Japanese Drama: 3年A組 3-nen A-gumi / Class 3A (2019)
Genre: school, mystery, suspense
Starring: Suda Masaki, Nagano Mei, Fukuhara Haruka, and more
Aired: January-March 2019
Watched: July 2019 on NEWASIANTV
WATCHED IT BECAUSE...
It seemed interesting from the synopsis; reminded me of the Japanese movie, Confessions (where the teacher put HIV into milk the students had drank). So like weird teacher revenge-y things. I had saved it to watch later, but then turns out Haruka Fukuhara, from Good Morning Call, is in it, so I wanted to watch it more.
THE REVIEW
I’m trying to figure out how to write this review because I wrote everything that happened in the drama below (in the spoilers). I can’t write much because I don’t want to give anything away… but I’ll attempt to be a little more detailed than the synopses that most sites provide.
3-nen A-gumi follows a highschool art/homeroom teacher, Hiiragi-sensei, near the end of the school year. We can see that many of the kids in the school are really disrespectful, to each other and to the teachers. We know that Hiiragi-sensei is planning something. As students enter their classroom, Hiiragi-sensei closes the classroom doors and tells all the students that from today, they’re his hostages. The students obviously think he’s joking and try to escape, only to find that the doors won’t open; the windows are tempered glass and you can’t see in. Somewhere at this time, a bomb explodes, evacuating the whole school—except for Class 3A. The students try to fight to fight their teacher, only to find that he is actually really strong, not the literal physical pushover that they thought he was.
Meanwhile, down on the ground, the principal is hesitant about calling the police. I found this bit a little too ridiculous… especially having been a teacher—especially having been a teacher in America, where school shootings and everything are such huge and common tragedies. Kids and adults in schools here have to practice lockdown drills numerous times a year. So the way the principal acts—like throughout everything, he just wants to protect his school, from damage and media attention, rather than caring about the kids. Additionally, theres a teacher, Takechi-sensei, who is some sort of celebrity and goes on talk shows and fansignings and special programming in the school’s gym (a different building). The school’s teachers, in general, (at least a small group of them) are commonly seen hanging around with the police department’s setup in the gym, which, really, is not realistic. But in general, this is supposed to be the ironic bit, I think. That teachers do care about students? But at the same time, they don’t really care about the students. But in general, it’s also just super unrealistic, because really… human lives. However dumb or stupid or disrespectful or annoying high schoolers can or may be, they’re still people that need teaching.
So taking this note into consideration, Hiiragi-sensei is using the next 10 days before these seniors (3rd grade of high school) graduate to teach them lessons and unveil the truth of how and why one of their classmates, Reina, committed suicide. He tells them that before the truth is uncovered, they will not be leaving the classroom.
Each episode unfolds a new development of this story, and really, you can’t and don’t always expect what they’ll add in next, so if you start, you sort of have to just keep watching.
SPOILERS
(highlight below to read)
“I have to write most of my review in here because it’s a mystery and you don’t know much unless you watch more of the drama, which is exactly what I’ll want to recall for myself in the future. So what happens is…
First, Sakura, who was Reina’s best friend, says that the reason that Reina committed suicide is because of her. Reina was accused of doping (is this really what it’s called?), and was being bullied. In order to not drag Sakura down, she wrote a letter to her and broke off their friendship. Sakura then started to ignore her and she feels that that’s why Reina killed herself. The teacher says she’s wrong and then kills a student, Ren, as promised.
The next day, the teacher shows that it was because of the doping incident. Someone posted on Mind Voice that they were harassing Reina, and the big post that pushed everything was a video of Reina doping. We find out that this person was Reina’s first friend, Usami Kaho, who owned that account. She’s a popular girl who wanted to leech off of Reina’s popularity, but also, after Reina became friends with Sakura, she ditched Kaho, so Kaho was angry. No one dies after this day, but they still have to find out who was responsible for the video.
It was either Satomi Kaito or Kumazawa Karen. Karen was on the swim team with Reina and it seems like she gets brushed away because she’s not as good as Reina. However, it ends up being Satomi. He had a crush on Reina, but he got rejected because Reina actually likes ___. Satomi is angry and then Kai Hayato asks him if he wants to get revenge on her, all he has to do is record a video of her.
After this, the teacher collects Satomi and four other students and kills them off.
Kai is the one who took the video from Satomi, but he says he’s not the one who edited it. This is where it becomes a lot bigger than we think: actually, there’s this gang of teens and young adults, BERMUZU? involved. Kai’s backstory is that he was a dancer, but his ma got in a car accident leaving her paralyzed. He quit dancing in order to take care of his mom and his two younger siblings, taking up a bunch of part time jobs. One day, one of his crew members tells him of an offer: the friend’s friend wants to meet Reina, who goes to the same school as Kai, so if he brings her to meet the friend, he can earn like $2,000. He does it, and then the friend comes, who’s actually the leader of the gang, K. They try to take/kidnap Reina, and last minute, Kai beats people up and tells Reina to run.
Kai somehow gets another opportunity and tells Satomi to record the video. He brings the video to K. Kai knows the identity of K. In fighting with the teacher, with the students’ lives on the line, the teacher gets this story out of Kai. The teacher wants the name of the gang leader, and Kai breaks down in tears, saying that if he gives away the identity of the leader, they’ll hurt his family. The teacher tells him to trust him… and then class president Sakura, who had slipped away during the fight, says that she talked with Ren—the first student who had died. And none of them had died. Kai should trust the teacher. We find out the identity of K—Kishi, and then the teacher, who is sick with something, faints.
