Sakigake!! Otokojuku

Sakigake Otokojuku is the world's MANLIEST school where students refine their manhood in the most masculine & over the top way possible! That's the gist of it but it can offer more to those who already acquired MANIME tastes. For example if you're a fan of Fist Of The North Star, then Otokojuku pays a huge tribute to the series in terms of action & character designs.

If you're not a fan of masculine shows then there might not be much to offer but I'll offer some insight. The story follows the schools newly appointed 1st years where our main cast consists of Momotaro, Togashi, ... J, Toramaru, & the comic relief trio Hidemaro, Tazawa & Matsuo. The theme of the show is to become a better person who bear masculine ideologies such as guts, friendship, & tenacity. The beginning of the anime is gag arc where we get to learn of the outrageous training students have to endure such as marching through buildings, doing push ups to avoid getting blazed by flame throwers, boxing with spiked gloves, & even play a death battle of rugby.

Quite early on the series shifts into shonen battles where our main cast battles a rival school & eventually face their third years in mortal combat. Most of the battles don't contain super powers but deliver bizarre martial arts & intense savagery. While the anime doesn't cover the full story, it does emphasize the characters' determination to win at all costs. School spirit has been so impressive where even the comic relief characters have badass scenes.

In terms of battle hype, there's plenty to go around especially with the final episodes of the series. Sadly, the anime needs to be rebooted or continued as the GREATEST TOURNAMENT ARC in shonen history needs to be adapted. From chapter 70 onwards the manga covers a 16 Man VS 16 Man tournament. 16 people per team definitely sounds outrageous & thrilling for a tourny but guess what? The arc doesn't have 2 teams... it has 32 participants each with a team of 16 characters. @_@ That's a lot of fights.

Long end short: if you got a laugh out of reading Hokuto no Ken, you might wanna avoid sticking to this series. On the other hand, being a passionate fan of HnK will leave you thoroughly entertained by this strange 80's comedy homage.

If you're a fan of ridiculously old-school series that come off as being written by crotchety old Japanese men who value honor and justice to a point of social ridicule (mixed with a dash of admiration), Otokojuku might be a good pick for you. Riding the Hokuto wave of the mid-80's, Otokojuku is essentially a high-school comedy variant of Hokuto, aiming for a ... blend of shounen-as-hell integrity and comedic tinges that come off more ridiculous in the face of how seriously the series takes itself. Or is that backwards? Either way, the show is unique in its inability to understand exactly how far a premise can be taken before it turns into comedy, which works in its favor.

On the anime itself, Toei's rendition of the series works very well for the high concept of the story, not only in the lumpy, ugly renditions of the cast, but also because Toei's the type to recycle, so outside of this "spartan school of demons" setting that Otokojuku has, other less important background characters look like normal 80's Toei figures, which makes the thugs at Otokojuku really look proper in their status. It works!

On the character development, you have your pros and cons; literally everybody but the main character is incredibly interesting in what tropes they follow and their designs. The protagonist is a younger Kenshiro who succeeds at everything and only stresses himself when others are dying around him (which is apparently common). He gets boring by page 3, but it's the groups surrounding him that brings the character setup to a better light.

For the Japanese, Sakigake!! Otokojuku is a Cult Classic to the degree that any Japanese Otaku has either watched/read it or at least knows about it and can quote many of its memorable lines and the Memes it spawned(for example,"Minmei Publishing" is still quoted as the source of any outrageous statement about martial arts). It is popular to the degree that its manga's spinoffs are still going strong today,32 years after it started. For Western fans though, it is unfortunately a VERY underrated and underappreciated show that a lot more people imo should checkout.

So what is Sakigake!! Otokojuku? well, the 80s was the decade of ... MANLINESS BATTLE Manga, with series such as Fist Of the North Star and JoJo's Bizarre Adventures being smash hits with tons and tons of fans. Sakigake!! Is an extremely over the top parody of everything battle manga. In this respect the closest modern equivalent would be One Punch Man, but that is where the similarities end as the approaches of the two series to the parody are completely different.

Sakigake is a school that teaches MANLINESS. the students(mostly composed of Japan's worst delinquents)do crazy hard tasks and training all for the sake of becoming more MANLY. the Headmaster is a World War 2 hero who REALLY loves to announce who he is loudly scaring EVERYONE with the strength of his voice, which is so strong that it can destroy the speakers of a helicopter. Your Main Protagonist, Tsurugi Momotaro, is always calm and serious no matter what happens. he is the guy that you know will win despite all the overwhelming odds. he is the head of Sakigake's First year students, and is gradually accompanied by more main characters during the series (who die more than once, by methods that include falling in a pit of sulfuric acid and falling off a mountain, only to be miraculously alive after. Because GUTS.)

