship until the viewer can’t help but root for them to the end, and then they introduce the obstacle in the shape of a disapproving parent or other party.
In my opinion, this is where this series already missed the mark. The first part, in which the two main leads fall for each other, spans a period of five months, from April to August of 2015. That is to say, Akira’s crush on Hijiri starts in April, but it takes another while for Hijiri to realize her feelings for Akira. In other words: these two have known each other for only five months, and one party only develops feelings within three or four of those. Within this timespan, they only have a handful of one-on-one moments, which are mostly overcast by tension and, in Hijiri’s case, extreme awkwardness. That night with the fireworks in August is the first and only time that Hijiri allows Akira to come close and kiss her – besides that, they’ve never even held hands or hugged before. We don’t know what Hijiri was going to do about Akira after that kiss, because they were immediately cornered by a bunch of people and didn’t even get to talk about the ‘what now?’, but it’s very likely that she would’ve brushed it off as a mistake or pretended it never happened.
The point that I’m trying to make here is: apart from that kiss, nothing ever really happened between them, physically. They barely even knew each other outside of school. The way I saw it, Akira developed a crush on his teacher and Hijiri simply started to notice him more when she became aware of his feelings.
It reminded me of a passage from one of the books I’ve translated:
‘Receiving affection from others causes a psychological response to reciprocate, which we call: “reciprocal attraction”.’ – Before I Knew I Loved You, Kawaguchi Toshikazu
This is from a chapter about a boy who starts noticing a girl after hearing from someone that she likes him. As soon as he becomes aware of it, he keeps meeting her eyes and ultimately, almost inevitably, falls in love with her as well. I’m not saying that this always happens, or that someone’s confession always makes the other person fall in love with them, but to me, this is what the ‘buildup’ between Akira and Hijiri felt like in the first part. It felt like Hijiri got awkward because of Akira’s feelings for her and desperately tried to distance herself from him. Still, she caught herself becoming interested in him, and hearing that he allegedly started dating a girl from his class made her think: ‘huh, I thought he liked me?’ which was a normal reaction. From the ‘development’ – if you can even call it that – they’d had up to that point, I found it really odd that Hijiri’s feelings had apparently already grown so strong that she felt that she had to call off her engagement. Were those three months of suppressed feelings really worth more than her relationship of many years, with someone she actually saw herself marrying? I couldn’t keep up with it. The ‘buildup’ between Hijiri and Akira in that first part alone just felt incomplete to me, and it baffled me that they based all the shite Hijiri got in the following three years on that short period of interaction between them. I literally spent the entire series wondering why everyone was being so dramatic over something that didn’t even happen, and more importantly why Hijiri went along with it as if she’d actually done something criminal.
Hijiri had never even acted on her feelings, so when everyone started throwing words at her like ‘sexual misconduct’, I just couldn’t fathom what was happening. Admittedly, this kind of cursed the series for me from the start. I couldn’t get into the dramatics of it all, because I simply didn’t feel like anything serious enough had happened between the two. It became excruciating to watch Hijiri receive shitstorm after shitstorm, as if she was some kind of pdf-file that had seduced and abused a minor, even though Akira was the one who initiated all of it and Hijiri had always tried to keep her distance as much as possible. Hijiri never once acted on her feelings for him, she kept suppressing her own heart until it drove her miserable, and yet no one ever acknowledged the fact that she had to go through the worst of it, not even her own parents. One look at Hijiri’s face during the times she expressed herself in the most sincere way ever should have been enough to invoke at least some amount of sympathy for her, because it was clear that it was literally killing her inside. But no, she was made out to be the villain in everyone’s story. What’s worse, Akira’s attempts to ‘convince his mother’ and ‘fight for their love’ only got her into more and more trouble, while he wasn’t even aware of it.
Having said that, I don’t mean to say that I was against the relationship between Hijiri and Akira. If anything, I wished they could’ve just been happy together. Love doesn’t differentiate between age and gender. I personally know a couple that’s 26 years apart, and they are just enjoying their time together to the fullest without making it a thing. Of course it matters that I’m from Europe, where things are often more lenient than in countries that still have a lot of conservative standards, and I agree that talking about a ten-year age gap between two adults sounds less bad than one between an adult and a minor – 35 and 45 sounds very different than 15 and 25. But seeing how sincere both of them were, and the way everything happened through mutual consent, I didn’t see anything wrong with it.
In fact, I think there were some pretty good points to it. As happy as Hijiri was (or thought she was) with Shotaro, I found it eye-opening to hear how she actually felt about him. From her monologue about what she liked about Shotaro, it became clear that he was someone she’d always looked up to and who made her strive to improve herself. In her case, this meant devoting herself to her dream of becoming a teacher. As admirable as this was, she couldn’t deny the silent disapproval of both sets of parents that she chose to pursue a career of her own instead of sticking with Shotaro. After all, he would take care of her. As it happens, I’m currently preparing to translate a novel about women struggling in a society built by and for men. Women are expected to quit their jobs and give up their own (trivial) dreams once they marry and give birth. As well as things seemed to go between Hijiri and Shotaro, this was like an unspoken truth that Hijiri kept having to face up to.
