Great Teacher Onizuka

Twenty-two-year-old Eikichi Onizuka—ex-biker gang leader, conqueror of Shonan, and virgin—has a dream: to become the greatest high school teacher in all of Japan. This isn't because of a passion for teaching, but because he wants a loving teenage wife when he's old and gray. Still, for a perverted, greedy, and lazy delinquent, there is more to Onizuka than meets the eye. So when he lands a job as the homeroom teacher of the Class 3-4 at the prestigious Holy Forest Academy—despite suplexing the Vice Principal—all of his talents are put to the test, as this class is particularly infamous.

Due to their utter contempt for all teachers, the class' students use psychological warfare to mentally break any new homeroom teacher they get, forcing them to quit and leave school. However, Onizuka isn't your average teacher, and he's ready for any challenge in his way.

Bullying, suicide, and sexual harassment are just a few of the issues his students face daily. By tackling the roots of their problems, Onizuka supports them with his unpredictable and unconventional methods—even if it means jumping off a building to save a suicidal child. Thanks to his eccentric charm and fun-loving nature, Class 3-4 slowly learns just how enjoyable school can be when you're the pupils of the Great Teacher Onizuka.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	GTO
Prequel:	Shonan Junai Gumi!
Summary:	Great Teacher Onizuka Recaps

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Onizuka, Eikichi

Main

Takagi, Wataru
Japanese

Kanzaki, Urumi

Main

Mitsuishi, Kotono
Japanese

Uchiyamada, Hiroshi

Main

Cho
Japanese

Kikuchi, Yoshito

Main

Midorikawa, Hikaru
Japanese

Nomura, Tomoko

Main

Kawasumi, Ayako
Japanese

Fuyutsuki, Azusa

Main

Orikasa, Fumiko
Japanese

Yoshikawa, Noboru

Main

Okano, Kousuke
Japanese

Murai, Kunio

Main

Seki, Tomokazu
Japanese

Aizawa, Miyabi

Main

Noda, Junko
Japanese

Danma, Ryuuji

Supporting

Chiba, Isshin
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Katsumata, Hideo

Producer

Abe, Noriyuki

Director, Storyboard, Recording Engineer

Tsuru, Toshiyuki

Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Odaka, Yoshinori

Episode Director

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Opening Theme

	1: "Driver's High" by L'Arc~en~Ciel (eps 1-17)
	2: "Hitori no Yoru" by Porno Graffitti (eps 18-43)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Last Piece" by Kirari (eps 1-17)
	2: "Shizuku (しずく)" by Okuda Miwaku (eps 18-33)
	3: "CHERISHED MEMORIES" by Hong Kong Knife (eps 34-42)
	4: "Driver's High" by L'Arc~en~Ciel (eps 43)

Reviews

Sep 29, 2023

DivinityV12

Recommended

A great anime although it was slimmed down extremely from the manga.

I saw snippets of GTO from youtube and the comedy was great from what I saw so I thought I'd give it a binge and oh boy was it worth it. Even for an anime which came out pre 2000 while it didn't have any fancy and smooth looking art style like what we have today and disclaimer, I don't believe you need it to be UFO table level art style to be good, especially when the setting is school and comedy. All you need is a good plot, characters with enough depth and ... alot of funny drawn faces for it to be at the level it needs to be.

The plot itself for the anime was about a delinquent man Onizuka who wanted to become the best teacher in all of Japan and his job is to win over the students who from their past experiences hate teachers. Each student has their own unique personalities along with flaws like every human being does and being the characters Onizuka is he then proceeds to try and win over these students.

from what I've read after finishing the anime is that this adaptation cuts out an extreme amount from the manga which is still continuing to this day along with the fact the author has taken breaks to focus on other works.
Nonetheless I really enjoyed this adaptation eventhough it cuts out alot of important parts of the manga which could've added more context and info to the anime. I still found it very fun to watch, with Onizukas personality being the perverted yet kind of man to not care and do things his way which gives alot of comedy.

Now I'm not a manga reader, simply because I've never enjoyed taking the time to read putting it simply and without the music and voice acting does turn me off a bit, I am contemplating reading the manga of this just from how much there is and the fact that it's still ongoing and maybe (fun fact) because the final episode aired 3 days before I was born. Quick maths at this time currently I am 24 years of age.

I was disappointed by how this didn't get a second season but judging from how Japan is with how they take education very seriously and other things, this after school show was probably very influential and they didn't want to chance anything coming of it. Which is sad but kids are easily indoctrinated so to chance a kid becoming a delinquent from viewing Onizuka would cause for concern.
Although I'm pretty sure if we tried, us the community could put together enough funds to have it remade in HD like how Urusei Yatsura is with it being green lit for a second season. Although that came out in 1981 so 18 years before GTO.

