First Impression: 35 Sai no Koukousei

Why would a 35 year-old woman want to go back to high school?

 

In the first episode, it introduces Baba Ayako (Yonekura Ryoko) who is a 35 year-old transfer student. Her reason for coming to school is that she wants to make 100 friends. 

But in this episode, it deals with bullying. Ayako notices that one of her classmate, Hasegawa (Hirose Alice), gets bullied by a group of boys and girls who teases her for eating lunch in the bathroom alone. Also, they know that she doesn’t have any friends. So, Ayako tries to figure out what’s going on with this girl and helps her out to deal with her problems.

It’s obvious that Ayako is a mysteries woman. We don’t know where she comes from or what her background is. Other than the fact that she’s probably rich, since she's able to drive around in a expensive looking convertible car. However, they did reveal that she was a high school dropout. So, she goes back to finish school. But I get a feeling that there might be more to that story. It did give a very short flashback of her as a high school student in the past. Maybe that’s why she wanted to help Haseagawa because she could relate to her problem. But it seems that Ayako is not just here to finish school. She probably has some sort of traumatic past that affected her while she was in school and wants to redeem herself from her past by helping other students with their problems.

This mysterious woman got me interested in the story. And, I already like this character. She’s smart and she’s not afraid of confronting others when she sees something that bothers her. But I am also curious about her past, so I’ll watch this.