Hell Teacher seems likely to be one of those shows that’s a casualty of scheduling reality, or perhaps winds up a Patron Pick candidate. But after three episodes I’m actually quite impressed. Not only is the production quite decent for the sort of series this is, the series itself is rather interesting. This is obviously not a fabulously original premise – though it was certainly a lot more original when it was written – but the execution is impressive. There’s a fair bit of nuance in these encounters, and a good balance between creepy and goofy.
The story this time around is of the “midnight honor student“. It’s a take on the ever-present seven school mysteries staple, the anatomical model that comes to life at night. This one isn’t even waiting til it gets dark – it’s cleaning the classrooms while the kids are still playing outside. Once spotted by them, those kids do what kids do – they sneak into the school at night to investigate whether this is real. This is despite Nube-sensei dismissing the rumor, presumably to discourage the kids from doing exactly what they ended up doing anyway.
What strikes me here is how jaded Nube’s kids are to all this, with the exception of little Makoto who seems to be afraid of everything. Two of them have already had direct experience at Nube’s side of course, but maybe this town being what it is none of them are strangers to such phenomena. The midnight honor student is real in fact, and Nube immediately takes command to keep the situation from getting dangerous. Recognizing that this was a soul attached to a doll-like object, he tries to gently convince it to go home, rather than exorcising a spirit he deems not to be hostile.
I definitely get why Nube approached this the way he did, and more than anything the honor student comes off as a tragic figure – it just wants to be a real boy. But it’s not, and that’s not something Nube has the power to change. And when MHS doesn’t take the hint and starts to go psycho, the situation gets plenty dangerous anyway. It manages to lock him in a storage closet while it goes after the others with a shard of the mirror it broke, to “peel” them and make everyone like him. Nube manages to escape in time to avert a real disaster, but it was too close for comfort.
To gild the lily, the local youkai energy being what it is, Nube’s solution – to seal the soul in the anatomical model – doesn’t even hold for one night. So now we have a half-youkai doll’s soul running around somewhere, disguised as a child (if you don’t look too closely), promising to “put the skin on”. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that kind of seems like a problem? I certainly wouldn’t want to be the kid he sits next to in homeroom, in whatever school the midnight honor student decides to attend next.
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