On the other hand, as limited as her interactions with Akira were, he made her feel like she was good the way she was. In his eyes, she should just continue teaching if that was her dream and didn’t need to change anything about herself. Sure, this can be seen as a slightly naive perspective that suited a teenage boy in love. But I feel like that’s what they were going for, and that’s probably what was meant to strengthen her feelings for Akira. In that regard, Akira’s support may have actually been better for her than Shotaro’s, because it later became clear that Shotaro had also been holding back a lot of frustrations towards her.
So yeah, it’s not that I disapproved of Hijiri and Akira as a couple. It’s just that, in hindsight, this series was just a rollercoaster of drama and shitstorms about a ‘couple’ that didn’t even spend that much (screen)time together. If you think about it, they didn’t even communicate that much. It’s only when they end up spending some time together on Yamaejima that they finally learn some trivia about one another. Everyone made so much fuss about them, but when they actually spent time together, they were as awkward with each other as ever. This is what made it very hard for me to actually ‘feel’ the love between them. Throughout the series, they share two kisses in total, both within the context of it still being wrong and forbidden. All this drama about two people who haven’t even spent that much time together. Much ado about nothing, if you will.
What possibly irked me the most was that it literally ended with Akira coming to find Hijiri in Thailand after he came of age. Are you telling me that it all just came down to him becoming an adult before his mother allowed him to be with Hijiri? Then why the heck was it necessary to drag out such a dramatic plot for three, heck, eight whole years, including the final five-year jump? Why couldn’t they have solved the issue from the start by saying: ‘Akira, the fact that you’re still a minor makes this legally problematic, so you’re only allowed to see her after you become an adult and finish college’? I mean sure, that would’ve made it a very short series, but at least it would’ve been reasonable and understandable. Wrapping it up like that, after almost a decade of misery and ‘we aren’t allowed to be together’ just made the whole main story feel pointless. Basically, they could’ve just agreed to wait until he came of age from the start, because apparently that was the whole issue here.
I guess the intended wholesomeness and beauty of it just went over my head. Of course it’s a drama series, but I never like it when the drama is disproportionate within the context, or when the ending downright defeats its whole purpose. This series just made a mountain of a molehill in how it straightout condemned the relationship between these two. It brought me back to Hirugao, in which two people were close to being ARRESTED for ‘having an affair’, even though they only met up a couple of times and hugged ONCE before already deciding to call it quits. The way these people were treated like actual criminals for developing feelings for another person than their spouse was INSANE. I’ll keep saying it: feelings do whatever they want. I personally know someone who’d been married for ten years and then suddenly met someone who turned their world upside down and ended up marrying them instead. You can’t blame someone for developing romantic feelings for another person. It was straightout painful to watch how Hijiri was subjected to such harsh treatment, even though she would’ve gotten rid of those feelings herself if she could. In fact, she did do everything she could to distance herself, she took it upon herself to move away and avoid contact, but it kept finding its way back to her, causing her to get shitstormed all over again.
As much as I felt for her, what made it all the more unbearable was the fact that she didn’t stand up for herself. She just accepted it, even agreed to having done something unforgiveable, punishing herself by quitting her job because she ‘didn’t have the right to be a teacher’. She made herself the biggest martyr in the history of J-Dramas, and I hated that. I can’t even remember how many times I yelled at her to grow a backbone and not just allow people to treat her like that. It was always others that stood up for her, or that pushed her into action, it never came from herself. That was really frustrating. Even when Akira ‘broke up’ with her over the phone with such a pathetic excuse after everything she’d been through to finally admit her feelings for him, she just accepted it. She didn’t even get mad, she didn’t even consider confronting him to find out what happened, she just smiled through her tears like: ‘I guess that’s youngsters for you.’ GIRL. As much as I felt bad for everything she had to face on her own, because even her friends and parents turned against her, she needed to take control of her own life and grow a freaking spine, man. Her passive attitude towards everything only made it more frustrating to watch. She literally had to be tricked into meeting Akira at his campus and encouraged to confront him to go: ‘Oh, right, yes maybe I should talk to him’, like… Come on, man. She didn’t deserve what she got, but she didn’t do much to defend herself against it, either. It was like watching the female lead from Douse Mou Nigerarenai all over again. The few times where she did speak up were the most impactful moments ever. That’s when you could see her qualities as a teacher the most as well, so it’s a shame there weren’t more of those moments.
On the other hand, something can also be said about Akira. I get it, he was young and passionate. In contrast to Hijiri, who remained incredibly passive throughout everything except for her constant moving to new places, Akira was the type that moved before he could think. He was contrastingly impulsive, which ultimately got Hijiri in even more trouble. What bothered me about Akira’s situation was that his mom withheld every kind of blame from him under the notion that he was still a minor. He was still a minor so he couldn’t take responsibility for what happened, he was still a minor so he couldn’t be blamed for anything. It was all Hijiri’s fault because she should’ve known better, being an adult. Even though Akira was the one who kept seeking Hijiri out, it was Hijiri’s fault for ‘still being on his mind’, even when she kept moving away again and again to put literal, geographical distance between them. In turn, Akira was so immersed in his own plan to convince his mom by obeying her instructions to focus on his studies, expecting her to actually soften once he’d done what she’d asked, that he didn’t even think about how his behavior kept negatively influencing Hijiri. Every time he went to look for her, it would get back to his mom, who would then pay Hijiri a visit herself to threaten her, over and over again. In that sense, he was still very immature indeed. He just acted on his feelings, as naive and youthful as he was, but even after seeing what it had done to Hijiri, he kept claiming that he wanted to be with her, making things even harder for her.
