I don't think this episode was bad and quite done well, even if it was repetitive a bit in terms of themes. It was fresh to me in my opinion.
I felt really bad for Fuyutski, that was terrible bullying from the females of that class, holy crap. She didn't deserve it, girls can be jealous and can be terrible bullies. Anyways, I like the juxtaposition between Fuyutski's search of purpose for being a teacher and Onizuka not thinking too much about it. Sometimes people just naturally want to become a teacher so they never thought too much about it and some have a good reason to. Guess it's similar to many things in life too like what job you want to do and why people like certain things. Also, Onizuka, you crazy fucker, you're awesome with your antics heh.
Next paragraphs are why I think the writing is good and done realistically. It's long so bear with me but I'm providing needed details that tl;dr ignores. (tl;dr is that I'm inferring the girls in Fuyutski's class are using peer-pressure and that the country girl is using a cognitive bias called availability heuristic to stereotype all teachers which is a real thing)
The reason behind why all the girls seem like bitches might be because of peer pressure and so they don't want to step forward, remember Class 3-4 in the beginning where girls would bully Yoshikawa for going against the grain by befriending Onizuka in the beginning? Maybe something similar is occurring, a lot of peer pressure tactics were shown in past episodes (such as ostracizing communications with Tomoko in her specific arc) so let's not count out the girls in this episode using similar type of peer pressure tactics. Might be why it looks like they're all just bitches, and hell maybe group think is occurring because of Japan's culture tendency towards trying to act in a group manner. Also, we're only getting close-ups on the bitches, there probably are good girls in that class but we're just not able to get their point of views in the matter. I'll admit the boycott just because of Fuyutski teaching is quite stupid but let's be honest, that's part of being human which Onizuka says (interjecting it in perfectly) to the country girl at the end of this episode when talking about the teacher having an affair.
Next, the girl in the country hating teachers. Don't you guys remember Class 3-4 hating all teachers as well since they're the same until Onizuka came along? This is happening... well yet again but in the country setting and focused on Fuyutski. Anyways, no matter where you are like in Class 3-4 (City) or the country. People will experience something called the 'Availability heuristic' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic) which says it "is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision." This type of cognitive bias is behind why people are racist, why they stereotype, etc. The reason why the girl in the country associates ALL teachers as people who would abandon their students, have an affair, etc. is because of her past teacher. Such things can't be easily erased unless another teacher comes along and displays characteristics that go against the grain or they decide to change their point of view. By the way, that's how to destroy this bias. Have people become more aware of others who go against the typical "stereotype" that was formed in the brain or at the very least be wary of their thoughts being irrational. Of course, the person stereotyping needs to be open to conflicting information and these students with their hormones as well as trust issues probably are doing that (I just did it there).
While it may be stupid to see a person literally stereotype all teachers as X, we all stereotype and use mental shortcuts which is perfectly fine in some instances. Some are more self-aware about their thoughts/actions than others, we are all guilty in some ways because we use it everyday for many things since it's just easier to point to an example.
Overall, this episode was done realistically (because people are actually this stupid in real life) and also we have to take into account about Japan's culture where they discuss selfishness and thinking of others in this context. If you made it to the end of my whole post, I would like to thank you for your time and hope that you got something of value out of it. |