After 8 years of hiatus, Kinpachi Sensei returns for a short season comprising 12 episodes and one graduation special.
After 8 years since his second season, Kinpachi's life has changed quite a bit. He's now married to Amachi Sensei (Mitsuko Baisho) and has a small son Kosaku and a daughter Otome. He's also assigned to a new school Matsugasaki Middle school. His class have changed quite a bit too. Instead of the rebellious Me generation teenagers, he now has cagey Gen X students to look after.
This was a short season, but it is one of my favorite Kinpachi Sensei season, because situation seems more real than other season of this series.
Kimie (Miyabi Kishi) was mentally brutalized in her previous school and can't come into her class room, so she goes strait to the infirmary and gets private lessons from the nurse. Yuko (Akiko Ura) has a father who's an alcoholic and has to work to support him and herself. Other students have their quirks with varying degrees of odd behavior due to stress from their life.
While Kinpachi saga is supposed to be a home drama, many of the stories are like tales of horror. Kinpachi have traditionally imposed exchange diary with his students. What kind of a society is it that a teacher has to monitor his students to that level ? What is the need for the teacher to have so intimate a knowledge of their students ? If it's for a legitimate concern over their social and mental health, such society must be horribly distorted. What kind of a society is it that the headmaster and the vice principle of the school goes out at night with a flashlight to police students, making sure they are not roaming the streets ? They don't believe that such insane level of control imposed on students wouldn't affect them negatively ? (and in this series it did).
Each of the student shows the duress they are under in their own ways, and although the story ends in a positive note, the life shown is those of strangely distorted individuals. I wouldn't want to live in such a society if I had my choice. What is shown is a very violent society even if overt violence is not evident. It's no wonder that Japan has high suicide rate of teens along with South Korea.
Perhaps being exposed to this level of scrutiny from a very young age that allows the Japanese to produce goods that have such high quality control. But the price kids has to pay from early in life is obviously high as seen in this series.
Kinpachi Srnsei is a digest view of schooling system of Japan, and a drama that reflects life of youth not only of Japan, but to extent of Asia. High sacrifice does have positive side, and it shows why they have such high levels of achievements in academics, arts, and industry.
