First Impression: Kazoku Game

The Numata family is about to get schooled by Sakurai Sho.

Sho plays as Yoshimoto Koya, a prestigious tutor from Tokyo University. He has been hired by the Numatas to help their youngest son, Shigeyuki (Uragami Seishuu), to improve his grades and get him to go back to school.  Because, he stays in his room all day and refuses to go back to school due to being bullied. But Yoshimoto promises the parents that he will get their son to return to school in just 5 days.

Yoshimoto begins to take stalker-ish photos of the family members and observes them. The entire Numata family consists of the father,  Kazushige (Itao Itsuji), who works at the human resources department. Kayoko, the mother, who seems to be trying to be a perfect housewife despite being very stressed out. Their eldest son, Shinichi (Kamiki Rynosuke) who is the perfect son who gets good grades. But he seems to be troubled by his parent’s high expectations of him. However, Yoshimoto deduces that they seem to be a perfect ideal family on the outside, but on the inside they have flaws. 

Yoshimoto comes up with a plan to get Shigeyuki to return to school. He makes a deal with him. If Shigeyuki is able to stay in his room without leaving for 5 days, then Yoshimoto will do whatever he asks of him. But if he fails to stay in his room, then he has to return to school. The deal doesn’t sound so bad.  So, Shigeyuki agrees to this. Then, Yoshimoto blocks Shigeyuki’s windows with cement and blocks his door with a big metal security door.  And, only Yoshimoto knows the combination to open the door. Yoshimoto says to him that if he’s going to be in his room all day, might as well be trapped in it.

I could spoil you the outcome of this. But I would recommend seeing this for yourselves.

My first impression of Yoshimoto is that he’s such an oddball and a very suspicious man. At first, he’s light-hearted and sometimes can be funny. He seems to be a likeable tutor. But the drama slowly reveals that he is actually a serious and intense person. I mean, he uses an abusive method to get the kid to change his behavior. I understand that he is trying to imply tough love on this kid to make him stronger. But I personally don’t agree with the abusive method because it’s going to create even more violence as a result.

But in order to make Shigeyuki to become confident about himself, he needs to be in an environment where he will be given love and support. But this family clearly has no love at all. I can tell from the very beginning of the drama. When the tutor slaps him in the face, the entire family did not say anything about it. Even when he was trapped in his room, they put no effort in helping and they don’t care about him. So, I guess, I kind of understand why Yoshimoto has to use a rough approach on the kid and also to inflict it on the entire family members. Because, he believes that this is the only way to get through to them. I feel that Yoshimoto is a good therapy for them to deal with their problems.   

For the first time ever, I’m actually impressed with Sho’s acting in this drama. He made his character believable. And, I really felt scared about his character. In the beginning of the drama, I saw an innocent Sho-kun, and then towards the end of it, he became a completely different person. Now, I’m kind of afraid to know what dark secrets his character has.     

The first episode alone was enough for me to get hooked onto the story. The first episode took me by surprise. Especially with that ending, it turned into something light-hearted to all of a sudden dark. But I’m definitely going to watch this all the way to the end. I just wonder what other eccentric things that Yoshimoto is going to pull off with this family.