5
37
Heracin
Interesting and fun concept but very repetitive story with too little character growth
I have seen quite a lot of Japanese school drama featuring fights between "bad"/"misbehaving" students and therefore I might just feel a certain weariness towards the genre and be more critical of it compared to when I discovered it. The story is quite classic but I enjoyed the location and time period (Chiba in the 80's) and also the fact that there is no "hero" teacher fighting like it is often the case in that kind of drama. Here, the leads are the students and everything needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. There is no moralizing teaching moments, just very shonen-like confrontations between rivals.
The acting is over-the-top which makes sense given the fact that it is a manga adaptation clearly more oriented towards heavy gags and comedy rather than emotional moments. It is quite fun and the performance of Kaku Kento is really the highlight of the series. In my opinion, it is thanks to his huge physical comedic abilities that the drama jokes are landing properly. The other actors are suitable but less good, they fit the over-exaggerated tone of the show but have much less variety and range in their acting. I enjoyed the bromance between the two main characters but I wish it would have been more developped.
The drama is funny but it has quite a lot of flaws as well. The main ones are that the story gets very quickly super repetitive and also that the characters have almost no room for growth. There is not really any evolution between the first episode and the last episode of the series which is a bit of a shame.
In addition to that, the production value is very low. The fight scenes are laughable at best: the fake blood and the theatrics of it all are fun but they could have been much better filmed and conceived. On another hand, I liked a lot the intro song with its 80's japanese rock band vibe and with the yanki theme, it was totally fitting given the concept of the drama and the generic scene was unskippable.
I would recommend this to people looking for a mindless but funny Japanese high school drama. It is quite classic for the genre but set in the 80's which bring up a bit of a different flavor. I think that I have seen similar series that are better but it is still an entertaining watch for either the real afficionado (or in contrary people that have not seen a lot of dramas in this genre and will have therefore less fatigue regarding the repetitive side of some scenes).
The acting is over-the-top which makes sense given the fact that it is a manga adaptation clearly more oriented towards heavy gags and comedy rather than emotional moments. It is quite fun and the performance of Kaku Kento is really the highlight of the series. In my opinion, it is thanks to his huge physical comedic abilities that the drama jokes are landing properly. The other actors are suitable but less good, they fit the over-exaggerated tone of the show but have much less variety and range in their acting. I enjoyed the bromance between the two main characters but I wish it would have been more developped.
The drama is funny but it has quite a lot of flaws as well. The main ones are that the story gets very quickly super repetitive and also that the characters have almost no room for growth. There is not really any evolution between the first episode and the last episode of the series which is a bit of a shame.
In addition to that, the production value is very low. The fight scenes are laughable at best: the fake blood and the theatrics of it all are fun but they could have been much better filmed and conceived. On another hand, I liked a lot the intro song with its 80's japanese rock band vibe and with the yanki theme, it was totally fitting given the concept of the drama and the generic scene was unskippable.
I would recommend this to people looking for a mindless but funny Japanese high school drama. It is quite classic for the genre but set in the 80's which bring up a bit of a different flavor. I think that I have seen similar series that are better but it is still an entertaining watch for either the real afficionado (or in contrary people that have not seen a lot of dramas in this genre and will have therefore less fatigue regarding the repetitive side of some scenes).
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