The First half of the Anime is 100% Comedy and parody, and it is INCREDIBLE. i haven't laughed so hard in ages at an episode, let alone continuing to laugh that hard for all the first half!
The second half is the battle arcs. however, the battles are, surprisingly enough, enjoyable both as "Shounen anime battles" and as "Parodies of shounen anime battles". they have a ton of epicness in them, yet at the same time you can clearly feel and enjoy the underlying parody. It is an impressive concoction, and a very enjoyable one. The only annoying part is that the last few battles feel rushed, including 2 major battles only being shown in a summarized fashion, yet the final episode is mostly a recap. not sure why they did that, and it is the only reason i gave the anime a 9/10 instead of a 10/10

Overall, this anime is incredible, and I recommend it to everyone and hope it gets a lot more fans than it currently has :)

I gave it a 7/10 but hey! Hold on! I loved it! I really did. But looking at it through and "objective" prism, its nothing stellar. But still 7/10 is a great number. But getting to the point....
I'll begin with the bad things. The story is a bit shallow and predictable. And the scenario sometimes betrays itself, not respecting the choices it has taken for some characters throughout the story. Also, sometimes the motif gets too repetitive, with bad guys coming and going all the time. To be honest, when I reached half of the series I was thinking to drop it, as I mostly ... found myself not wanting to watch more than one episode each time. But after that half, some things get more exciting in some aspects, and pushed me to watch it in the end.
And now for the good things. First of all I love the animation. Its superb. So well worked and good to the eye. The voice actors are all great, and the music is STELLAR! I loved its sound. It had that dark 80's shounen feeling of Dragonball or Hokuto No Ken. And as I said dark, I loved the serie's atmosphere. Most probably is what caused me to watch it till the end. So dark and gloomy, with those red skies, super dark shadows, traditional Japanese touches there and there, with historical flashbacks and stuff, and a touch of demonish feeling. And the humour in this anime is great. I adored the characters and their over the top manliness and obsession to honour and guts. In the end this series left me a nice taste. So nice that im about to watch it again after some time. I totally suggest that the fans of HnK or DB watch it immediately.

Sakigake!! Otokojuku Review
Now I understand that this isn't Fist of North Star which you can obviously see the resemblance and is also most likely the reason Toei decided to pick up this series to do an anime adaptation for because they were obviously trying to create another Fist of the North Star so it's not surprising if this was their plan.


Story (5/10) Average
The Story starts off like how a lot of anime starts off (which I don't mind), this is a slow start with a combination of introducing characters and episodic arguably filler comedic episodes in between. Then once it gets all of the character ... it takes off.
You can break this entire anime adaptation into about 4 Arcs.
1) Otokojuku Introduction Arc
2) Second Years Part 1 Akashi Gouji Arc
3) Second Years Part 2 Date Omito Arc
4) Third Years Daigouin Jaki Arc
With about Four Arc covered in the anime adaptation by Toei within 34 episodes I think as far as pacing with the first arc could have been better there is a bit too many little filler comedy episodic episodes within that arc. Now I'm not saying there's a problem with those types of episodes but one can easily tell that the last arc (3rd Years Arc) suffered because Toei most likely (and this happens a lot to Toei) ran out of budget. Certain fights where entirely skipped in the last arc only to be shown to use in quick slide shows by a character telling another character (who was asking what happened) what happened and what he missed, it was a sad attempt to quick skip over fights that could have been good and where most likely not skipped in the Manga which has 300+ Chapters if I'm not mistaken. Toei obviously just wanted to quickly throw this adaptation out there as pacing suffered in my opinion.

Art (7/10) Good
For an anime that came out in the late 80's you can't really judge it by how things look today. But you can compare it to how other things looks back then like the other Toei animated adaptation Fist of the North Star. Now when you take that into consideration this looks identical to that obviously it was the same animators and artist from that team to do this and I didn't have a problem with it. I know how Toei does things to I my expectations where already at a point were I could be impressed or disappointed I kind of knew what I was in for.

Sound (8/10) Very Good
Probably the best thing about this show is the sound and by sound I mean everything sound related. The Opening was catchy I never skipped it, the voice actors were good, the OSTs that played through out the anime was also enjoyable and it fit very well. Even though I did hear sound effects that I know Toei obviosuly migrated from FOTNS to here (example the nerve reaction sound effect prompts in FOTNS when Kenshiro hit's someone's vital points and also the explosion sound of that person when it happens) but I didn't necessarily mind it but I do feel they could have found or created a sound effect that was unique for the anime instead of being lazy and just re-using stuff but oh well it was the 80s and it's Toei.

