[News] Yonekura Ryoko to play a high school girl in new drama ‘35-sai no Koukousei’.

[News] Yonekura Ryoko to play a high school girl in new drama ‘35-sai no Koukousei’.

Cr. - tokyohive

On February 19th, NTV announced that actress Yonekura Ryoko will be playing a female high school student in their upcoming spring drama ‘35-sai no Koukousei‘ (tentative title). It will be the very first time for Yonekura to play a high school girl in her career and her first starring drama on NTV in general.

‘35-sai no Koukousei’ is a socio-critical school drama set at a senior high school. It follows a 35 year-old woman who enters the school as a student, where she has to face the dark sides of present-day senior high schools, including bullying and playing hooky. The drama depicts how she is gradually changing the students as well as the school in general.

She hates it when students pretend not to see the difficulties of one of their classmates or blame someone else for the problems they are dealing with every day. Thanks to her age and experience in society, she can help the students to solve their problems and acts as an an older student they can rely on.

Yonekura is going to completely transform herself into an ordinary high school girl and the drama is going to show her wearing the school’s uniform, doing homework after school, participating in physical education and so on. However, her character is still going to be somewhat different to a normal 17 year-old student.

For example, she always arrives school in an expensive foreign car; or during lunch break she always goes to the smoking area and after school she always needs a refreshing can of beer. It is unknown why she suddenly returns to school 18 years after graduation, but the mystery about her identity is gradually going to be revealed as the story progresses.

Yonekura commented, “First I thought I was going to play a teacher when I received the story, but then I was really glad to hear that I’m actually going to play a student. I want to think about how all the different problems on the campus could be settled when experienced by a 35 year-old student and how it should be conveyed to the viewers. Please look forward to this drama!”

The expectations for this drama are high, since Yonekura once again strengthened her image as the queen of drama ratings in the year 2012. The producer of the drama is aware of her ever increasing charms and the kind of image the viewers have of the actress. The producer hopes to live up to their expectations, while showing them yet another side of her by putting her into the role of a high school student.

NTV is going to air ‘35-sai no Koukousei’ every Saturday at 9:00 pm starting in April.