I initially liked the idea of this show and enjoyed the earlier episodes but halfway through, I couldn’t take it seriously. It became absurd and unreal and the order of how things were revealed was so, so ineffective.

For instances:
- Tibet being the son of one of the masters is actually an interesting idea, however, since we know nothing about this Master Phut or their relationship and bond as father and son, prior to Tibet attending Home School, we could care less. And so did Tibet; this was a father he didn’t remember or care about. A father he didn’t try to know or understand why he had to die or ‘kill himself’. Tibet only applied to Home School because his mom wanted it and he wanted to do it for her. So when Master Praset was revealed to have been the one behind Phut’s death, it was a well-duh no-brainer moment. Hence, Tibet’s reaction to everything Master Prasat disclosed felt over the top.
- The name Home School is self-explanatory but it was nice getting a flashback of where it originated from and how it came to be, however, it was revealed so late into the show that at that point it was… ‘Okay…good to know I guess?’.
- Run and Rin/Maki’s reunion is supposed to be the biggest angle but it was delivered so poorly that I watched them hug it out with a straight face. Gun and Film’s acting was good enough, I blame the camerawork and editing for the disappointment. Understand this is supposed to be a reunion after six long, desperate, and confusing years where the loving older brother suddenly fell off the face of the earth only to be discovered to have been locked up for years, and the production team couldn’t spend more time making it magical? Even the after-dialogue fell flat. They seriously reunited because Run recklessly ran out in front of an incoming large group of students and luckily his sister was among them and happened to recognize his backside in the dark. There was no suspense, no beautiful moment, no omgoodness yes they’ve finally met again! I swear, I can’t remember if they played any music but if they did it did nothing for me.

This series didn’t feel school-ry. The lessons were predictable and cliche. Besides, isn’t three years too freaking long to be learning about accepting your peers as your family…? There are no good direct callbacks, for example, why have the students run laps every morning? To build their stamina and make it easier for them to chase their parents later on? Or was it just to have a former professional runner as a PE teacher? What happened to the ducklings??? What was the long-term point for raising ducklings and how was that experience and learned skills applied to the later episodes or life in general? Why did the students have to learn to work together when the end goal is to have them kill their parents separately? I wished the ‘lessons’ had a bigger role than just a device used to torture the students. And how are we supposed to believe that GEN 6 is the only class in 15 years where students have fallen in love therefore the school had to invent a new rule to forbid it? You're letting teenage boys and girls run wild here, c'mon now.

Although I’ve listed a few above, I believe the show’s biggest downfall is that there were no decent builds and follow-ups, especially for a mystery/thriller. The suspense, if any, was short-lived. A lot of prominent revelations turned into background noises fairly quickly. The main villain was obvious from the opening in episode one. And much to my displeasure, this series really gave me Naruto vibes. In the ‘action’ scenes, all the characters do is talk each other’s ears off and/or reveal their sad backstory. I can’t count how many times I begged the characters to stop talking and just act. This could have ended at 14 episodes had they just cut out the filler (and if someone had just shot Master Prasat). I also don’t understand the students’ constant need to ask endless arbitrary questions when they obviously weren’t going to get straight answers. Some of the students are praised for their cleverness or for being outstanding but really all they’re doing is questioning the masters to death. I know Master Prasat has a gun but he was outnumbered 1:7 if we include one master. I kid you not, Prasat having a gun is the only reason the series has an additional three episodes. Once they saw that he had one gun that fired one bullet at a time, they immediately backed off and let him do him. Crazy story, I know.
The whole ‘don’t fight violence with violence’ has been tossed out the window by the ‘good’ characters so many times, I don’t know why the characters continued to shamelessly maintain that they weren’t using violence. I guess shooting someone is violent but punching, smacking, and assaulting with a deadly weapon aren’t?

I don’t mind a big cast, I actually like this one for its diversity but that’s when you run into common issues like poor character development or unfair screen time. Which is what we have here.
Run and Maki, respectively are smart characters and were held to high standards, so when they got together it wasn’t wrong to assume that they would do something amazing together. Two heads are better than one, right? Well, that wasn’t the case here. Instead of combining their higher intelligence and skills, Maki became a damsel in distress and was constantly used against Run.
I enjoyed the group of six: Maki, Tibet, White, Nai, Pennueng, and Phleng a lot. But I wish they’d put in more effort to search for their peers as they were fully aware of the danger around them. They’re a good group of friends but they’re also that good group of friends that don’t really care about anyone not part of their clique.
Given that the students have been through countless strange and dangerous scenarios, you’d expect them to grow some smarts or cautiousness about them but they remain relatively naive until the end. Not knowing who to trust is one issue. Trusting the same villain(s) is another.

I would definitely rewatch earlier scenes and interactions, but I’m not sitting through all 18 episodes again. Not even for Mek and Mok!