Kasuka na Kanojo (2013)

This is a very good drama. Judging for the overall plot (a teacher moves into an apartment where he finds the ghost of a woman and has to go through his new teaching job while getting to know this very dorky lady ghost) and the promo pictures, I thought I was getting into a bizarre-ish comedy when, in reality, this drama is very emotional in many aspects. The problems and issues Katori Shingo's character, Koyama sensei, has to face with his students are of all sorts but go very deep into serious emotional cases: there's bullying (serious, scary bullying), isolation, harassment, violence and overall a lot of very complicated problems (take this as a trigger warning, since the drama doesn't really seem like it will showcase this), that go beyond many school dramas I've seen. Yes, the main core of the plot is for the class to get along and for the teacher to regain his will to get involved in his job, which is not new, but the things they face go further than a university entry exam or a troublesome group of delinquents, and it is very tied to the students' lives at home. That being said, I do feel it was a bit biased towards teachers and the side of the parents was rarely shown as positive, but I guess it was a conscious choice for the theme of the story. The relationship between Akane, the ghost, and Koyama sensei is one you end up growing to care for (the ending could be questionable, though, but that's up to the viewer), and Anne is splendid in this drama. Maya Miki and her, for me, steal the show with their performances. The young cast had its ups and downs, but I commend Maika Yamamoto, who was really convincing throughout the story. All in all, I really liked this drama, it's very smart and heartwarming, it goes deeper than many I've seen of its kind, not stopping into solving an issue with the students but finding out why they're having that issue to begin with and how they could solve it themselves. I highly recommend this if you want a school drama with both intense situations (well handled, for the most part) and dorky comedic characters.

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