This drama was around by the time I started watching dramas and many of my friends started with this one. I always had it in my "to watch" list and recently, I decided to give it a go. I don't know what took me so long. I always thought, from afar, that GTO and this one were the classics in the whole "unlikely teacher taking care of a complicated group of students" trope in dramas, and I can appreciate, while watching it 13 years later (wow) that a lot of today's dramas owe to Gokusen. The story is entretaining and can, at times, be as cheesy as you'd imagine, but it has heart and it's well portrayed. It was very good (and kind of adorable) to see baby Matsujun, Oguri Shun, Matsuyama Kenichi, Narimiya Hiroki and others of their generation and realize how much they've grown as actors. But the soul of the drama is definitely Nakama Yukie and her performance as Yankumi. I loved her character and the way she was portrayed, more than I liked many other teachers in other dramas with the same trope. That being said, you need to know that there's going to be clichés, there's going to be cheesy scenes and there's going to be conflicts of one episode that get resolved in the same episode, as opposed to a cointinuing storyline; so if all that's not your cup of tea, this may not be the drama for you. But if you like school dramas with a problematic group of students and an unlikely teacher (in this case, a Yakuza heir with a very fun personality), then you need to watch this one.