Great Teacher Onizuka

Posted by eksith on 3/26/09 • Categorized as Anime

Gang leader, Mentor, Pervert

Eikichi Onizuka, 22 years old (something he anounces on a regular basis) is a former gangster turned loser turned teacher.

After finding a temporary job teaching at a college, where his own unique style of extreme violence gets respect from difficult students and seeing the power it has over impressionable girls, he decides to make the profession permanent.

Onizuka then enrolls at the Holy Forest Academy, barely, where he is instantly enamored with Azusa Fuyutsuki and remains so until the end of the series. Before he knows her as a potential co-worker, Onizuka saves her from the school’s own vice principle, Hiroshi Uchiyamada, another pervert albeit a coward and a less than honorable one, who also humiliates and talks down to his students. Of course, this instantly runs afoul of Onizuka’s own unique sense of justice and handles it with a wrestling move…

Things are off to a bumpy start, but Ryoko Sakurai, the director of the academy sees Onizuka’s true colors and recognizes that’s what the school needs. She gives him his ultimate challenge: A group of students in Class 3-4, known to drive all their teachers borderline insane or outright crazy. There’s a disturbing origin to their bullying which Onizuka gradually learns toward the end of the series.

Meanwhile, Onizkua handles the students with his own unique blend of coarse humanity, street justice, and bizarre wisdom. One by one, the students learn to trust him and the most vicious of the bully students become his friends.

Onizuka, perhaps, learns more about himself than the students learn about themselves. While the little monsters are transformed from teacher hating tyrants into truly decent human beings.

After a while, you’d be hard pressed to decide if Onizuka is an idiot or genius. Or maybe he’s an idiotic genius in his own way. A perverted, reckless, drunken master in the ways of world. The seemingly impossible scenarios he has been landed in (due to his own doing some of the time) are really no match for his own drive to get over them when the motivation calls for it. Onizuka is genuinely heroic.

There are times when the story really takes a campy turn and the situations are unbelievable, but it’s oh-so enjoyable to see Onizuka squirm, wiggle, run and fall out of danger, almost completely unscathed… Except for a few blood streams from his forehead from time to time.

The only down side would be the animation, which is awfully reminescent of the 80’s. I suppose, considering the time the manga was released, it was just to make things consistent. But the animation really does take things down a notch.

You can’t quite explain the pain and humiliation you may suffer by just sitting at home watching Onizuka in some of these situations, but it’s a lot like watching a train wreck. A really, really, really funny train wreck.

You probably won’t be able to avert your eyes. A highly recommended series.

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