Back to Figva's Profile Figva's Profile

This is probably one of few manga reviews I'm gonna write and a first one, since I really wanted to say opinion about Horror manga like Uzumaki.

In my eyes, this manga had quite the potential with mystery surrounding the plot and kinda likable characters but decided to waste everything with badly done chapters and often forgetfulness of how horror works.


The plot of Uzumaki can be perfectly described in one word: confusing.
It starts of truly interesting with some very interesting dialogue and other great ideas for horror. But as the chapters progress, oh boy does the dissapointment keep getting bigger and bigger. The ... whole spiral thing that was said at the beggining of the story no longer makes any sense in many places. A chapter starts and the whole spiral thing is just thrown there without any sort of development or element of surprise. Whats worse is that towards the end not much makes sense anymore so the whole ending just turns into more confusion. I really like media with unusual endings but this ending being what it is feels like the result of mess of a plot.

Let's talk about characters next, this one is gonna be short since I don't feel like much important praise can be said.
The characters since the first chapter were very likable and interesting but I never seen any sort of more serious development because whole time for that was wasted on stupid spirals and thing surrounding them. The lack of character development really shows towards the end when the whole thing turns more into action, adventure type of story rather than horror.

The clearly best thing about Uzumaki is the artstyle.
Some panels done by Junji Ito really feel like a beauty to look at and greatly calptures the beauty of this whole spiral horror. I feel like the art was used very nicely in right places, at the right time but unfortunately even that just can't save this manga from those bad things.


Enjoyment of this manga really is mixed and plot dependable.
I really like some of the chapters specialy the ones in the beggining and towards the middle. Even had a feel that things might actually gonna get better as we progress to the end, but no. We got same old repetitive spiral lore that no longer was enjoyable.

Overall, I feel like Uzumaki is a dissapointed in certain ways. It mostly is due to the confusing plot parts in the story and underdeveloped characters. The artstyle was the thing I loved the most about this manga, but even that couldn't save it from the mediocre moments that I mentioned throughout this review. Junji Ito feels like a horror expert and man who really knows his stuff at certain times but overall I feel like Uzumaki isn't a great display of his skill and mastery of this genre.

Final score 6.3/10

This is my first time writing an anime review and I never expected an anime like Great Teacher Onizuka would push me to start writing reviews.

Also sorry for all grammar mistakes beacause english isn't my main language


So Great Teacher Onizuka or GTO for short is a classical comedic Anime about an ex motocycle gang leader Eikichi Onizuka who decides he must become a teacher in High School. And so starts his adventures of changing bad behaving students of class 3-4 using his own interesting teaching methods.

Now I wanna talk about the 5 part rating criteria for this anime

So first of all comes story:
...
The story of GTO is really unique and outstanding in its own way. Yes it has some elements of repetetivines but its the creative imagination that keeps this anime so interesting to watch. Then comes the comedic part of the anime which always fits there perfectly along with all the references. When I finished watching I instantly knew that there won't be another anime with such unique plot and only manga could make me even more satisfied.

The story is absolutely unique and one of a kind thats why I give it 10/10

Now for the characters :

GTO has quite a few interesting and very well made chaacters.

First would obviously be Eikichi Onizuka himself

I found him being one of the coolest and funniest characters in all anime I watched. He is also an absolutely amazing teacher, due to his completely different views of education in general and using his own teaching techniques he thinks would work best. Then comes his other part of him being a completely shameless pervert and a very embarrasing character with no manners what so ever. These traits of Onizuka make him a very comedic and very respectable character both at the same time.

Another character I found very well made and entertainting has to be Urumi Kanzaki

When she first appeared I didn't expect more than another bothersome and annoying female character. But I was wrong, as the story progressed she became a very understandable character that I viewed wrong in the beginning. She is Insanely smart and suprisingly has a lot of social skills for a person who is considered a prodigy. Just when she thought she got all her life figured out , a guy who knows how to truly live came. I found the lesson given to her by Onizuka to be the best one out of all.

A of course I want to talk about the Vice-Principal

When you first see this guy in the anime you know its gonna be a hilarious journey. At first this guy looks like another shameless pervert like Onizuka and besides that a meterialist who only cares about his car which is a Toyota Cresta that gets destroyed quite often anyway. Only deeper in the story I started to see why we should have a soft spot for this guy in our heart only then we realise why the car is so valuable and more and a material object to him. The situation with his family is truly a sad one that happened due to him being too much of educator rather than caring head of the family and Cresta is the glue that holds whole family together.

Of course I can't finish talking about the characters without mentioning more well made characters like : Kikuchi, Murai, Aizawa and the Chairman of the school.

The characters in GTO are very well made but some times it feels like Onizuka is carrying the whole anime on his shoulders thats why I give it 9/10

Now moving on to art:

The art in Great Teacher Onizuka is nice. It really has that classic 90s vibe with its animation and the way characters are made. The fight and comedic scenes are very nicely done and there isn't really too much to talk about in this category.

I give the artstyle in GTO a 8/10

Next criteria is sound :

The sound quality in GTO is great. All the openings and endings are very likable and its hard to pick one over another.

I found the first opening to be my favorite but when it comes to endings I couldn't just pick one .

The sound for me was close to perfect but still felt like it was missing something thats why I give it a 9/10

And lastly I wanna tell just how enjoyable GTO really is:

I got hooked on this anime right after the first episode which I consider a comedic masterpiece. Despite lack of time I still finished the anime in 1 week because it was very amazing watching expierence that I find hard to stop once you start. This anime is outstanding when it comes to enjoyment factor from start to the very finish. As I already mentioned before the comedic scenes were done fantasticaly and will definitely get a laught or two out of you every single episode.

Great teacher Onizuka enjoyment is really something else. The anime producers did a remarkable job for this cathegory and I can't say anything else, only give this a 10/10

Now that I mentioned my ratings in 5 different criterias I wanna talk about some small flaws that I found while watching this anime:

The filler episodes were a little weaker than main but still provided amazing comedy and interesting scenes.

The final episode felt kinda rushed and should've been 40 mins long just like the first one

Some things in the first half of the series might feel repetitive because Onizuka faces a problematic student, gives him a lesson and then 3 episodes later the pattern repeats itself.

But overall Great teacher Onizuka as an anime is a comedic masterpiece and close of being a masterpiece as an anime in general. It has strong and memorable characters, absolutely amazing story, classic artstyle that truly gives this show 90s feel, great sound and out of the roof enjoyment.

My final rating for GTO is 9.3/10 which is the strongest 9 I gave to any anime so far