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]

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

Katsumata, Hideo Producer

Hagino, Ken Producer

Abe, Noriyuki Director, Storyboard, Recording Engineer

Date, Hayato Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Oct 17, 2024

whiteflame55

Recommended

It's just what it says on the tin: great.

I watched this show a short time after watching Golden Boy. I'm not going to be comparing to that show, but it had a similar vibe to it, and I think in many ways this is a broader realization of the ideas of Golden Boy.

In many ways, this show probably shouldn't work. When your premise is that Onizuka is becoming a teacher to perv on high school girls... yeah, it's not the best, especially since he doesn't really drop that throughout the story. Hell, a substantial arc in this story involves Onizuka getting one of his students ... work as a model using some very revealing outfits to display her ample... assets.

But that's also kind of the point. Onizuka is a good person at heart, even if it's hard to see at times (like, a lot of times), but he also doesn't give two shits about the methods he uses to achieve his aims. He's willing to do things that would absolutely get other teachers fired in order to deliver a message to individual students (or small groups, depending on the arc). That sometimes involves skirting the law, giving up his and others' worldly possessions (RIP so many Crestas) and even potentially losing his life. He puts his students first and foremost, especially and strangely when he's pursuing something for himself.

And his students respond in kind. Even students who are outright hostile to him to start are slowly won over, and while it almost seems formulaic, the series never falls into a clean rhythm. There's always some new wrinkle to address, and while Onizuka is often abnormally confident, he's also just so human in how he deals with repeated threats of firing and imprisonment. The students themselves require very different forms of intervention, some of which Onizuka does actively, and some of which is just a consequence of a series of actions that include Onizuka, but all of them showcase why he's the man for the job.

Really, though, what makes this show is the humor. Yes, all the memeable moments are impressive, and Onizuka especially knows how to make me crack a smile, but this is one category I have to give to the antagonist that is the Vice Principle. Dude is a laugh riot despite being introduced as a terrible human being. All those poor Crestas...

It's a show that revels in the mess that is its characters, and while I couldn't appreciate everything the show did, it did more than enough to earn its classic status.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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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 ... really annoying towards the end, it felt like they were cranked to the max in the following episodes which just made it nearly unbearable to watch. For any average person, the humor and the concepts in the anime would've been completely weird, but since I'm relatively old, I can understand that the anime was from a different era ,therefore, could find humor and comedy in the jokes when I took them lightly.

ART (9/10):
Since the anime was made in the 1990 and start of 2000's it has great animation for its time. It brought back a lot of nostalgia, overall the sound and design were also great.

MUSIC (10/10):
The music from that era was really something else. Just the music alone would make this anime a 7/10 disregarding all the other components.

Story (4/10):
Could've been better, took a bad turn towards the end.

The only bit of personality development for Onizuka was him thinking he is a bad teacher to him actually building confidence in himself. Finally, the first 23 episodes make it absolute gold hence the rating of 7/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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