I watched Gokusen Live Action over the weekend. I did so primarily because I was curious on how it would be. I watched the anime version before on Animax and usually both live action and anime version differ. I wanted to know which was better.

Basically, Gokusen is about a girl named Kumiko Yamaguchi who’s grandfather is the third generation yakuza leader for the Oedo family. Kumiko’s dream is to be a high school teacher just like her father. She lands a job at the Shirokin high school for boys and became in charge of the rowdiest and laziest section of 3-D. The challenge now is on how Kumiko be able to handle being a teacher to her trouble-making students and help them all graduate from high school, while keeping her identity secret as a yakuza leader’s granddaughter.

The series has its moments of comedic relief expressed in Kumiko’s naivety, some school teacher’s eccentricity and her student’s rowdiness. Though that is not all it boasts. Being true to the manga, it gives lessons on dealing with life, learning to judge people not on how they looks and learning that your past or heritage doesn’t necessarily define you. The last episode had me crying and cursing, “I hate speeches” and “I hate goodbyes” more than ever before. And though the manga is still ongoing in Japan, the series gave a somewhat feasible ending to the story, and will make fans have something to look forward to.

The live action boasts some famous names like Yukie Nakama (Sadako of “The Ring” fame, Shinobi) as Kumiko Yamaguchi, Jun Matsumoto (Hana Yori Dango, Kimi wa Pet) as Shin Sawada, Misaki Itou (Densha Otoko) as Shizuka Fujiyama, and Shun Oguri (Hana Yori Dango) as Haruhiko “Uchi” Uchiyama, among others. The live action series runs at 12 episodes.

Next stop, Densha Otoko!

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