Character (6/10) Fine
I think the characters introduced was fine nothing more nothing less. But I do feel a backstory on Momotaro should have been addressed whether the manga did it or not we do not know anything about him. If anyone got a good backstory presentation I would say it would be Togashi Genji but even the way they present it was fine of mediocre (and this most likely the mangaka's fault but Toei once again). He had a reasonable backstory which I felt connected to but Toei I felt could have done a better job presenting it as some details on his backstory weren't explain until the very last episode (which was a 17 minutes of recap of the entire anime.) All the other characters that had backstory were fine, little or none-existent which I'm not asking for a amazing backstory for every single character it's just the one's they decided to focus on should have been done better. And I would talk about Plot armor but I'll save that for the next section.

Enjoyment (6/10) Fine
My enjoyment of the entire anime adaptation is sitting at a 6 which is fine. The one thing about this anime that urked me a bit at first then quite a lot around the end is the plot armor. I'm not going to say anymore about it but just know this anime doesn't like to kill off it's characters it'll definitely spend the time building up a death and the tragedy of it when it happens and watching the other characters cry over it but then something will happen and they'll try to vaguely explain how this person isn't dead which is fine when you do it like once maybe twice or three times the most but the amount of plot armor in this series definitely felt like a slap to my face. Other than that enjoyment of other things like the comedy was fine not hilarious just fine, the fight scenes were also fine nothing mind blowing just fine, honestly the mot enjoyment I got out of this anime was singing along to the intro music.

Overall (6/10) Fine
The anime I personally felt would have probably been better if it was not in the hands of Toei basically trying to make another hit like FOTNS (even the the series hints at a lot of the similarities between the to down to character design between characters examples include Akashi's should pads or Hien basically looking like Shin from FOTNS's twin brother) that doesn't give them the right to try and treat it like it's FOTNS because at the end of the day it's not FOTNS it's Sakigake!! Otokojuku and I don't respect Toei for the decisions they made when it came to adapting this series it could have been better if it gets a remake by a different company in the future you would know what I mean but this isn't the first time I've been unsatisfied by the decisions of Toei but they still get me every time.

I enjoyed this very much and this is my first review even though ive watched many series cz i felt this to be the ulti shonen genre!! story in the ending is completely strayed away but the objective remains the same "refine your manhood". The comedy part is really good and its unexpected in some or rather many episodes. Dont expect too much from art since its a very old anime. Mainly i watched this cz i wanted to see for myself how buggy's voice actor has done in this and it was truly amazing on his part. Now i understand why the voice of ... buggy suites him perfectly. Overall its very enjoyable and im sure many will like it and give atleast 8* or above.

Do you face a scenario where you enjoyed something a lot but yet deep down you know it has too much flaws to ignore.
This is that kind of anime for me.
Mild spoilers ahead
The anime started to be very good like Gintama level but at better pacing,Initially the atmosphere was fun and the obstacle seemed threatening ,the tension felt real.
Sadly the common shounen troupe of fakeout hindered it.
It shifted its gear from high school fight to battle type arc but once we know that everything is fakeout I couldn't appreciate it completely.I felt moved after certain moments only to be revealed that character was ... alive,
As a result the last arc was awfully mediocre ,we know that no one will die and no one did,t he fights were average and ending was kinda lame.
I know I kinda criticised it too much and it may seem a very mid show but trust me the fun I had, the emotions I felt, that iconic dialogue "I am principal"(watch it to find it out).
For enjoyment 9.5/10
plot 6/10
characters 8/10[Momo and Togashi were very good rest were averagish ]
This anime sadly didnt age well but a good journey .
Farewell to this anime .
Overall 9/10(but I can fully consider if someone rates it low).

SAKIGAKE ! Otokokuju is basically the manliest school ever with the most powerfull principal and the most ruthless teachers around the world, not only Japan, but the whole world feels like little sissies close to these dudes, and the students of course are the toughest among the deliquents. The anime is pretty focused on the comedy in the beggining, but as the flow goes on it sets itself as a solid battle shounen, with manly tears and blood spilling, the only bad part is that sometimes the story feels kinda off and the choreography of some fights is weird, but most of it is great, ... simply manly, if you notice everything here is manly, to a point where even lions are afraid of the principal. This anime is of course influencied by HNK, but it is not a rip-off, neither a parody, but a great anime with his own identity ! And it was pretty influencial in japan during its time, sadly due to being very old and never getting a new adaptation, he kind got lost with time and didnt get very famous around the globe, but, let's stay positive and pray that maybe we get a new series, or maybe an couple of OVA's with decent animation.

