This fall, TBS will air the eighth series of the drama "3 Nen B Gumi Kinpachi Sensei." Tetsuya Takeda will once again star as the title character.

The show's original creator and screenwriter, Mieko Osanai, is no longer on staff. In 2004, during the airing of the seventh series, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She left the show, replaced by screenwriter Yuki Shimizu for the second half of the series. At the time, it was announced that she had to leave for health reasons, but an article in Shukan Bunshun earlier this year reported that her health was not an obstacle, and the network forced Osanai to step down.

Osanai criticized the later episodes written by Shimizu, calling them "unrealistic." When asked about the possibility of the show continuing, she initially refused. The network was eventually able to get her approval for a new series, under the condition that it isn't like the episodes that Shimizu wrote previously.

The series begins airing in October, in TBS's Thursday 9:00pm time slot.