Teruyuki Kagawa Doing His Thing in "Roppongi Class"

Aren’t we all getting tired of Teruyuki Kagawa playing these same snarky corrupt characters over and over again? Ever since first seeing him as the weaselly Hideyoshi in Toshiie and Matsu way back in 2002, I knew he’d be up to no good whenever he appeared, and through the years in dramas like the Hanzawa Naoki series and even Shudan Sasen, he always played the same type: Powerful man with connections who destroys innocent people’s lives, in which the main characters spent the whole drama fighting against him and trying to defeat him...

And now we have “Roppongi Class”, a drama about a kindhearted young man who always wants to walk the path of the righteous, who gets on the wrong side of a powerful family run by patriarch Shigeru Nagaya (Kagawa), who rob him of his school, his family and even his freedom when he is jailed due to their mechanisms. Getting out, his only goal is to expose the family and make them pay…

I only began watching this for the Yuko Araki goodness, and while she is very, very good in it, I REALLY don’t have the stamina to sit through another one of these “Corrupt People in Power Persecuting the Innocent” kind of dramas like the aforementioned "Hanzawa Naoki".

Unless this turns into some kick-ass movie a la “Fukushuu No Miboujin” where the persecuted parties are the ones with the upper hand and gleefully extract their revenge on the crooks,  I’m probably going to pass on this one…