Associated Titles: ごくせん, 極道の先生 (aka Yakuza Teacher)
Status: completed [155 chapters + 4 extras]
Author: 森本梢子 (Kozueko Morimoto)
Key words: teacher MC, school life, lawless students, yakuza, comedy, fights/martial arts, romantic subplot.
Kumiko Yamaguchi is a just-graduated young girl that will start her first job as a teacher at the Shirokin High School. Although rather average looking, she actually hides a huge secret: she is the heiress of the 4th generation of the renowned Kuroda group, one of the most powerfulyakuzagroups in Tokyo.
However, Shirokin is not your average high school either. It actually is the nest that harbours all the young delinquents of the area, where all the unpromising youngsters are dumped. Therefore, Kumiko sets herself a high goal: to lead her students towards the right path and wash clean the name of the school. But she needs to face these little jerks while hiding her background and acting dumb (more than she is), not always that easy…
She will involve herself in the adventures and misadventures of her students, who although atually having a somewhat soft heart, their violent tendencies and problematic behaviour always land them in disadvantageous situations, often involved with gang fights or even the yakuza. Among these immature brats, she finds herself an ally, Shin Sawada, a student of her homeclass who is actually very reliable and intelligent, and always guards her back to help her keep her secret from being exposed and… well, because she is a brawn-over-brains type of person who would actually make things worse if left alone…
Kumiko is dumb and has no common sense after being raised in a yakuza household, but she is insanely strong in fights. When her student’s are endangered, she will be like a mother hen kicking the ass of anyone trying to touch a hair of her kids. Still, she will act all reserved in front of her crush, the lawyer of her yakuza group. Besides that, there are also a few peculiar characters involved with her such as the pervy weird headmaster of the school or the bishounen-lover female teacher, as well as other teachers and the yakuza guys in her family.
This manga is a nice school life martial comedy (truth be told, I don’t know how they classified it as Josei, to me it’s more like a Seinen…). The art will probably shock you (specially the MC, don’t be too disappointed with her ah), it is not your typical manga style, specially if your are used to the overly-stylized shoujo art, it’s a rather old-fasioned style personal of the author. The manga is quite old, you’ll notice that not only in the drawing style but also in the comedy. Still, you can get used to it so I hope that doesn’t stop your reading. As for the romance, you won’t find much (so don’t read it for the romance else you’ll be disappointed). There are some chapters with romantic development and whatnot, but in the rest usually it is mostly the ML watching over MC as she goes wild with her antics. Still, our ML will still find his chance to confess and we’ll be able to see how it ends.
Apparently it has a TV drama as well as anime adaptations, haven’t watched them so I can’t say much about it, still I might want to check the drama someday, must be funny. Morimoto sensei has also a few more works, I haven’t read all but from the other one I’ve read (Koudaike no Hitobito) and recommendations I’ve read, I’m sure they’re also quite funny.
Other mangas by Kozueko Morimoto: Koudaike no Hitobito ~ Ashi girl ~ Deka Wanko
Blooming Translation 