Also, the fact that he just ‘broke up’ with her over the phone like that was complete BS. You’re seriously telling me that this boy, after clinging onto Hijiri for three freaking years, never able to let his feelings for her go, just needed ONE word from Shotaro to make up a fake excuse to cut ties with her for good, after everything Hijiri had been through? She’d JUST admitted to him and his mother that she loved him, she’d thrown away the last things, determined to finally stop lying to herself, and THAT’S when he goes: ‘actually, my feelings have cooled down’?! Even if it was a blatant lie, even if he meant to protect her from giving up her dream as a teacher, how freaking DARE he do it like that. He could’ve just brought it up instead, ‘I heard that you gave up your dream to be with me, that’s not how I want this to go’. Because as soon as Hijiri confronted him (that is, after she was pushed to confront him with it), he immediately admitted that that’s what it had been about, and not that his feelings had gone cold. So yeah, for a couple that allegedly ‘fought so hard’ to be together, they did a pretty lousy job at communicating. In fact, as soon as they finally ‘got together’, as soon as Hijiri finally confessed, they started out by lying to each other. Great start, guys, I can just FEEL your sincerity through the screen… Not.
So yeah, all in all there were a lot of things that I found very frustrating to watch. The lack of buildup between the leads in the first part led me to be in a constant state of ‘what’s all the fuss about?’ and the way both leads dealt with what was thrown at them also didn’t feel right to me. As much as I wanted to wholeheartedly root for Hijiri and Akira, I couldn’t help but feel like they weren’t ‘one’ with each other. They spent most of the show separated, barely keeping contact. The ‘development’ between them just wasn’t enough for me to feel their love, and this caused me to be emotionally disconnected from them, even through all the tears and the dramatic music. Which is a pity, because I love being swept up in the drama and feeling all the sympathy in the world for the main leads. In this case, I just couldn’t get into it.
Now that I’ve already covered most of my thoughts on the main leads and their relationship, I need to go over a couple of supporting characters.
First of all: Akira’s mother Aiko, the character with possibly the most disappointing development, if you ask me. I remember so distinctly how cool she was at first. I literally even uttered the words ‘I love this woman’ when she saw right through Runa’s accusations of Hijiri’s involvement with Akira. Of course, it didn’t help that Aiko found out something actually was happening between the two right after she’d stood up for her. Still, the way she turned on Hijiri and kept messing with her even after she moved away and told her countless times that she wouldn’t meet Akira again, was awful. At some point I couldn’t even look at that wretched squinting face of hers anymore, her anger towards Hijiri was so exaggerated that it just became annoying. This woman literally went to every single person from Hijiri’s circle, from Shotaro to her mother, to express her concerns about Hijiri’s relationship with her son. People who weren’t even directly involved, if you count that problematic mother from Hijiri’s second school. She kept claiming that Hijiri continued to make trouble, while in fact she was the one who kept bringing back all the trouble. She was the one who couldn’t let it go, and wanted to ruin Hijiri’s life to the point that she wouldn’t even be allowed to teach anymore. As if she would just fall in love with any new student at any new school, even at a freaking kindergarten. Aiko treated her like a serial molestor and it really got out of hand. She ultimately even sent the police after her for ‘kidnapping’ Akira, when he’d been the one dragging Hijiri away. It all just went so far, for nothing. I also hated the way she gaslit Hijiri. She cornered her to the point where Hijiri’s mom went on her knees to beg her not to pull charges and she’d go: ‘Hijiri, look what you’re making your mother do’. Mind you, she did the same thing to Akira. After everything she did to Hijiri, when she finally got her to sign that written agreement, she went to Akira, saying: ‘Look what you made Hijiri do, imagine how she must’ve felt signing this.’ No, ma’am. YOU imagine how she must have felt, all those years. Hijiri took responsibility for her actions, moved away, even quit being a teacher to appease Aiko time and time again, and still there wasn’t even a shred of sympathy in this woman, not a single moment of ‘Oh wait, maybe I’m being too harsh on her’. She even admitted in the end that the only thing that ‘broke her heart’ about this whole situation was the idea that Akira would resent her for it. Not even that she would’ve kept her son from his true love, no, that she would get treated badly for it. The revelation that she herself had cheated on her own husband before made her even more hypocritical. As much as I liked her at first, this woman lost every shred of respect from me.