I'll just say it flat out. I don't think this show is all that good. There are a few factors that are keeping me from giving it a lower score, it has SOME memorable moments. Like when Ryu runs on the legendary treadmill of death, that's not what it's called, but I'm calling it that anyway; very fitting. And it also has SOME good fights. Like Kenshiro w/sword vs. Bigger Kenshiro w/bigger sword. I'd call it a cock fight, but I'm above that (^w^). The reason why Japan gets so many earthquakes is because it's the sound of the character's massive swinging logs slamming against ... the floor. Causing tectonic plates to shift. Otokojuku's goal is to be the manliest anime to ever man. And I gotta say, it mans well. This show has a lot of testosterone. Otokojuku is a militaristic high school for troublemakers and delinquents. This show gives me flashbacks to when I was in boot camp, so I'm a little biased, considering I hated that entire experience.

Leader of the first years, Momotarou Tsurugi. Clearly inspired by Kenshiro. I find it somewhat funny how his friends call him "Momo" all the time. Momo meaning "peach" in Japanese. It's just a little silly whenever I hear it, because they're calling this huge manly man a peach. His friends, Genji Togashi, Ryu Toramaru, J, and Hidemaro Gokukoji must survive the trials and tribulations of Otokojuku. There's not much I can say about this show. It starts off as this goofy, delinquent, comedy series that takes advantage of it's gross-out humor, then it evolves into this seemingly serious battle shounen series. I guess that's technically better than before, however I find that element of Otokojuku to be very obnoxious and tiresome. The main group of characters must fight to the death or go through this "legendary" trial that no one have ever defeated. It's a bit cliché, and Otokojuku does this over and over and over again. You quickly get tired of that formula, because most of the show is just constant trails. Now that I think about it, I believe this battle shounen aspect is about two-thirds of the whole show. I might be wrong about that, I can't remember, sorry. My point is that the story arcs are very repetitive and drawn out.
Comedy is subjective...duh. With Otokojuku, I wasn't really vibing with it's sense of humor. I'm sure someone out there loves it when a character farts in another character's face or whenever a black character is introduced they're portrayed as dumb fuck with no manners, who can only speak in broken English or when the upperclassmen try to sabotage whatever the first years are up to and screw up every single time because Momotarou "Peach Man" Tsurugi is so ahead of the curb. I didn't really like this show all that much. I'm glad I watched it, but I'll never go back to it again. Go watch Hokuto No Ken. That series is infinitely better than this one. And there's better delinquent anime out there. Be-bop High School, Kyou Kara Ore Wa, and I'll reluctantly recommend Cromartie High. That show quickly stopped being funny for me, but the beginning episodes made me laugh more than this one. Otokojuku doesn't have much to offer except for some cool fights and a cool OP. Not a fan.

Story: What story? It's mostly trials/10
Art: 6/10
Sound: 6/10
Characters: 4/10
Enjoyment: 4/10
Overall: 5/10

Taking place in a school full of crazy people and events,the story starts episodic and then develops story arcs like most old school shounen,which repeats it again and again just in a different coat of paint.

Just when you think it starts to get good,it skips or rushes things,then undoes everything at the end of the arc to return to the status quo.

To top it of it ends with a recap.

They all look like Hokuto no Ken characters so if you like the artstyle then good for you,the soundtrack was nothing special,just ok,animation was mediocre outside of some decent moments that don't last long.

Most characters are ... barely developed and we just scratch the surface of them,the few that are fleshed out are switched out for new characters,the VAs did a good job voicing them though.

The series actually started out okay,the humour did a good job with the insane school they are in,though the humour phases out a lot later for its serious arcs which are done badly.

Honestly if you wanna watch this you need to like MANLY anime a lot because it certainly is not as good as Hokuto no ken,despite looking like it.

Otokojuku is a classic in Manime , its a shame the anime ended early , this show is manly and over the top , what do not expect much in plot , or in characters thanks to its short length, pros the characters and animation , cons the short list of episodes , and characters who let just say don't keeping being dead , the manga is a big recommendation from me , this is still a worth watching anime
Unique battles , and manly Fist of the North Star like Writing , Otokojuku is a good manga with a anime that ... is just too short , I really don't like it's just 30 plus episodes