Anime Review: Great Teacher Onizuka!

Hello

In my next few blogs I will aim to go by genre and talk about an anime I particularly enjoyed watching. Hopefully some of you guys will have seen it but if not, try and check it out to see if it’s your cup of tea. If it is, let me know what you liked or didn’t like about it. If you have another favourite in this genre, please let us know by writing in the comments section. After all, we want to expand our anime horizons right J.

Genre: Comedy                       

Anime: Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO)

Episodes: 43

This week I thought I’d start off with a good comedy anime and one of my favourites to date, GTO!!

Ok, so those of you who haven’t heard of GTO, it’s about a teacher called Eikichi Onizuka, who is basically an ex-biker and gang leader.

One day, Onizuka decides to become the greatest teacher (for the wrong reasons of course). He lands a job at a prestigious private school with the help of the headmaster but gets the short straw. He is assigned the delinquent problem class that basically made all their previous teachers quit (mysterious death, nervous breakdown and joining a cult. loool). He needs to earn the respect of the students, but how do you do that when these kids are some of the brightest masterminds in Japan? Not only that, he is tasked to earn the trust of his fellow colleagues.

Viewers realise early on that Onizuka has a problem with the system of traditional education. He uses his own special brand of philosophy and less than conventional methods, to ultimately, get through to his kids one student at a time by helping them to overcome their problems.

His sole interest seems to be the female students, and he certainly does not hide it well. However, you soon realise that he is a Karate champ bad-ass with plenty of toood (attitude), while also being a social inept loser, with good honest intentions, to give his students a better educational experience than he had.

GTO is one of the most absolutely hilarious animes around; it will have you laughing with tears streaming down your eyes. The series addresses serious social issues with some of the real life problems his students have, which I’m sure a lot of viewers can relate to, but it does so with raunchy humour. Once you get past the sexual themes, Onizuka’s skirt-chasing and pretty much the torturing of his students, you realise that Onizuka is actually a modern day knight, albeit in tarnished armour.

Those of you who are interested in the voice acting will be glad to know that it is indeed, amazing. Onizukas voice, played by Takagi Wataru, is a genius simply put. The dramatic scenes to bass-ass to moron idiotic mode and hysteria mode are done to perfection. The English dub on the other hand is just ok. This series, like ALL anime, has to be enjoyed in Japanese (with subs).

Overall, this is a wonderful series that takes real life and puts its own spin on it by making it quite original and damn funny! This is definitely aimed at the older 17+ male viewers but if you watch it with an open mind, anybody who likes mature themes with good humor will find this very enjoyable and sad to see it end.