I honestly didn’t think Hijiri’s mom Satomi (played by Nakajima Tomoko) was much better, although she was at least able to allow her daughter back in the end. From the first moment we met her, I instantly disliked how she kept pushing Hijiri to only ever give favorable answers. Even after Hijiri told her she’d fallen in love with her student, Satomi just told her to marry Shotaro and move to Osaka anyway, because he would protect (and distract) her. Instead of standing up for her daughter, she just urged her to do whatever she could to appease the situation, to appease Aiko, even if that meant lying to herself. She only ever expressed disappointment in her daughter. I couldn’t help but compare it to the mother-daughter bond in You Are My Spring, how wholesome and warm that was and how the female lead started crying when her mom turned up at her door, as if she’d sensed something was up with her. This was the complete opposite, no warmth whatsoever. Hijiri’s mother literally came by to tell her how disappointed she was in her, and how she didn’t have to come back to her parents’ house anymore. Thanks for the support, mom. At least she softened a little bit when Hijiri called her to say she was going to start afresh as a Japanese language teacher in Thailand. It seemed like she was okay with it as long as Hijiri removed herself from the situation, but I definitely would’ve liked a bit more motherly support from her. Hijiri was literally left with no one.
Random side note: I never actually encountered the name Hijiri until I read All The Lovers in the Night by Kawakami Mieko last year, and I even thought it was a last name then. I recently saw the movie adaptation (beautiful, made me cry), which reminded me of the name and now I happened on this drama, with a female lead named Hijiri. Isn’t it interesting how, once you encounter something for the first time, it suddenly starts popping up all around you?
Moving on, another person that kind of annoyed me was the principal from Hijiri’s first school, Shioya Michiyo (played by Natsuki Mari). She was established as a typical elderly and old-fashioned lady, with her exaggerated raspy voice and way of squinting, but the way she immediately started judging and gaslighting Hijiri immediately rubbed me the wrong way. If you were a principal and you discovered a blog about one of your staff members, presumably written by a student in secret to slander them, wouldn’t your first response be to find that student and make them stop? I immediately had to think of School 2017, where something similar happened, like some mystery student kept writing blog posts and the whole school was trying to find out who it was. Not in this case. Even before the situation with Akira started, Hijiri was already being victim-blamed and gaslit like crazy. Madam Principal literally told her that she should be more careful to evoke such actions from her students, and that it would probably help if she stopped wearing such ‘feminine’ clothing (they were literally wearing the same length skirt). No action to find out who was writing and spreading the posts, whatsoever. What the actual freak. Even when she initially rejected Hijiri’s resignation after the kiss incident, it never felt as if she was on Hijiri’s side. While she might have been rooting for her – maybe this was her way of showing ‘tough love’? – she’d always been judgemental towards her and never actually undertook any action when it came to protecting her image. When she made one more surprise appearance in the end and told Aiko that she’d started a consultation against bullying, my first reaction was: ‘Really? This woman?’ Maybe she always regretted what happened to Hijiri and wanted to make up for it, but based on what we’d seen from her in the first part, I personally didn’t feel like she made a very convincing consultant when it came to bullying. Maybe I’m being too harsh here, but that’s just how the series portrayed her in my opinion.
And then there was Runa-chan. Iwasaki Runa (played by Ono Rina) was Akira’s classmate who had a crush on him from the start. Her jealousy towards Hijiri took on pretty nasty shapes at first, to the point where she even went to Aiko to spout slander about how Hijiri seduced Akira – luckily Aiko immediately saw it for jealousy on her part. But what I did appreciate about Runa was that she reflected on herself and actually felt ashamed about her actions. She was at least introspective enough to realize that she was acting ugly, even though she couldn’t stop her jealousy over the fact that Akira only had eyes for Hijiri. I had to admire Runa’s determination though, because she took every opportunity she got to try and make things work with Akira, even when she knew he would never feel the same way. In the process, it was nice to see their friendship deepen, even after he rejected her time and time again. At least Runa had some good character development. I think she can be forgiven for her actions in the sense that she was still a teenager struggling with her unanswered crush. Honestly, in the end Aiko became twice as nasty as Runa, which says a lot. As much as it kept bothering Runa when Hijiri’s whereabouts after moving away went viral again, in the end she just accepted that she couldn’t get between them, and she even went to tell Hijiri when Akira disappeared from home, which ended up driving them back together. I honestly thought Runa was a very realistic and well-written character. As nasty as she could be, she reflected on herself in a way most adults didn’t even seem capable of, and she ended up accepting things for the way they were, wishing Akira the best and moving on with her life.
There were some other classmates that made regular appearances, such as Runa’s best friend Atsugi (Nishimoto Marin) and Akira’s friend and ‘class clown’ Kokonoe Junichiro (played by Wakabayashi Jiei). As much of a jester as he was made out to be, I actually appreciated Kokonoe – he seemed to be the only one from Koboshi who genuinely rooted for Akira and Hijiri from the start, instead of judging them. It was nice that he kept popping up, even years later, because this also showed how strong his friendship with Akira was. He was also a bit of very welcome comical relief, giving some breathing space in-between all the drama going on. The only other classmate that I didn’t like, apart from Ebihara Michiru (Kawaguchi Kazuna) who wrote that stupid blog about Hijiri, was Kosaka Yu (Nakata Seina). I don’t know what was up with this girl, but she was one of those characters who just popped up out of nowhere and started poking around in stuff that had nothing to do with her. I hated the way she just randomly called Akira to tell him his friends had found out Hijiri’s whereabouts and were keeping it from him, even though Runa was working up the courage to tell him. She evoked such a ‘who even are you and why are you getting involved in this?!’ energy, it aggravated me a lot.
