Kinpachi Sensei returns to his old hangout Sakura middle school after seven years since his third season. He is now 46 years old with changes in his family. His wife passed away, and is now a single parent. His daughter Otome is in middle school, and it's also been 15 years since his first series when Tamotsu Miyazawa (Shingo Tsurumi) and Yukino Asai (Kaoru Sugita) had a child Ayumi (Mitsunari Hashimoto). He is now 15 years old and is now in Kinpachi's class.
The series continues to take on issues of violence in school. It seems that in this society, everyone is out to get one another. In episode 2 a girl is hit with a back fist by a male student. In the fourth episode, when Kinpachi asks the class who had experience of being hazed, almost everyone in the class raises their hands. When he asks who's hazed others, again almost everyone raised their hands. This means everyone is a victim of organized violence, and everyone is an organizer of violence. Either overtly or covertly, this society engages in victimizing others in some act of violence or another. The theme in variation may be there, but this is the same issue that's featured from the very beginning of this series.
One thing that impresses me about this series is that everyone involved is amazingly hard headed. The teachers, the students, and the parents. They are all bent on being "correct" in their own ways, but are perfectly willing to harm those who they believe have violated their code of conduct. Everyone has their own code of conduct, so everyone ends up thinking they have the right to harm the other party. Parents and teachers especially are at near hysterical level.
One of the purpose of this series was to bring out the issues that were somewhat covertly going on in schools of that time. So Kinpachi is like a condensed version of the microcosm of what goes on in Japanese schooling system. This season's theme seems to be on hazing, and violence wielded by students to one another takes center stage of many episodes.
This is a very violent society, and I could see why some students elect not to show up to school. Who would want to walk into a situation that you know you would be victimized ? Worse yet, you're surrounded by not so enlightened authorities who have very limited world views themselves.
Collapse of education system in Japan is not a mystery, but bigger mystery is how it managed to go on for such a long time.
