Great Teacher Onizuka

This one may be interesting especially for teachers! Maaaaaaaaaaaybe, I mean, peeeeerhaaaaaaps there coooould be aaaany teacher that reads my blog... Just a theory of mine. Never mind.

As the title suggests, there is a man called Onizuka (actually Eikichi Onizuka; Onizuka is his last name, but we know him better as Onizuka) who is just a great teacher. Hence the name. 

Take that, defenders of surprising writing techniques!

You remember I said that I see the two animes a bit like the opposites of each other? Well, I have to say that I'm still watching Great Teacher Onizuka while I've seen Death Note already two times. Naturally, there are more differences between them. Death Note is an anime that sucks you into itself and leaves you with a smoking head. But Great Teacher Onizuka has exactly the reversed effect. When I come home after a long day of work and I just feel down and stressed and depressed by everything and everyone, I watch one or two episode of this great anime and I feel much better and more relaxed. But let's explain a bit what it's about.

This one is more comedy and social. Great Teacher Onizuka (often abbreviated as GTO) is based on the eponymous manga series which is actually a continuation of Shonan Junai Gumi written and illustrated both by Tohru Fujisawa.

Eikichi Onizuka is 22 years old and has been a member of a motorbike gang in his recent past. But now he takes the decision to do something good in his life and get a good job. He wants to be a teacher. The young well-conditioned man is just everything but not the typical example for a good teacher. He has a wild past, he doesn't have any studies, he doesn't know what to do with his life. How could somebody like him be a good teacher? Oh, he can. And many teachers could take an example of him, believe me.

But I don't want to anticipate. And I should mention some more things about Onizuka. To be honest, another of his (most important) reasons to be a teacher... well, the school uniforms. And basically the girls in it. Don't think of him as a pedophile! He's just... well, he's still virgin and he's easily excited when it comes to girl in good-looking clothes... Or directly, good-looking girls! And who could judge him for that? I mean, he's a man! 

But I assure you, Onizuka has honourable objectives and opinions. At the beginning of the story he gets an internship as a homeroom teacher in a high school. He just can't wait to see all the cute girls and when he enters his class, his facial expression (which is hilarious, besides) talks for him: There is only ONE girl in his class. But he doesn't give up so easily and does his best. Just that one girl seems to have many problems at home because her parents are always discussing and one night she meets up in a park with Onizuka. He begs him to let her sleep at his house that night because she couldn't stand her parents' yelling anymore. Just imagine how lucky Onizuka must have felt on his inside at that moment... 

Later, at Onizuka's place, when it just seems that the girls tries to seduce him... *Flash* A photo. The girl tricked to Onizuka to make the pictures of him how HE was trying to seduce a student. And some guys of her class were her accomplices. The girl results to be a devil dressed like an angel that just tries to destroy the life of every teacher she has. But Onizuka doesn't give up just like that and teaches the girl and her friends a lesson, in his own way.

 Eikichi Onizuka, master of hilarous grimaces and disguises

Some episodes later Onizuka will get a fixed job in another high school and there he will be the homeroom teacher of the class to be known as the most difficult of all Tokyo. Since then, every teacher to be enlisted to that class, lost his job after some very bad experiencies with the students. But Onizuka takes the challenge. The students of that class turn out to have many personal problems and Onizuka will help them out and make friends with some of them. But he will have to resist many problems because there are more than one person who don't want him to be a teacher. And the way Onizuka solves his conflicts is always unique: he will destroy several times a certain car, jump several times of buildings, do a motorbike race, a swimming competition...

As you can see, it's a unique anime with a unique character with a unique behaviour. But all these things make this anime a refreshing experience in our conservative culture. And to be honest, I think Onizuka taught me some lessons, too.

And as always, I do the whole work for you and present you the first episode (it's a double episode of about 45 minutes, but only the first one):

Dear, now that I've seen that picture I'm hungry T_T