Speaking of getting aggravated, the arc about Tachibana Ayano and her neglectful mother did a lot to me as well. Ayano (Ishida Rion) was a girl from Hijiri’s kindergarten class (after the three-year time jump) who clearly didn’t have a great home situation. She lived alone with her single mom, who kept neglecting her. She’d show up to school without lunch, her mom never came to pick her up and whenever stuff needed to be signed, for field trips for example, the teachers always needed to pay a home visit since her mom just couldn’t be reached. There were a lot of rumors going on about her mom, how she was a homewrecker and kept taking home with different men. Honestly, I had hoped for some kind of comradery between her and Hijiri. It was clear how much Hijiri related to her situation of being succumbed to slandering rumors, and I guess that was also the main reason for her to approach her.
However, Tachibana Miwa (Murakawa Eri) was not waiting for such comradery at all. If anything, she just decided on a random Tuesday to dig up dirt on Hijiri, because she kept ‘meddling’ in how she should treat her daughter, and started BLACKMAILING her, holding her past of ‘sexual misconduct with a teenage student at her previous school’ over her head. It was so obvious that she was only using it to deflect from the fact that she was neglecting her own child, but again Hijiri did NOTHING to defend herself. Seriously, I was so happy when her friend and colleague stood up for her and literally told Miwa to stop avoiding her own problems, because that’s exactly what I was thinking. I just wished Hijiri could’ve said it herself. In fact, even after Miwa finally eased up toward her, Hijiri straightout ADMITTED to the entire school staff that the rumors were true, that she ‘had caused trouble with a student at her previous school’. I just couldn’t understand why she kept giving such vague explanations that only made others misunderstand the situation more. Like I said, I felt horrible for her, but I can’t deny that she didn’t do squat to stand up for herself.
As much as this arc annoyed me – why was it even necessary to make Miwa and Aiko meet, just to collaborate in their respective disdain towards Hijiri? – I have to admit that the ending of this part actually made me cry. When Miwa finally came around and turned up at Ayano’s recital, it brought a genuine tear to my eye. Just seeing her admit to her own mistakes and expressing her love for her daughter, promising that she’d work on herself and come back for her… And then little Ayano being like: “You’re a mess, but you’re my mom and I still love you”. 😭 That was genuinely heartfelt and touching. As frustrated as I was while watching, this moment actually caught me off guard and made me tear up without expecting it.
Moving on to some characters that I liked, let’s discuss Chizuru. Niwa Chizuru (played by Tomochika Yukiko) is established from the get-go as a senpai and good friend of Hijiri’s. Although it remained unclear to me how they actually met, Chizuru is often shown at Hijiri’s house after she moves to Tokyo in the first part. She’s also the first person to give her sincere advice on her feelings for Akira, although she’s definitely on the side of ‘this is not right and you should stop before it gets out of hand’. While I did feel like she was a bit harsh on Hijiri when the latter decided to quit her job again and be honest about her feelings for Akira, I can’t help but think that she was a very good ‘tough love’ kind of friend to Hijiri. The way she first scolded her and then still came back to hug her, said everything.
Having said that, I still couldn’t help but wish we could’ve gotten more information on Chizuru. After the three-year time jump, it’s revealed that she brought Hijiri to the kindergarten that she was teaching at, meaning that she was also a teacher. Maybe they knew each other from their teaching school days? I wonder how this happened too, like did she also quit her job in Tokyo and move along with Hijiri to that kindergarten? Or was she already working at that kindergarten and just visited Hijiri often? I didn’t really get it. Anyways, what I appreciated about her was that she was so straightforward. She was the one who stood up for Hijiri against Miwa and told her to face her own issues before slandering her kid’s teacher for just wanting to help. In contrast to Hijiri’s passive attitude, it was really refreshing to have someone like her say what needed to be said. Without people like her in her life, Hijiri would’ve probably not been able to make ANY decisions, so I definitely liked that she at least surrounded herself with people who were strong enough to speak up for her when she couldn’t.
My absolute favorite character from this series was Nogami-sensei. What a freaking legend. Nogami Kazuki (played by Watanabe Dai) was another teacher at the kindergarten Hijiri started working at after the three-year time jump. Honestly, if only she could’ve gone for him. He was the best guy ever. Not only were his feelings for her sincere, but he also didn’t even make bones about what she’d experienced before. He accepted her entirely for who she was, complicated past or not. He kept looking out for her, standing up for her, and was prepared to take things as slowly as she liked. I felt bad for him, honestly. It was crystal clear that Hijiri only accepted his confession to, again, distract herself from Akira. I do feel like she wanted to try and date him for real, because she acknowledged what a good person he was and must have thought: ‘maybe he’ll be a good guy for me.’ But we all knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Too bad, really. Out of all the love interests Hijiri had in this series, Nogami-sensei was definitely the best option. He proved that even more when he ended up encouraging her to go after Akira. He never became possessive or petty, he realized how she felt long before she was willing to admit it, and he immediately set his own feelings aside to persuade her to chase after her own happiness. He was the best guy in the entire show.