The students take this opportunity to try to run away. They meet the other students who actually didn’t die, and it turns out: they don’t want to leave. The teacher explained what he was doing—trying to find the truth about who MURDERED Reina—and the six students wanted to stay. The kids are split between staying and helping versus leaving. Chaos breaks out; the police are coming in… and then the teacher comes in, with Sakura’s help. He gets Suwa Yuzuki to confess. She was actually dating Kishi (the gang guy) and he gave her something. Also—he helped her become the model that she is, etc. etc. She doesn’t want to lose all of that. After a good lecture, she throws the necklace that Kishi gave her, and inside is a SD card.
In it, we find out a list of all of the people who ordered fake videos. In it—one of the teachers of their school.
Haruka Fukuhara’s character, Suzune Minakoshi, gets her part here. She’s Ren girlfriend and was also on the swim team. She accuses their swim coach, Tsuboi-sensei, as the person who ordered Reina’s fake video. She says that he had a crush on her, and after finding out that she was dating Ren and missed swim practice one day, he kicked her off the team—and he also probably liked Reina and got rejected by her. She posts a video accusing Tsuboi-sensei and asks another student who had her phone to post it. In a video chat with the teachers, she accuses Tsuboi-sensei to his face, to admit it or they’d all die. Finally, the principal steps in and tells the coach to tell the truth. The truth was—on the day that she missed practice, which was to go to the hospital, her ma called the coach. Suzune had a fatal heart arrythmia problem and it could take her life if she was exercising too hard or too stressed. The only way to get her to stop swimming was if the coach kicked her off the team. At this, Hiiragi-sensei yells at her being selfish and not looking above the surface. That post would’ve wreaked havoc on Tsuboi-sensei’s life. Good thing Hiiragi-sensei had stopped the student before posting the video.
As for the teachers, no one admitted to hiring BERMUZU, so he blows the students up.
Actually he didn’t, and he accuses the popular teacher, Takechi-sensei. (I finished watching the drama at this point.) Basically, Takechi had connections with this former minister of education guy/the college where he was recommending students, and for recommending successful students, he would get $$$. Hiiragi’s ex-girlfriend (the homeroom teacher he replaced) had found out this secret and was going to report him. Takechi then hired BERMUZU to create a fake video of that teacher Fumika; she ended up having a mental breakdown of sorts and quit. Hiiragi wanted to get revenge somehow on Takechi and transferred to the same school. During this time, he found out that the same thing was going on with Reina—because Reina had rejected Takechi, since she heard from her seniors about the $$—and furthermore, Takechi even tried to bribe her with money up front. She said she was going to report him and so he ordered the fake video.
There are some other parts, but basically, the whole thing was to teach netizens and people in general how dumb and mean they are—without thinking, people post things, bashing people, hurting people—they don’t realize how their words can affect others. Meanwhile, people can go spiraling from cyberbullying. I think the message of the drama was good but a little anticlimactic. But important nonetheless. The point of him barricading himself was to prove a point to the netizens—how within the course of 10 days, they changed their opinion about him like 5 times.
Lastly, Sakura said that she killed Reina—because she met Reina right before she jumped. She was able to grab her hand, but then her hand slowly slipped and she fell and died. Reina had been having delusions and hearing voices, haunted by Mind Voice comments. Sakura remembered the incident as she letting go because Reina convinced her and she agreed that her life would be better this way.
Hiiragi-sensei’s last part of this whole scenario was to assure Sakura that it wasn’t her fault. After he finished his live broadcast of his purpose and whatnot, he was about to jump off the building. As brilliant as his plan was though, I’m not sure how he got this timing perfectly right… but the kids on the floor below had figured out (thanks to Sakura) that he was going to jump and kill himself. He had blown up another bomb, which blocked the way to the rooftop. Together, with Gunji (? forgot his name) the detective he took hostage, they unblocked the rubble and ran to the roof RIGHT IN TIME THAT SAKURA COULD GRAB HIS HAND. But she wasn’t strong enough and her hand started slipping…
And the Kai grabbed on, and then a bunch of other students. And they pulled him up and saved him.
So obviously he lived and got arrested. Oh, I guess I missed another part. He had like pancreas cancer or something and he was getting weaker throughout these 10 days. But despite everything he went through, he, as narrated by the students, lived on for another year before passing away. ”
</spoilers>
OST/MUSIC
No OST? Other than bgm(?) and the ending song, which was too jolly for my liking (although that’s to emphasize the satirical but schoolish nature of the drama?).
OTHER COMMENTS
So my hugest peeve was just the sarcastic tone of the adults, but I already talked about that. Also, I couldn’t stand the corny line Hiiragi-sensei says in every episode, “Lets ssinku.” But. Whatever, fine.
OVERALL
- Did I cry? No
- Should you watch it? I’m sort of caught in the middle with this one, because I watched the whole thing in like 2-3 nights. I couldn’t stop watching because I wanted to know what happened. I guess you can watch this if you want a little mystery.. I would rate this like a 5.5-6? It has a good message (sorry if that’s a spoiler) but… It’s just an okayish drama in my opinion. Watch it if you have a lot of time and don’t mind spending some of it watching this.
-huay