In Japanese films, high-school classrooms are often portrayed as rowdy environments where kids can talk, tease, flirt and fight, without any visible adult supervision. But when the teacher walks through the door the fun — if that's what it is — usually ends.
There is however another genre of Japanese high-school films set in schools populated entirely by punks, bikers and other anti-social types. Teachers are conspicuous by their absence or utter insignificance. Kids roam the graffiti-covered halls like Vandals and Goths in a pillaged Roman city, intent only on struggles for power and status. Fighting, either punk-on-punk or gang-on-gang, is the main extracurricular activity.
The apotheosis of this subgenre was reached with Takashi Miike's "Crows Zero" (2007) and "Crows Zero II" (2009), hit films based on Hiroshi Takahashi's "Crows" manga series from the 1990s. Made with Miike's characteristic mix of extreme violence and black humor, and cast with popular ikemen (pretty boy) actors, the films were hits with both the manga's male fans and women who found whole crazed spectacle kakkoii (cool).
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