Another character that I really liked was Akira’s father Kosuke. Shimazaki Kosuke (played by Kishitani Goro) left when Akira was five years old, and although he always kept writing Aiko letters, she never ever told Akira about them. Towards the end of the second part, after the three-year time jump, Akira manages to track him down in Japan and Hijiri goes with him to Yamaejima. Honestly, what a breath of fresh air this guy was. Not only was he the coolest, chillest guy ever, he also immediately clocked Akira’s feelings for Hijiri and just told him to go for it. Screw the age difference, if he loved her, he should go after her. I really loved that little arc on Yamaejima, it was such a welcome and well-needed break from everything they’d been running from for so long, and Kosuke made it all the better. I genuinely liked his character, I wish we could’ve met him sooner.
One more character that I can’t forget to mention is Joffy. Jofu Shigeru (played by Makita Yuji/Makita Sports) was a good friend of Aiko, who also worked at her furniture-making company. There was no romantic relationship between them, but he was always around the Kuroiwa house and was like an uncle to Akira. I was a bit disappointed that he stayed Team Aiko all the way and also disapproved of Hijiri and Akira’s relationship, but he really cared about Akira. After the three-year time jump, Akira even moves in with him and his elderly mother to get away from his own mom for a bit, and there he’s treated like he’s part of the family as well. I liked Joffy, despite being on the disapproving side – at least he never involved himself in it as unnecessarily as Aiko did.
Now that I’ve gone over all the recurring supporting characters, the time has come to go over the second leads of this series: Shotaro and Haraguchi.
I’ve already mentioned Shotaro before, of course. He was Hijiri’s fiancé and while they were living and working apart – she in Tokyo and he in Osaka – they kept in touch regularly and everything seemed to go well between them. They both kept putting in the effort to visit each other as often as they could, despite their respective busy work schedules, and they both seemed genuine about their feelings and desire to marry one another.
Through Shotaro’s scenes, we are introduced to his new boss at the firm, Haraguchi Ritsu (played by Yoshida Yo). She is immediately established as quite an eccentric person, a real career woman with a flamboyant fashion style and free-spirited lifestyle. Besides being openly bisexual (props for the representation), she draws Shotaro in with her straightforward way of talking and hands-on mentality. Since she lives across the hall from Shotaro, the two often end up going for drinks together and establish a friendship. Not gonna lie, when she was first introduced my first thought was that Shotaro was going to cheat on Hijiri with her, that there would be some kind of secret office affair between them. To my relief he kept her at bay, even when she started making blatant advances. I complimented him for continuously backing off with the excuse that he had a fiancée and he didn’t want to betray Hijiri.
What’s kind of funny is that my feelings towards Shotaro and Haraguchi kind of swapped towards the end of the series. At first, I liked Shotaro. He seemed like a decent guy and he kept trying to make things work with Hijiri as well as he could. I even felt bad for him, because things were literally spiralling out of his control. Imagine being engaged to someone, envisioning a future with them, and they suddenly start wavering. It can’t have been easy for him. However, the second he exploded at Hijiri that it was all her fault that this happened, I backed off. Of course it was good that he came to regret that outburst, but later on he did it again, which made me feel like Hijiri may have actually dodged a bullet by calling off their engagement. The fact that he bottled up his frustrations before letting them out in this way wasn’t right. What also wasn’t right was how, after breaking up with Haraguchi, the first thing he did was try to force his way back to Hijiri, after everything that had happened. I was so glad to see how well they were getting along, even after breaking off their engagement, and then he pulled that ‘Go to Singapore with me’ and I was like ‘BRUH’. He gradually became more and more pathetic, even though he was initially such a steadfast character.
Haraguchi, on the other hand, started off as quite an enigma to me. I couldn’t really gauge her intentions. I definitely did not appreciate how she jumped in-between Shotaro and Hijiri before they’d even talked about their issues themselves. It’s like she sensed something was off about their relationship and just went to Shotaro saying: ‘I don’t think she’s going to stick with you, but hey, I have feelings for you so you can just date me instead.’ Initially, I was like: ‘sorry ma’am, but could you please mind your own business?’ It felt like she wriggled her way in-between them and jumped on the opportunity to exploit their relationship problems so she could have Shotaro to herself, because she suddenly realized she was in love with him. On the other hand, after the three-year jump when Shotaro finally decided he was interested in Haraguchi, she didn’t immediately jump on the opportunity, saying that she didn’t want to be a rebound and ‘go through the same pain as when he chose Hijiri over her’. Even when they started dating, the fact that he kept worrying about Hijiri made her so anxious that she ended up breaking up with him anyway.
Honestly, I thought that was fair. He was all over the place and I imagine no girlfriend likes to see her boyfriend so hung up on their ex, even if it’s just out of ‘concern’. What’s more, despite everything she never actually became toxic to Hijiri. Even after meddling in her relationship with Shotaro, she actually complimented Hijiri on finally finding the courage to be honest to herself and rooted for her to follow her heart. Heck, she actually arranged multiple secret meetings between Hijiri and Akira, because they wouldn’t do anything by themselves. We love to see women supporting women. After the enigmatic persona she started out as, it was really nice to see her development and realizations about both Shotaro and Hijiri. The way she dealt with her feelings in the end was really mature, which can’t be said for the majority of the adults in this show. In the last episode, it’s revealed that she’s pregnant with Shotaro’s child, and while determined to take care of it herself, Shotaro crawls back to her to support her, determined to show his love and sense of responsibility to her.
