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Praxis?
I Don't Need No Stinkin' Praxis.
Review:
GTO
(Great Teacher Onizuka)
Anime/Manga/Drama/Music/Fandom/
Title
rating: More sexual crimes then
a bad episode of Law and Order: SVU. R
-43 episode anime
(1999-2000?), complete
-25 volume (200 episodes)
manga (1997-2002), complete
-12 episode live-action
drama, complete
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I remember my middle school life as a mostly idyllic time.
I would play Magic the Gathering with my friends, learn
about Plate Tectonics, and otherwise waste time in preparation
for high school. Apparently, in Japan, middle school is
nothing like this. Students scheme to have their teachers
arrested for pedophilia, plot against another in ways that
usually involve nudity and beatings, and otherwise act like
hell demons bent on destruction. Great Teacher Onizuka (called
GTO for short) is the story of a teacher--can you guess
his name?--and his road to becoming the BEST TEACHER IN
JAPAN. Onizuka proves that it's not the intelligence that
makes you, it's experience, experience, experience. And
connections to the mob.
Anime
I've never met anyone who didn't like this show. Even my
friend, who hates anime like it killed his parents, loves
this series. It's not hard to see why: GTO is funny, very
funny. It's not an intelligent funny--I don't mean that
like I'm some elitist, I'm just saying this isn't an astute
satire of the teaching system nor a dark comedy meant to
make you think about the injustices of the world. This is
43 episodes of skirt-flipping, porn-watching, otaku-beating
humor.
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Remember,
corporal punishment works!
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That's not to say the show doesn't have its dark or serious
moments. Kids get beaten up, students try (often and repeatedly)
to throw themselves off things in order to die, but it all
ends in humor and a good ending. Like most shounen shows
(and most shows in general), you know everything is going
to be a-okay at the end; there are cliffhangers because
you want to know how Onizuka will get out of his newest
problem, not because you're concerned that he's going to
die.
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Introductions are in order, I suppose. Eikichi Onizuka
is a 22-year-old virgin and former biker gang leader who
wants to settle down and become the greatest teacher ever
to exist. Normally one thinks that teachers should have
some basic skills, such as knowledge of his/her chosen subject,
compassion, a very long temper, and a lack of a teenage
girl fetish. Onizuka has none of these. There are several
reasons why former biker gang leaders do not often become
teachers, mostly revolving around the fact that said gang
leaders used to make a living horribly beating people.
All goes well for Onizuka at first: while student teaching
he sets straight (read: beats up and dunks repeatedly into
pond) the punks in his class who try to blackmail him. Unfortunately,
Onizuka then skips his teaching exam and is forced to apply
to one of the few places that could employ him--Holy Forest
Private Academy. On his way to the interview he beats up
a pervert who's feeling up a woman on the bus, and it just
so happens that that particular pervert is the vice-principal
of this particular learning institution. This leads to Onizuka
being horribly rejected, which then (when a few punks who
were expelled break back into the school) leads to Onizuka
German Suplexing the vice-principal, which then leads to
Onizuka being hired. Remember that, kids--beating people
up will get you jobs, or in jail, or maybe both.
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Then there are the students. A motley bunch they are, and
they are all working toward the destruction of Onizuka--did
you ever read the book "13 Ways to Sink a Sub?"
It's like that, only the kids want him placed in a mental
institution like their last teacher. There's Yoshikawa Noboru,
a gamer otaku who's the Uncle Tom of the class and doesn't
want to see Onizuka driven to the brink of insanity. There's
Kikuchi Yoshito, the evil bishounen genius who Photoshops
porn for fun and Murai Kunio, the blond angry boy with an
Oedipus complex. Apparently Midorikawa
Hikaru, who did Tamahome from Fushigi
Yuugi and Seki
Tomokazu, who did Chichiri from Fushigi Yuugi voice
Kikuchi and Murai, respectively. There's a good reason for
this, as GTO was done by Studio Pierrot (which inflicted
Fushigi Yuugi upon us). On the female side of the student
body there's Nomura Tomoko, the slow girl with the big breasts
(tell me, are F cups humanly possible?) and Aizawa Miyabi,
the uber-bitch who lives only to see Onizuka fail.
