To everybody who told me to read Gokusen: God damn you all.
Because I totally started last night and now I cannot fucking stop — I am addicted to this…slightly weirdly drawn and amazingly, wonderfully cracktastic story. Like, I love it so much that my face hurts. You know, from love. PROBABLY BECAUSE OF MY ENDURING LOVE FOR TEACHER/STUDENT SHENANIGANS. I’m warning you — picspam and spoilers beneath the jump.Â
Gokusen is the story of Yamaguchi Kumiko — the daughter and only heir of the Oedo yakuza (Japanese mafia) clan. (Yeah, you guys already see why I love it, right?) She’s…kind of a freakjob:
Due to various reasons, her life’s dream has been to become a teacher — and having finally achieved it, she’s shafted into the Class from Hell. Depressingly, it reminds me of my old photography class, although my memories of that semester are colored heavily with fumes from the developing room.
The story Gokusen details her trials and tribulations, trying to balance her job as a teacher with her family responsibilities without any of her students finding out…except there’s Sawada Shin:
I SWEAR TO GOD THAT’S WHAT IT SAYS IN THE MANGA. HONEST. HAND TO GOD.
Shin is an underachieving genius, who at first finds Yankumi (her students’ somewhat affectionate nickname for Kumiko) boring — and then he becomes truly fascinated: respecting her for her strength (both of character and her ability to pound on bitches like woah) and eventually finds out her secret, although he swears from the outset he’s going to keep it and never tell.
Much shenaniganry occurs. THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:
Shin totally has the awkward teenaged boy hots for Kumiko — and ya’ll, I fan myself with both my God damn hands over this it is so freakin’ cute.
“But Pru!” you’re all wondering, “Where do I acquire such AMAZING CRACK?”
I recommend you hie thee over to Whip of Love, where under “manga downloads” the first nine volumes of the manga are available for direct download, too cute for words. Or, if you’re more of an dramarama person, go here to see the live action drama version of Gokusen, starring my favorite jailbait ever as Shin — you guys might recognize him from another older woman/younger man bait jdorama, Kimi Wa Petto (which, shut up, I loved, okay?):
And Kumiko is played by this hot piece, although in the interest of honesty, she mostly dresses like a trainwreck and not like hawtness:
COME ON. YOU KNOW YOU WANT THIS.
Pru, I was just going to tell you to watch the drama if you hadn’t already! And there is a sequel. With not one, but two, underage students taking over the Shin role. It is nine kinds of amazing.
Ahhh Gokusen. I loved, loved, loved the drama.
DON’T FORGET, DAPHNE. ONE OF THE UNDERAGERS IN PART 2 IS ONE OF THE NOBUTA BOYS.
I told you you’d love this! Oh god, Gokusen is what got me back into Dramas and manga. *_* Glad you’re enjoying our scanlations~!
AGAIN. YOU’VE RUINED MY LIFE, MKLUTZ. I COULD HAVE GONE OUTSIDE SOME DAY, BUT NOW, NO MORE. JUST GOKUSEN. Oh, and this that I wrote last night in a delirium:
She and Sawada cross paths more than they should, and it’s starting to make Kumiko nervous. She’s friendly and tries to be inspiring and hopes that—to her dear students—she’s a beacon of hope, or at least somewhat terrifying so they’ll stop trying to set their desks on fire while she’s teaching them calculus. But she’s starting to give Sawada a wide berth—he’s either everywhere or she’s noticing him too much. And when she can’t sleep Thursday night, it’s like the gods are warning her, and she ends up watching a marathon run of Majou no Jouken on television. It freaks her out so badly she can’t even make eye contact with Sawada Friday morning. All she can think is that she, too, could have a passionate underage romance with a schoolboy, and it could only end in miscarriages and attempted murder-suicides—with the added complications of her own family history.
You mention yakuza love and awkward teenage crushing. May I direct you to Tokyo Crazy Paradise?
Seriously, I feel like pimping is almost unnecessary with this series. But this is the gist: She’s daughter of police parents who has lived her entire life as a guy. (Ringing any coffee-scented bells, here?) He’s the son of THE yakuza boss who has taken over the gumi at age 14. They fight crime.
No, but seriously, the humor in the series, the utter BLACKNESS the mangaka has the balls to go into for what’s ostensibly a shoujo series (though it really doesn’t read like it), and the strength of the ASSKICKING characters really do justice to the time spent reading it.
Tsukasa (the genderbending police brat girl) becomes Ryuuji’s bodyguard. (And you’re gonna fucking love Ryuuji. He’s the 14-year old who’s done it all–but he’s still as awkward as hell with his crush on Tsukasa from DAY ONE. Or day negative 34328, since they’ve been in class together since they were kids. Come on, he stayed in school as the yakuza boss in order to “examine the interesting speciment that came into view every day.” It’s utter cute hilarity.)
And what I love about TCP is that Tsukasa really kicks ass, much like Yankumi. She really does most of the fighting, and she’s usually the one saving everyone’s asses; not like weak shoujo convention where the heroine is the “fighter” but it’s the hero pulling the trigger.
In short, Tokyo Crazy Paradise is awesome. You should look into it. I will enable further if I have to.
Argh, I followed the link to the manga and ended up readng all of it this morning, and now I got up to speed and there’s no more and I’m left hanging… dammit!
There’s also an anime of Gokusen if you want more. I don’t know why but I always end up turning on the channel at the right time for it…
OH MY GOD.
I *adore* Gokusen, both the purity of Yankumi/Shin in the first drama and the manga/anime… and also the Gokusen 2 drama with Kame and Jin (Kame looks distressingly appealing all beaten-up) and OMG THE GOKUSEN2 SPECIAL. It’s like an ENTIRE parody episode, with the full cast and regular production values, and as insanely inappropriate as you could *possibly* wish. I was dumbstruck at some of it.
It has been fansubbed. Part 2 is here. (Part 1 starts off with a few other parodies beforehand, so I lined to Pt 2 instead.)
Unlike the others, I actually do NOT recommend watching part 2 if you are a fan of part 1 and especially of the Yankumi/Shin ship. Because it’s basically watching a commercial-hack version of part 1 all over again, except, as mentioned above, it’s full of pretty boys who need 2 to take on the role of 1. But otherwise, its so predictable that it’s a bit tedious and it is sadly lacking in any kind of character development.
Isn’t Gokusen freaking awesome????
I love Yankumi so freaking much. And Shin.
..And today, because of your enabling,and me being at a friends house with super fast internet I’m going to finally watch Coffee Prince, and Bad Couple.
okay, when the young Chief takes Sawada Shin for gambling, booze, and cheap hookers?
FOR THE WIN. TIMES TEN MILLION.