THE LATEST
Monster Parentfrom July 8th, 2008
Episode 1
If you think Singaporean parents are horrible, Japanese parents are way worse if this drama is to be taken as an accurate portrayal. I was half the time omgwth while watching episode 1.
Takamura Itsuki (Yonekura Ryoko) is a successful and amibitious coporate lawyer who has never lost. Her mentor ask her to accept a quest from the Board of Education, where the head of the board was an ex-classmate of her mentor. She gladly accepts, without an inkling how, erm, horrible the job turned out.
Her first on-site observation was Ridiculous Parent #1 who insists the primary school changes this Japanese language teacher who has Kansai accent. This parent believes that the kansai ben has made her daughter violent. It’s actually a gesture common in the kansai culture (tsutomi) that someone use to wave across another person’s face, dimissing the person’s comments as silly or impossible. So this parent #1 is more of unknowledgable and ridiculous than parent #2.
Ridiculous Parent #2 (Kimura Yoshino) I think, is a serious nutcase. She harrasses her daughter’s form teacher with at least 20 phone calls a day, sneak into the school gym to take video of her daughter’s class having PE lessons with the form teacher, just to backup her belief that the teacher is a *gasp* paedophile who likes lolicon. This case stems from one fateful outing in which the teacher happened to take a few lesser photos of parent #2’s daughter, compared to another female classmate. Parent #2 insists that the teacher practises favouritism, by giving more assignments to students with better results (in reality it was because these students finished their class assignments faster than others, so in order not to let them waste their time waiting for other classmates to finish, the teacher gave these students some more questions to practise), as well as being a paedophile (wth?!). At this point, I was seriously wondering why did the school not just sue her for harrassment, like what Takamura suggested.
My question was answered by a very obstinate member of the Board of Education, Miura Keigo (Sasaki Kuranosuke), who thinks that hauling parent #2 to court will disrupt the harmony between the students, as well as further endangering the school-parent relationship. Hello? The parents don’t give a damn for the amount of unnecessary stress they give for the school and the teacher in question. In the end, this poor teacher attempted suicide, but was saved, and decided to quit being a teacher.
Ridiculous parent #2 (or rather, nutcase parent), was rather elated when the teacher quitted, and thanked Takamura for her “help” in making the teacher quit. Instead of thinking it was her ridiculous harrassment, parent #2 thinks it was the weak character of the teacher that prompted her to quit. Seriously, someone should just sue this nutcase for harrassment, illegal trespassing (to take secret video of the PE class) and get her to pay the psychological damage she caused the teacher.
On a sidenote, Hiraoka Yuta looks baaaad with his hair. And so far he’s been pretty redundant. Oh man, when can he get a meatier role. 
Overall an interesting drama so far, but I just can’t believe such parents exist.
*The disclaimer at the end of the drama says that its a fiction based on real scenarios in Japanese primary schools. Hmm.