Hi wa mata noboru

Not a bad series at the core, just unentertaining. You're watching a bunch of 30 people who want to become cops for their own petty reasons, and their teacher gives them a hard time about it. And that's good, because all the talk that Japanese people usually have, which usually ends with smiles, tears, and "reconciliation", doesn't work here because the teacher – the Kyokan – looks at them with his stony face and shouts them down some more. That worked. Another plus was just the story of the teacher, Ton, and his wife's escape with the escaped criminal. It ran through every episode and culminated beautifully in episode 8, and I have to say, that was the best episode. It's just that even with all that, I wasn't really enjoying it. The cast was okay, but I found the whole thing bland, dull, and you didn't have much chance to get into it in any way. Even so, you do learn some interesting facts from time to time – I was intrigued, for example, that policemen keep one set of cuffs for their entire lives, or at least until they lose them or they break down irreversibly. But who knows if that's true. :-D A better 2 stars. (02.08.2012)