Before moving on to my cast comments, I briefly want to touch on the title of this series, since it includes an interesting wordpun (or should I say, kanji pun) in Japanese. I’m not even going to elaborate on my thoughts on the English title ‘Meet Me After School’, except that I don’t think it suits the series at all. What’s interesting about the original title is that, when read, you’d expect it to be written as 中学生日記, with ‘chuugakusei’ written as ‘junior high school student’. However, the character used for ‘sei’ in the title is 聖, which has the meaning of something holy or saint-like, and also happens to be the kanji for Hijiri’s name. I couldn’t help but feel like this has a wry feel to it, which really suits the message of the series. It could relate to the fact that Hijiri’s ‘saint-like’ image was ruined, or that her feelings for her student were anything but holy. Even the slogan written on the poster reads: 「教師としてあるまじき、純愛」’a pure love that’s unbecoming of a teacher’. In this way, you could say that even the title is judging Hijiri for her feelings. As wry as that sounds, it does match the way I felt while watching the show, and how agonizing it was to see her be condemned throughout. I can’t think of an English title that could possibly replicate this innuendo, but ‘Meet Me After School’ definitely doesn’t do it for me.
Let’s get into the cast comments! As I said, my criticisms on this show have nothing to do with the casting – all the actors delivered an incredibly sincere performance, and I can only applaud them for that.
It’s been ages since I last saw a drama of Arimura Kasumi. I remember she was EVERYWHERE when I was in Japan ten years ago, around the time this drama aired. It seems like she never stopped acting, but I just haven’t seen anything of her lately, apart from the movie Call Me Chihiro that suddenly popped up on Netflix three years ago. I’ve seen her in 11-nin mo Iru!, Yokoso, Wagaya he, Itsuka Kono Koi wo Omoidashite Kitto Naiteshimau, and in the movies Strobe Edge, Erased, Nanimono (which I saw at a cinema in Japan) and Call Me Chihiro. I feel like I’ve seen her in way more, though. It was cool seeing her again in such an emotional role. Despite my qualms with her character’s passive attitude, I think she knocked it out of the park with her acting. Admittedly, she does have the tendency to hide behind her sweet smile and not jump out as much as I’d like to see – I’d be curious to see her go completely insane and scream her lungs out, for a change – but she has a very subtle way of acting that still comes across as heartfelt. I really liked seeing her in something again, and I hope I get to catch up on stuff she’s been doing while I’ve been out of the loop.
This was actually Mizukami Koshi’s first drama project! I haven’t seen him in anything before, but there are a couple more of his dramas (and a movie!) on my list, so I’m curious to see different sides of his acting. I think he did a very sincere job at portraying Akira. Although I definitely missed passion between the lead characters, I think they both did a lot through glances and subtle gestures. He has a handsome appearance and a very natural way of acting, which I liked. It was nice to get to know him through this show, and I’m excited to see how much he’s grown since this first drama project.
Just when I thought I hadn’t seen anything with Machida Keita before, I just realized he played Karube in Alice in Borderland! I only watched one episode of that show, but he was in that one, so I remember him, lol. I think he was cast very well as Shotaro, and switched between the layers of caring (ex-)fiancée and serious office worker very effectively. As much as he started to irk me towards the end, I can’t overlook that that means the actor did a good job at portraying the character’s emotional struggle, and I compliment him for that. He delivered a very credible performance, and I’m curious to see more of him.
My queen Yoshida Yo! I did not know she was going to be in this, but I’m really glad I got to see her again. I’ve seen her in the movies Like Father, Like Son, and quite recently in A Pale View of Hills, the beautiful adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel by the same title. Drama-wise, I saw her before in Koinaka and Naomi to Kanako, which is not as much as I thought, lol. Anyways, I’m familiar with her as an actress and I really like her style. I thought the character of Haraguchi fit her to a T, from her stoic to her more goofy side. She always exudes this wise oneesan kind of feeling and is usually cast as this type as well. It was really good to see her again as a more major character in an emotional drama. She’s awesome, I love her.
I really thought I recognized Natsukawa Yui from somewhere, but I guess I’m wrong. There are some shows and movies of hers on my list, but there’s nothing I’ve seen of her already. Again, as I like to say: if the character manages to piss you off, it means the actor did a good job. That look she would get on her face whenever she encountered Hijiri or even heard her name, ugh, it was aggravating! She really managed to embrace that obsessively angry mom vibe, it almost took me back to the mom from Mask Girl, although that woman got way more violent. The reason I never got to understand her side of things was that it was never explained sufficiently to make me sympathetic towards her actions. The fact that she only pulled out Kosuke’s letters because she was trying to stop Akira from leaving to chase after Hijiri was pretty nasty as well, like she ended up using it as an excuse instead of properly sitting him down to have a serious conversation about it. Still, I think the actress nailed the agony Aiko must have felt, even if I couldn’t get behind it.
