School Police - Interesting Japanese Drama Series with Unique Premise

Few days ago there was this new Japanese series released on Netflix which has an interesting premise. Plus I was also quite familiar with the main lead. So I decided to give this a try and finished the whole season yesterday. OK, let's start with it now.

Brief Story Line

When the government decided to implement a police system in school, Ryuhei Shimada (Tatsuya Fujiwara - Erased movie, Kaiji trilogy etc) who was from an elite police squad applied to be the pioneer and was placed in Akamine Middle School. His duty was to be a police officer guarding the school from various possible criminal activities. This made his colleague in Tokyo PD Saegusa Hiroki (Yamada Yuki - You are the Apple of My Life, Itazura na Kiss: Love in Tokyo TV series etc) very confused with Shimada's decision to be stationed in Middle school.

Despite the system being fully supported by Principal Kijima (Takahashi Katsumi), it was widely criticized and opposed by the teachers and students alike. One of the most vocal was Japanese teacher Ms. Ryoko Asamura (Maki Yoko - The Grudge, Yakiniku Dragon etc) who was strongly against it as she believed school should be a safe environment for children. She was supported by the other teachers including social studies teacher Shibata (Izumisawa Yuuki) and English teacher Mizuno Kaede (Yamaguchi Sayaka).

However, as time progressed, it would seem that the system might be a good choice as there were some hidden dark secrets in Akamine school. So how would the story conclude? Find it in this intriguing series.

End of Brief Story Line

As I said above, I was quite interested with the series after watching the trailer on Netflix (not by the very brief synopsis which did not tell us anything). When I watched the pilot episode, I thought at first this would be a bit of comedy series with the crazy idea of putting a police inside a school, especially when the police seemed to be too strict and treating misdemeanor like violent crime. But slowly though there seemed to be a bigger mystery that need solving. And by the end of the first episode, I became more intrigued.

Each episode of the series would have a minor crime involving students and/or teachers but as the story progressed, there would be additional information revealed to give us an idea of that big mystery. I personally liked the "cases" in the first half of the series as they required some investigation. But when I reached the second half, I felt the focus were more on the students' personal struggle which require the help from teachers and also Shimada, although the major story arc still has development.

The series consisted of 10 episodes with quite standard duration of 45 minutes (except for the 1st which lasted almost and hour). My favorite was the 1st episode which introduced us with the main cast, the 7th episode with a very dramatic and touching student's problem and the finale which gave a proper conclusion. 

The cast did their job nicely. Tatsuya Fujiwara was perfect as this cool on the surface police but actually has a caring heart, even if sometimes he could be a little overboard and extreme in his actions (which I believed that's how the character was written). Maki Yoko was great too as the the idealistic teacher. But the person that caught my attention was Yamada Yuki as Shimada's junior. He was so fun to watch as the total opposite of the stern Shimada but could also complement him. Oh the cast playing the school students were generally good (they are played by really young people below 18 which would explain the real youthful look). Despite having little experience, most of them were quite convincing.

Btw, the series was classified for 16+ due to some sexual violence and also suicide. So there might be few disturbing scenes, but not the real graphic type. I quite like the theme song of this series, sadly I cannot find information of the song. From the Netflix short information, it was said to be based on books, however it did not seem to be mentioned in the opening or closing credits (or perhaps it was mentioned but in Japanese which I did not understand).

Overall this is indeed an interesting series. It has unique premise of a system of police put in middle school and it has enough small to major mysteries to satisfy mystery lover. Having pretty light first half was a good idea as it progressed to heavier topics of parents pressure, bullying and even sexual harassments. It even have some nice actions too. So if you are looking for such kind of series, then you can give this a try. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

PS: In Netflix, the title was written as School Cop but if you want to look in IMDB, the title was put as School Police (which I am using as the basis for my blog post)