My Boss, My Hero

I had planned today to finally catch the blog up to current happenings, and though I made a good start by posting about last weekend this morning, my plan fell apart thanks to 4 words. My Boss, My Hero.


The kana read "mai bosu mai hi-ro-"

I found out about the show whilst watching tv in my apartment. I have a total of 10 channels of tv available to me, all in Japanese. One is like a community access channel, 2 show almost exclusively baseball, one is usually showing some kind of food show and the rest vary depending on the time of day. The news shows even dub Nightline and ABC News (I won't go in to how annoying that was when I was sans internet and the bridge in Minneapolis collapsed). Anyway, I have taken to watching a few shows, even though I can't understand much of what is said. One is a samurai show, no idea what it's called. Another is a soap-opera of some type that involves bitchy women at a hostess-club. But by far the best thing I have found so far is My Boss, My Hero.

Though unable to understand the majority of what was said, I was immediately hooked through the sheer number of hilarious facial expressions of Nagase Tomoya


I watched the entire episode and was able to glean the basic plot of the show. And laughed my ass off even though it was in Japanese. Then, I promptly got online to find out more about it, and lo and behold the show has been fan-subbed!

Basically, the plot of the show is thus (edited from drama wiki). Sakaki "Tornado" Makio (Nagase Tomoya) is a tough 27-year-old high school drop-out. By academic standards, he's pretty dumb. He is the next in line to become the boss of the Kantou Sharp Fang family, a local yakuza gang. After he botches a deal with his complete inability to add, his father decides to force him to return to high school and earn his diploma. If Makio doesn't graduate, the position of boss will be given to his younger brother Mikio.

The 2 sides of Makio


In order to attend high school, he must pose as a 17-year-old during school hours and in the presence of any classmates or teachers outside of school. If his cover is blown, it would be the end of his high school career as well as his hopes to become boss. Being that he is 27 and never went to high school, he is compeletly inept when it comes to social interactions at the school. Thus, hilarity ensues.

As the series progresses, he grows and changes, and learns that school is much more than just studying for tests. There are all sorts of challenges that have nothing to do with studying and that help his character to grow.

One of my favorite running plots involves the daily fight for one of the 12 "Agnes puddings" (St. Agnes being the name of the high school)

The kana read "agunisu purin"

And so, instead of blogging about life in Japan, today I spent prowling the web in search of My Boss, My Hero. I'm up to episode 6 of 10. Fantastic show, I highly reccomend it ^_^ If any of you aspiring entrepreneurs would front some cash to bring it to the states we could make millions! Millions I tell you!