So for you anime only people I would recommend watching this as I still found it a great show and have become a bit attached to it over the 43 episodes and would definitely advise you to give it a watch. Although if you also read mangas or only read mangas I can't advise you but all I can say is, if a so called badly adapted anime can make me contemplate picking up the manga after all I've watched then it must be a great read.

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Dec 17, 2022

bruhmanlmao

Mixed Feelings

Okay so after completing the 43 episodes I had a lot of mixed feelings, the first 23 episodes were absolute gold nearly 10/10, after the 23rd episode it felt like there were many fillers and the story took a really bad turn.
As for character development, Onizuka had the relative same mentality and personality which was entertaining to watch in the starting. I get he is not the brightest tool in the shed but, him just doing dumb random shit and it somehow working out in the end just felt repetitive and ridiculous towards the end of the anime. The pervert/sex maniac side of him got ...

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Jul 31, 2013

Polyphemus

Not Recommended

Great Teacher Onizuka had some potential, but all of the humor is repetitive and juvenile, while unrealistic dramatic scenes dominate the plot more and more as the series drags on. It basically fails on both fronts. Plot points and devices are reused to the point where they become dull, and they get increasingly ridiculous as the series progresses. Not in a good way, of course. Holy melodrama, batman! This anime is chock full of bullshit backstories that are supposed to make us go “awwwwww, they’re not a bad guy/girl after all!” by the way. Yeah, it’s definitely as irritating and ineffective as it sounds.

Character ... development is unfortunately absent from the personality of our bland douche of a protagonist, and he is pretty much the same annoying dumbass for the whole duration of the plot. His way of solving issues with students is completely unrealistic, and while this is sometimes acknowledged and played for laughs, it takes itself seriously far too often. He’s pretty much just there for wish-fulfillment, plain and simple. As for his students, all developments in them come off as completely forced and contrived. Plus, almost all of them are blatant archetypes, who have some deep-seated reason to “bawww nvr trust a teacher again!” to boot. Why should we care about anything bad that threatens to happen when we already know that the Mary Sue genius cool handsome hacker boy can fix all problems that come up easily? Another telling issue with the characterization is that just about all men above the age of twenty are, for whatever reason, portrayed as disgusting perverts. This may be a reflection on Fujisawa himself, given the large amount of poorly-placed fanservice. All antagonists in this series start off completely one-dimensional and unrealistically evil, but they then get some sob-story tacked onto their character and their personality changes completely. That is simply not proper character development.

The art is easily the weakest aspect. Almost everybody has the same exact face; you know, that one face that Fujisawa Tohru recycles endlessly in everything he does. The only face he knows how to draw, basically. Great Teacher Onizuka largely depends on visual humor for its value as a comedy, but all of the "hilarious" facial expressions were used over and over again, when they were never really funny in the first place. At the same time, they contribute heavily to my inability to take Great Teacher Onizuka seriously. The rest of the visual humor is just somewhat lame and, man, I hope you like seeing Onizuka’s ass, because you’re going to be getting a lot of that. The animation is nothing special, and any flaws with it are completely overshadowed by the horrendous art.

All of the claims made by Great Teacher Onizuka’s rabid defenders about its “societal commentary” are completely untrue. Bullying is not dealt with much better, more interestingly, or realistically than in many other works I have seen. Furthermore, I failed to see what it actually criticized about the education system, other than the fact that not enough teachers are violent gangsters. This theme continues with just about everything else it supposedly comments on. It either just features these things in a cliché manner or does not really say much about them at all. There is no depth to Great Teacher Onizuka; it is just a simple drama and comedy. This would be fine did it do either of those things right, but, alas, it did not.

I have no idea as to why this anime is so highly regarded. It is just not very good, plain and simple. I get second-hand embarrassment when watching all of those sentimental scenes about teaching, and then I have to wonder why Great Teacher Onizuka didn’t just stick to comedy. Then I remember that it wasn’t funny and I think to myself “ah, that explains it.” GTO started out as a decent parody of all of those stupid shows with a super-teacher who helps his students work out all of their problems and wins their hearts in the process, but it eventually fell victim to self-indulgence and became a stupid story in the same vein. It contributed nothing new nor anything of real value to the genres of school life, comedy, or drama. It never made me laugh out loud, and it never evoked any kind of physical or emotional response. Not in a good way, at least. At its best, it’s okay. At its worst, it’s goddamn painful.

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Great Teacher Onizuka

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Onizuka, Eikichi

Kanzaki, Urumi

Uchiyamada, Hiroshi

Kikuchi, Yoshito

Nomura, Tomoko

Fuyutsuki, Azusa

Yoshikawa, Noboru

Murai, Kunio

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