Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou ep. 2 review

Well I am back from my trip and have been working on catching up with what I have missed. One of those things is of course the second episode of Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou.

 Start off with a quick recap of the final scene of the first episode, the meeting of the two groups of students.

The boys then go to their room and ponder what to do about this turn of events.

Watching the opening credits again I noticed that Johnny's is producing the series which explains why the boys having getting the most focus.

The guys find that their classroom has been completely transformed and are aghast at the changes. we get more character moments to define each one, like Satoshi completely misreading the kanji on one of the plaques on the wall.

Shohei also finds a reason not to be happy that there are girls at the school now when he finds that his desk is missing.

And then there is a cute scene of Yuuki and Makoto discovering that the toilets have been switched out to fancier ones with buttons. Though I do wonder how long the boys were gone for the girls to have been able to bring in plumbers to do something like that, but I do not think this is the kind of drama where those things actually matter.

The girls and boys clash again and we get a new character for the girls, who apparently was a late addition to the cast (Mitsumune Kaoru)which is why she did not show up at all in the first episode.

We get scenes of the girls going through the school finding things that need to be fixed.

The desks get written off as trash and there is a humorous bit of the girls freaking out after finding a porn magazine in one of the desks.

In the end the girls take a kind of holier than thou attitude towards the boys with all the changes they made but the boys refuse to let them getting rid of their desks slide. Tatsuya tells them that the desks are the souls of their nakama(friends) and the girls do not understand why they would care for desks that to them looked trashed.

The guys storm out and one of the girls says she wants to go back to their old school but Fumie gives them a small pep talk and raises the girls' spirits after this confrontation.

The guys talk a bit about what to do before Tatsuya gives the order for them to start searching for the desks and the run off to do so.

The girls look up information about the boys' desks and find information explaining how they are important to the guys. But the girls still do not understand as the desks did not look like they were treated as something important to them.

Meanwhile the boys are searching for their desks. Looking at the usually places for where the desks could have been taken.

While they are looking they run into a gang that gives them a hard time. They end up setting Maya off and he attacks then the rest join him to fight the gang.

This is actually a really fun fight scene as they film it continuously in one take with the camera moving all over the area. The only thing I do not like is the fact that the camera is shaky so I found it at times hard to watch as it made my head hurt a bit.

Fumie is out and spots the guys running off somewhere and decides to follow them to see where they are going.

She finds them looking through a pile of trash for their desks.

Watching the boys Fumie is reminded of her prized possession, a teddy bear cell phone strap her mother made for her before she left. Fumie's grandmother threw it away later then late that night Fumie dug through the garbage to get it back.

The next day Miyata-sensei (because I cannot actually remember his character's name) looks pleasantly baffled with having courteous students. The boys are missing from class though and the girls cannot believe they may still be searching for the desks, except for Fumie though but she just keeps quiet.

But the guys show up after all with their desks. As the girls watch the guys approach it is revealed that Fumie still has her teddy bear strap with her and unlike the other girls has nothing to say about the guys returning their desks as she can now understand why.

At the school building entrance Fumie and company meet the guys for another confrontation. Even though Fumie has come to understand them a bit she still has her reputation and the expectations of her classmates to live up to and confronts the guys about breaking the school rules.

It's just like a fighting game but without the actual fight when this screen changes.

Fumie ends up suggesting that they hold an election for the position of student body president and both sides are for it. With that the episode ends.


I like this episode more than the first. Characters are getting more fleshed out and I feel there is a better sense of where the drama is going with its story. I love how it looks like both sides will be learning more about each other and perhaps realizing that neither side is more right or wrong in their ways. Though Fumie seems to be the only one really getting that message now but there are enough episodes left in the series that we can see the same development in all the characters eventually.

I do like that some of the girls are showing signs of personality. Fumie was helped dramatically with her flashback as her character seems to be reserved in general so there is little chance of actually seeing her express a lot of emotion because that is just her character.

The new character definitely has the biggest personalities of the girls for now. I have been looking into all information about the series and from the AKB48 fan side of things it seems like Mitsumune Kaoru was added to the cast list late and has a character that was originally for one of the other girls according to rumor. I think she seems to be a good addition so far, even though I do not like her character much but I think that is intentional, as she seems to be one of the strongest actors on the girls' side.

Unfortunately the rest of the girls remain one-note, though Saya is a little better as the character happens to get more lines.

Still love the guys and the more background characters are given some more chances to shine as this episode is not as heavily focused on Tatsuya as the first one was.

New Japanese word learned this episode: 選挙（せんきょう/senkyou）- election (used at the end of the episode to propose who should lead the student body)