All the characters are great--there are really no clichéd
or poorly developed ones (besides the pure background characters).
They all have their problems, usually big ones, which Onizuka
takes it upon himself to cure with a little tough love.
Basically these are all angsty teenagers, but most of them
end up getting beat up in the end so it's all good.
The art style is pretty standard shounen (although this
is really more of a seinen series) with small heads, big
bodies, and big breasts. One of the best aspects of the
show, though, is Onizuka's facial expressions. While not
exactly beautifully animated, they are weird, funny, and
original, and really make viewing a pleasure.
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Onizuka
through the ages.
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The DVD's are put out by those great people at Tokyopop
and are pretty good. The menus are nice and clean, and while
the extras are fairly nonexistent (they mostly just let
you jump to all of Onizuka's facial expressions) they do
come with some pretty good culture notes.
Just one warning to all you people who can't remember playing
the original Sega Master System:
this show is very, how do you say, graphic. GTO teaches
us that about 97% of the Japanese population is horribly
psychologically deranged. Be it the ever-present Lolita
Complex (which comes up about 73 times an episode), a more
severe case of foot lust or something I call a "Butterfly
Fetish," in between we have spankings, panty sniffing,
and all those other great signs of horrible sexual problems.
Not a show, manga, or live-action drama for the weak of
stomach or the high of morals.
Manga
The manga is what started GTO and from which the anime
and live-action drama were spawned. By all accounts it's
better than both of them, and I would be inclined to agree.
Written by Tohru Fujisawa it quickly became one of the most
popular manga titles in Japan and ended at a whopping 25
volumes (200 chapters). Volumes 1-13 were used to make the
anime, which keeps fairly closely to the manga. There are
a few differences of note--the manga is a hell of a lot
dirtier, and a bit better written. If you can't wait for
Tokyopop to release the newest manga there are a lot of
summaries online; check out this
site. There's not much more to say about the manga except
that it's being distributed by my good friends at Tokyopop
and Onizuka looks like a girl in it, go figure.
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Need you any
more reason to see this show then REPENTANCE MONKEY?!
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Live-Action
Drama
In addition to being made into an anime, a live-action
version of GTO was created. Topping out at 12 episodes,
it follows the same path as the anime with a few differences--GTO
now has black hair, and it mainly skips the first 2 episodes
of the anime (and most of the later episodes of the anime,
if our math fans out there can calculate the difference
between 43 and 12). The physical humor of the anime and
the manga are toned down a lot here, replaced with more
subtle jokes that are possible because you're working with
real live human beings. These episodes are pretty hard to
get, but check out Kazza,
IRC,
or your local bootleg shop every once in awhile and you
may be able to find something. I've heard rumors that the
last episode of the drama was the most watched show in Japanese
history, a fact that I'm not surprised about it--it's pretty
damn funny. Still, I wouldn't say the live-action series
is as funny as the manga or anime, but that's just because
of the restrictions placed on the show because it features
real people and all.
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Music
(Anime)
The music sucks, plain and simple. It's mostly a mix of
brass pieces that sound like backgrounds in a soft-core
porn. The only good song on the Tokyopop soundtrack is the
bonus track Tokyopop itself created ("School's in Session"),
which you can download from their website for free. Skip
this one
Fandom
Besides a few very good websites, I really can't find any
English fandom for this show. Maybe that's because the target
audience is teenage boys, who aren't particularly known
for penning fanfics or drawing fanart.
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Overview
If you're not young and/or impressionable, watch this show,
read the manga, see the drama. Even if you don't like shonen
or anime in general (if you don't then why in the world
are you here?), watch this show. It's simply good.
Who would I kill as a favor to the people who made this
show?
John Dewey (he was an education reformer, dummy)
In other words:
4 out of 5 stars. 
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Yes,
yes indeed.
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