Been watching some great Japanese television lately. This afternoon, I marathon half of "Mr. Hiiragi's Homeroom" which is actually pretty nuts. Its an over the top drama/comedy where the homeroom teacher takes his students hostage to find out why one of the students was bullied to taking her own life.
Interestingly, this is the third or fourth of this kind of genre I've see, where a teacher goes absolute bat shit on the kids; the students are depicted as being selfish, thinking about either saving their own butts or apathetic to everything. It's as if someone has said they have had enough of the way students are acting and now we adults have something to say to them.
I don't live in Japan, but I've heard that the culture really focuses on the group, and not the individual (comparatively, Americans are individualists first). So I have to wonder if the culture shift among the students is what is making these sorts of shows? Did something snap? Are parents the same there as they are here and now kids are just brats?
By the way, I'm not blaming children at all -- y'all will grow up to be fine adults, even if your parents mess up raising you a little bit. And we all grow up at our own pace and will learn from our mistakes.
Anyways I probably should not laugh at the homeroom teacher threatening to blow up his kids to smithereens but its such a wild concept.
