Samurai High School

Synopsis:

Mochizuki Kotaro is a cowardly 17 year old high school student who spends most of his time goofing around. One fateful day, on his way home from school, he came across a mysterious history library. The librarian lent him a history book about a samurai from Edo era who has the same name, Mochizuki Kotaro. Since then, when faced with danger, Kotaro will turn into a samurai. What does the samurai want by travelling 400 years into the future and meet his descendant?

My opinion:

I started watching this in November last year and just finished the last 2 episodes tonight. There are only 9 episodes in total. Lol. So yeah, that is how bad the drama is. I can even watch while playing online games on my phone or tablet.

I am expecting this to be a comedy but the supposed funny parts turn out lame instead of hilarious. It seems that the actors are overacting for the funny scenes and they just turn out not funny at all.

There is no plot at all. Each episode is completely unrelated and the 'conflict' presented in each episode is too trivial and the conflict resolution is always too abrupt and forced. There is no overarching plot to tie the series at all. Kotaro wants to find out what the samurai wants but everything that he does does not have any relevance to this particular purpose. Until the end, the samurai's purpose of 'getting' justice is also lame.

The relationships among the characters are bad. I have never watched a series with a school theme where the main character hardly interacts with the classmates. Kotaro's relationships with Nakamura and Ai are lukewarm at best and Mochizuki family dynamic from an episode to the next is like flipping a pancake. The teachers also do not provide any educational value or learning point to the audience also.

In short, the series has no purpose, no story, and no message to deliver.

The only credit I will give is to Haruma Miura (who plays Kotaro) and Yu Shirota (who plays Nakamura). Haruma Miura plays both lame and samurai Kotaro and it is amazing to see how he plays these 2 characters with completely opposite personality. He can be goofy, can be stern, can be scary, but one thing he cannot do well is to be emotional and tear-inducing. By the way he plays Eren in Attack on Titan movies and I think he is pretty bad as Eren. Lol. Yu Shirota surprised me by playing this wimpy character as usually he plays strong and serious characters like Tezuka (Prince of Tennis Live Action), Shinjo (Rookies), Kagurazaka (the first Hana Kimi). Even when he is being adamant during police interrogation, he still shouts in a wimpy manner instead of being manly type of shouting. So he is always being in his character.

My afterthoughts:

None. This is the first school themed movie that I find disappointing. No moral lessons, no friendship or family tear jerking moments, and nothing memorable. It is actually extremely disappointing because given the themes of samurai and school, they have a great potential to make a great series.