GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka
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| Amazing opening episode. This episode reminded me of these days of being a teacher! The cool part was to show the human side of a teacher. Way to go forward! |
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| Man, that was... weird. There were definitely some moments that were hard to appreciate through a modern lens. The length definitely didn't help, either. That said, one episode isn't everything. |
"Molly Ringwald" out right now - check my Linktree!  |
| I'm not exactly sure what I expected from GTO. From what I heard through the years, I somewhat expected Onizuka to teach his students using hardheaded stubbornness, violence, and lessons he learned from his years as a street punk to help them out of their ruts. I knew about Onizuka's silly faces, his goal of getting a high school wife, and the general idea of his character, but nothing else. To my surprise, he truly was as much of a dirtbag as I heard, but he's also a hell of a guy who, with absurdly unorthodox methods, does in fact care about his students, albeit with none of the right reasons necessarily. Another thing I heard was the quality of the dub. I didn't realize Steve Blum was Onizuka, and while he's an amazing actor, I don't think he necessarily fits Onizuka entirely. He definitely pulls off the suave hardass who shows up, gets what he wants, then jets. He's also great when Onizuka is giving his heart to heart talks, as well as when he's trying to be threatening. I don't necessarily buy the perverted and goofy Blum version of Onizuka, but I can definitely tell he's having a blast with the role. I suppose it's because I'm so used to his more serious roles that it's hard to adjust. From just the first episode, the other voices range from okay to kind of questionable. I think if I sat down and watched long enough, I could probably stomach the dub, but I'll stick with subs since I'd need subtitles for some of the signage anyways. As far as first impressions go, it's certainly a fun show. Hearing Onizuka referred to as "golden boy" early on seemed like a cheeky reference to the actual Golden Boy anime, and I was absolutely expecting similar perverted antics by the time Mizuki started charming Onizuka. Though, again, I was surprised by how quickly the anime switched gears. Onizuka literally breaking down the wall separating Mizuki's family seemed a bit much in terms of narrative, but I suppose this show has no respect for subtlety, and for that, I respect its decision to tackle adolescent and education-issues with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer wielded by a skirt-chasing maniac. |
| Damn he really just KO'd that wall lmao. Great first episode |
| Strange first episode. Tons of stuff happened, but it was also very slow. Some of the comedy was... uh.... something. I have high hopes for the future though. Oh also, we started watching this on Peacock, but that version had crazy screen-tearing. I started feeling sick. Definitely don't watch on there! |
| I forgot how good this story is, I need to finish the manga. Wish I could track down the physical volumes those were nice. All the tiny writing was such a bonus! Deluxe first ep, I thought there was no way I could get pulled into this old animation again, but here I am. |
| Oh, well, it's time to return to the GREAT!(est) teacher. What is this? Fourth or fifth rewatch? Whatever, i wanted / needed one more to comment every single episode for Myanimelist. That first tv trailer from the very first days of 2003 aired on the italian version of MTV has been very convincing, the 7th of january arrived and i soon turned out to be immediately hooked, despite starting with a pilot long twice the size of a normal episode. i still laugh thinking about the opening disclaimer "the main characters of this show do extremely stupid things such as smoking, riding bikes without helmets, beating up each other. Don't imitate them: they don't exist for real, but you do." Because, you know, as if at 17 years old back then i wasn't already aware of those details, but still, i can laugh about it and feel relief that such a series is still available on Amazon Prime Video in 2024. It is refreshing to see the first posts of this thread mostly sharing the same enthusiasm i still have for this show and couldn't care less about modern oversensitivity. Onizuka is just a GREAT! (sorry, it's force of habit to write it in uppercase since 20+ years and counting) main charismatic character even now that i'm 15+ years older than him and even if (dyed blond hair aside) i couldn't be any more different than him. Also, perfect, PERFECT casting for him in italian dub, obviously full of all-star voice actors from this country that i began to discover and adore exactly starting from here. Oook, long introduction is long already. Socrates instead of Plato mix-up is still amusing, even if it's unbelievable how such a guy could actually be aware of such information. And obviously, those same thugs used Mizuki to blackmail him. It's still funny how one of those three looks like Egon from Ghostbusters, even if character-wise couldn't be any more different. Oh, well, payback is arriving and it's such a joy to watch. NO MERCY! "BuT... bUt YoU aRe A tEaChEr!!!! YoU sHoUlDn'T..." "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. "TEACHER" ONLY WHEN IT'S CONVENIENT FOR YOU?" ...Yeah. Fired? No, no... his students have turned on a new leaf. But... watching that sushi tossed away was awful, it's understandable by his following description how much of a trauma it was for him. LOL, the students are now crying for Onizuka parting ways after the stage. And Mizuki actually thanked him for everything he did at his place, even if not everything was solved. It was a bittersweet and somehow realistic resolution, but at least the girl is a little more optimistic now about the future. And yeah, it's still a little too much a suspension of disbelief how he broke, entered and made a hole into the wall with no legal consequences, not gonna lie, but it was still satisfying to watch and the debut of my favorite piece of music from the OST (Teacher Forever) managed to make it epic. Now the real fun begins. OP and ED are timeless, they complement each other perfectly exactly because of how they sound so different, even in the early 2000's i knew already that i would have never, ever skipped them for future rewatching, and that's exactly what happened. Never cared about riding motorbikes, yet Driver's High makes me want to do it. i think i actually did a bath into a tub with shoes on in his honor, i still laugh hard for "LOVE AND PIECE" graffiti typo, and even to this day every time he paints a target on his belly and shoots it at a mirror, i imitate him (well, just the fake shooting obviously). |
_untitledJan 17, 2:13 PM
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| This is underrated and best anime. I’ve watched so far. I’m currently watching episode 11 right now. Y’all should watch this! |
| i really wanted to like this, but the first episode made me so uncomfortable, it's hard to say. i actually kinda liked onizuka, despite him being so... yeah. but this didn't age that well. i can't laugh at most of the jokes. i just hope he's not that flat of a character. i can stand a flawed character if his flaws aren't the best part of him, you know? but it was only one episode. i mean, i'll give this another chance, onizuka does seem like an extremely likeable character anyway. well, good luck to me, i guess... |
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| show is now 25 years old. its just.... so peak.... Gotta rewatch this soon for sure |
  me candies:        |
| this is good and bad at the same time idk 42 more eps of this guy.....ill tough it out. its supposed to be good rite? |
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