It's the teaser for 'Gokusen'! Fight-oh. Oh!

After I wrote about the move to the big screen for the very popular comedy/drama Gokusen in Japan I made a point of watching the show to find out more about it. And after the first season I couldn't stop and a few weeks later I have watched all three seasons. Yukie Nakama [Shinobi] stars in all three seasons and the film marks her last time taking on the role of a young teacher named Kumiko Yamaguchi who no matter which school she ends up at is put in charge of the notoriously misbehaved class 3-D, a class full of delinquents and wannabe thugs. The big secret of course is Yamaguchi isn’t just any ordinary young teacher. She’s also the 4th-generation heir to the Ooeda yakuza family, which is run by her grandfather since he took her in at a young age when her parents were killed. She'd rather teach than take over the family business, much to the chagrin of her yakuza family members, but sometimes she slips in the odd yakuza slang and mannerisms into her daily work. But she will call upon her yakuza background to defend her 'precious students' when they get into trouble or trouble finds them.

Thanks to the watchful eyes of Kevin over at NipponCinema we can share the teaser trailer with you. And it is very much that. We see 'Yankumi' and the six young men from season three. We also see the young men who will obviously be the leaders of the next Class 3D that Yankumi will have to reach out to and change the lives of during the duration of this upcoming film.

I thought Gokusen was very charming and often very funny. It is about as melodramatic as a JDrama can get but after all it is a very endearing show and I found myself surprisingly emotionally attached to the cast of each season and was sad to see them graduate at the end of each season. Gokusen certainly wasn't broke so the producers of the show saw no reason to fix it as one season from the next to the next followed the same structure. Yankumi goes to a new school. She is assigned Class 3D. The class is full of punks and thugs who don't trust adults or teachers. As the season goes on Yankumi wins them over and each class bands together and fights the odds to graduate together. Every episode Yankumi will end up pulling the elastics out of her hair, removes her glasses, and beats up someone, or many if it is a gang which it often is. The gang leader will ask her who she is and she will tell them that she is their home room teacher. The gang will laugh. She will kick their asses. You Could count on it. Gokusen never broke from the formula but it was its charm and humor that made it worth coming back for.

So that being said I don't expect anything to change with the movie. While I am fine with that I would like to think that the producers and makers of the film may up the ante and increase the production values. Maybe give us more convincing fights and action. Polish it up a bit. I also don't expect to see this travel outside of Japan or try to reach out to an international audience. I can confidently say that this is a movie that will be made just for fans of the show, of which I am one so I'll have to wait to see it on DVD.