Eikichi Onizuka, 22 years old. Bachelor. Teacher. Yoroshiku.

Anime Christmas - Week 2 - Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO)

Common reactions to this anime from my friends include: "Are you serious...", "What?!" and "Oh Japan...". The nature of the central character to this anime is somewhat contentious, and the anime almost matches its poignancy with its misgivings. At its heart though, I found Noriyuki Abe's anime adaption of Great Teacher Onizuka to be a good thing and certainly one of the most entertaining anime I've watched. You just have to take a fair bit of it with a rather large grain of salt.

Eikichi Onizuka - Borderline delinquent schoolteacher

The series chronicles the misadventures of the naive, brash, outrageous and academically inept ex-biker Eikichi Onizuka as he tries to become a school teacher in late-nineties Japan. However, Onizuka is a man pointedly unmindful of the standards and expectations of both teacher and student in a rather rigid society and consequently comes into grief with local educational authorities and lobby groups fairly often. Along with a high school class who have a passionate hatred for all teachers, what follows is a heart-warming, if at times questionable 43 half-hour episodes.

All of the manga, anime and live-action incarnations of the Great Teacher Onizuka story have achieved enormous popularity. GTO is an optimistic story that draws its appeal from the earnestness and bizarreness of Onizuka's approach to teaching, and the affect that the man is able to have on a set of emotionally damaged students. Pair this with the perfect comedic artistry and timing in the anime and what results is quite a memorable experience and an anime that should be watched by anyone who has gone through or is going through high school.

Much of the comedic value of GTO comes from the manner in which the titular character goes about realising his dream of being a ‘great teacher’. Eikichi Onizuka presents a mesmerising and (arguably) admirably idealistic view on what the teacher-student relationship should be. At heart Eikichi wants to become a teacher to make school 'fun' and undo the wrongs that were done to him as a student because he was viewed as 'trash'. Now, on its own this sentiment would not be a recipe for realistically happy endings. But the beauty of this anime is that the tour-de-force that is Onizuka’s brashness and block headed determination makes his slightly unrealistic hope for education a reality in outrageous and inevitably comical ways.

The manner in which Onizuka wins over the heart of his students to that end is as mesmerising and unbelievable as it is comedic. Eikichi goes about his life rather carelessly and throughout most of the series stumbles upon the right solution not because of any conscious effort to, but that’s because his actions are the inevitable result of who he is. Throughout the course of the series, we see him throw himself off a building no less than 5 times in order to save students falling from great heights; he consecutively dates the mother of every student in his class in order to get to know their home lives better; and he ties up and terrorises most (if not all) students in his class who cause him grief.

Onizuka has a fondness for wearing animal costumes, and generally dicking about whenever teaching

At face value most of the above actions make him seem more like a careless borderline criminal. The charm and heart of this series, though, lies in Eikichi’s earnestness and his ability to profoundly affect the people around him. Onizuka presents a mesmerising and (arguably) admirably idealistic view on what the teacher-student relationship should be. He pushes closeness and understanding rather than the prejudice and labelling that other teachers and perhaps too many in modern society use to deal with disaffected youths. And his philosophy is made all the more poignant because he himself was a juvenile delinquent once upon a time – and he grew up to realise how much more fulfilled his life would be if he had older figures who cared.

The subsequent attachments that students in his class subsequently form to him are quite touching. To echo a sentiment I mentioned before regarding Gurren Lagann, it comes off less as being naive and more as being hopefully optimistic, given the culture of apathy that was in vogue when I was in high school (not too long ago). As the series progresses, more students come to see him not just as an abstract teacher figure who is to be respected, but as a valuable friend without whom their lives would be a little less bright. This connection, portrayed quite believably, is one that can be somewhat lost as generations grow further apart from each other.

Yoshikawa (left) in particular forms a close bond with Onizuka as he is ostricised in the classroom for being quiet and meek

No proper treatise of  GTO can go without mention of the visual style of the anime. This anime has possibly the best slapstick and visual comedic timing of any animated television show I have ever watched. Whilst the various plot elements have comedic value in and of themselves, the series rises above all others in making us laugh with bizarre facial expressions, over-exaggerated body movements and background slapstick that harks back to the days of silent cinema and Charlie Chaplain.

The visual gags are coupled with Scooby-doo style sound effects and a brilliantly mischievous score that emphasises exactly how much of a caricature Onizuka tends to make himself. Often you will hear a slow understated trumpet or a kick-ass ascending big band motif that alerts you to the fact that Eikichi is about to do something monumentally stupid. The result is a lot of hearty laughter as Onizuka rolls form one ridiculous situation to the next

Background Comedy - Onizuka outside the window, surreptitiously listening in on his students being scolded inside

I cannot finish this post however, without warning you about the misgivings I have on this anime. There are a notable number of scenes in this anime which border on perversion and situations where you start to question Onizuka's judgement. The series itself starts with Onizuka wanting to become a teacher in order to hunt for a young wife (though he does find his conscience and calling to teaching very quickly). These elements are not a deal-breaker for the entire series, but they exist and should be viewed with some amount of objectivity. That said, it should be noted that many of the perverse elements from the manga were actually toned down for the television adaptations, with much nudity and violence removed.

At the end of the day, Great Teacher Onizuka is one of the great classic anime and is probably the only 'conventional' anime that I will review. Of the anime that I would recommend to those who are entering the genre, GTO would be the one that follows convention most closely (with others like Cowboy Bebop being unique in their own right). It does a good job of making us empathise with an otherwise unsavoury character, and takes us on a rather wild and unpredictable ride in the process

Onizuka-sensei - what a boss.