Is it just me or has it become a running gag for Natsuki Mari to wear outrageous wigs in every drama she appears in? I recently saw her in Yuugure ni, Te wo Tsunagu, where she also wore a blatant wig – I remember commenting on that in my review as well. Having said that, I’ve also seen her in Kimi ha Petto and Nobuta wo Produce, and I don’t actually remember her wearing wigs there, lol. Maybe it’s a more recent thing. I wanted to include her in my cast comments because she was the only one that jumped out to me in her style of acting. From the start, she seemed to be the only one who tried to make a caricature of her character, which kind of irked me. While everyone else was being so natural, she seemed to be the only one who set up a voice and made a face to emphasize the quirks of her character. I can’t blame her for doing as she was scripted of course, but it did stand out to me. I’m curious to see her appear in something where she doesn’t have to wear a wig or exaggerated clothing to add to her character’s persona. Sometimes less is more.
I was really happy with the natural casting of Ono Rina. She actually looked like a typical junior high schooler, and her acting was very realistic, even in the twisted parts. I haven’t seen her in anything else, but she’s been going strong up until 2023 so I hope she keeps doing more. I’d be very curious to see what kind of actress she grew into, because I thought she delivered the multi-faceted aspects of Runa’s character very well.
I feel like Wakabayashi Jiei is always casted in the same type of role, as the comical friend or classmate. I’ve seen him in similar roles before in 3-nen A-gumi, Seishun Cinderella and First Love: Hatsukoi. I see on MDL that he’s still going strong in dramas, so I’m excited to see more of him and preferably in more varying roles, even though he always does a great job and I really love his energy.
I’ve seen Tomochika Yukiko before in Chef ~Mitsuboshi no Kyushoku~, but it’s been a long time and I don’t remember her from that. There are still a couple of shows with her on my list, so I hope I get to see her again. As I said before, I really appreciated Chizuru’s straightforwardness. Even though Tomochika-san is also an entertainer, she delivered this performance in a very sincere way, stripped of any added comical elements, which was great. I always appreciate it when actors who are known for being funny manage to set that set of skills aside and deliver a serious performance. The same went for Makita Sports, I think. Anyways, despite the fact that we didn’t get to know a whole lot about Chizuru, the actress portrayed her as a really ‘real’ person with realistic convictions, and I specifically liked seeing her own struggle with wanting to support her friend but not being able to accept the choices she was making. She did a really good job.
As I mentioned in my review, Nogami-sensei was my favorite character, and that’s all because of how Watanabe Dai portrayed him. I hadn’t seen him in anything before, but he made a big impression on me here. As ‘normal’ as he was, his sense of justice and his practical attitude was so welcome in this story, where everything seemed to spiral out of control and no one actually took proper measures to deal with it. His open-mindedness and genuine kindness was such a relief and the actor portrayed this very naturally. Nogami-sensei deserves more credit.
I really enjoyed Kishitani Goro’s performance as Akira’s father Kosuke. I’ve seen him before in Koizora, Samurai High School (although I can’t remember if I finished that show), and Jimi ni Sugoi! He’s a very familiar face in J-Dramas, overall. I was so glad that Akira’s father was the opposite of his mother. If there was anything that this story needed, it was more open-minded and empathetic people, and he definitely contributed to that small group. I loved the energy that the actor brought to Kosuke’s character and how he actually made me wish he’d appeared sooner so that he could’ve maybe talked some sense into Aiko, or something. Anyways, it was nice seeing him appear in this, however short it was.
That’s going to be it for my cast comments! Since it’s a drama from 2018, I already expected there to be some familiar faces, but it was another nice balance of actors and everyone did a great job. It’s really just the element of the storywriting and the drama that peeves me in these older series, but I guess it’s inevitable since that was the trend back then. In any case, I always enjoy seeing familiar actors and discovering new sides to their acting.
I honestly struggled a bit with how to structure this review. I ended up doing it a bit different than usual, starting with my criticisms before diving more into the characters. But I couldn’t help it, I just needed my qualms out of the way first before I could focus on the things and people that made me less aggravated. I’m still giving this show a plus rating because, as I said, it’s not a bad show. The message is clear, and the quality and the acting are good. I just couldn’t get into the way things escalated so quickly, without barely any real buildup between the main leads, and how the female lead became such a martyr even though she barely had anything to apologize for (in my opinion). The worst thing she did was have feelings for a minor, but as long as she didn’t act on it and waited until he came of age, I didn’t see the problem. In the end it just felt like she was tormented for years on end when there was no need for that at all.
I saw very high ratings and positive reviews for this show on MDL, but I think that’s the beauty of watching series: everyone sees things from their own perspective. I don’t have to agree with them, they don’t have to agree with me. I can’t deny that I got incredibly frustrated while watching this, while others may not have felt a shred of frustration at all. It’s not up to me how I feel, because feelings do as they want, and I think that links to this story as well. Love doesn’t differentiate, it goes where it wants. If there is some practical or legal element standing in your way, you can just find a way to solve it, preferably without unnecessarily ruining someone’s life. That’s what I will take from this one.
Thank you for reading this far if you have. I’m very excited to find out what I’ll be watching next, and I’ll be back as soon as I can with a new review.
Until then!
Bye-bee! x