With most students going back to school lately, it’s a fitting coincidence that today I begin retroblogging Great Teacher Onizuka. Back in the last round of voting it tied with Kare Kano, and due to the popularity and enthusiasm displayed for both I promised to blog each in turn. GTO just happened to lose the dice roll and so had to wait until now. So, here again we return to the end of the 20th century but in a very different form. Former bousouzoku member Onizuka Eichi has come a long way since his days of being a tough, crazy biker…well he’s come some of the way anyway. Still being a pervert and acting like a delinquent, he’s enrolled in a teaching college and is about to start his first two weeks of student teaching. But he ends up in the middle of a class of delinquents and conniving blackmailers, not the best start to his goal of becoming the “greatest teacher in Japan.”
Perving it up on his first day.
Osawa, even creepier…though the thought rather appeals to Eikichi.
Bringing out the barely suppressed Krauser II in him.
Even so, he clearly isn’t as cynical about it all as most of his fellows. To have that self-professed goal of becoming the greatest teacher in the country, he must have other reasons than getting to be around high school girls all day.
A trap if I ever saw one. And not the Impz kind of trap either.
Mizuki Nanako, the one attractive girl in Eikichi’s class, is sitting in the nearby park that night crying, saying that she ran away from home and then asks to stay the night at her teacher’s place. He’s already gone into full ecchi mode over the thought, and while she’s making dinner he first sets up the futon before second-guessing the situation and putting it away. But just as she’s talking about how her parents have no time for her because of their jobs she strips down to her bra and panties in front of him…just in time to have three of the delinquents from his class burst in and snap photos of them, threatening to sell them to the media unless he pays. Later that night the three are in the park when they tell off a biker, just as the rest of his gang shows up for a meeting. Fortunately/unfortunately for the three students Eikichi shows up, fighting his way through the crowd until the boss recognizes him as the leader of the legendary Onibaku Gang from Shonan. And he’s there to claim his “prey”, having the bousouzoku bikers hoist them up from ropes and dunking them into the pond. But in doing so he does spare them most of the bikers’ wrath.
Unfortunately he doesn’t work for Tadano Hitoshi’s company. He’s pretty proactive about stopping blackmailers.
Bobbing for revenge.
Words cannot describe the badassery of this image.
And now he has the class eating out of the palm of his hand, manly tears of respect running down their faces.
After a day of reaping the rewards of his not totally loyal class, Eikichi is about to head home when Nana is waiting on his motorcycle trying to act cutesy. Despite her being the architect and bait of the plan to blackmail him, she wants him to give her a ride home. And keeping with the ecchi tone, she takes off her panties and puts them on top of the engine of his bike as a bribe of sorts. And he freaking falls for it! He spends the whole way thinking about but trying not to think about what’s under her skirt, and eventually they arrive at her home, luxurious but empty. Her parents left a huge, expensive tray of sushi for her, but she throws it out because she’s sick of them acting so isolated from her and from each other. After Eikichi’s freakout over the wasted food (I’d do the same, even animated it looked delicious) she asks for him to drive her around for a while, kind of acting like a spoiled brat in doing so. But when he won’t pay attention to her she tries jumping off the bike into the path of a truck, saved only by his quick thinking and riding skill.
Seriously. And cut out that vapidly cutesy pronunciation of “sensei.” It’s sounds like you’re saying “sen-shey” or something, you airhead.
While it doesn’t detract from the series, this unfortunately is about as visually impressive as the pilot episode got.
Like his silence while the other teachers were being cynical, there’s a nice hint of things to come with him, something that will make him more than just the pervert-biker teacher.
Ah, I go from Kare Kano’s masterful, delicate shoujo to MANLINESS in my retroblogging. Hopefully a certain banchou will make a guest appearance.
After Nana’s brash stunt, Eikichi hears more details from her about how her parents live together but are effectively separated. They each have their own rooms, and the wall between them is a particular focus of her anguish. Being a somewhat Brutalist styled home with lots of thick, unfinished concrete, the wall is both literally and symbolically cold to the touch. But then Eikichi tells her to go home, speeding off on his bike as she’s left to walk. But then not much later that night he reappears with a gigantic sledgehammer at her doorstep. Walking right in despite his shirtless, menacing appearance he heads upstairs and proceeds to start smashing a hole through the wall between Nana’s parents’ rooms. Her parents are shocked, but Nana herself is overjoyed and even hinders them in calling the police to arrest Eikichi. Once the a hole is smashed in the concrete, he walks out just as casually as he entered the home. At the end of his two week student teaching stint he’s quietly happy to see the two female members of his group warming up to the idea of teaching, and the playboy Osawa fired for fooling around with a student. Nana commits to helping bring her parents back together now that he’s given her a place to start, but on a final note before he leaves the school she flashes him from the uppermost stairway as he leaves, ending the pilot episode on the same pervy note that it began on.
Extreme home makeover.
Aaaawwww. I can’t help but like the one girl in the group who wasn’t a jaded opportunist at the start.
Something makes me think that you’re not one to begin with.
Ah, he seems to be learning!
GREATO.
Final Thoughts: – A fun first episode, and it gave us a hint of all the elements that the show should contain further on. Eikichi’s perverted antics but his oddly, genuinely caring side. There’s the connection with his past shown in his banter with his old friend from his bousouzoku days and in the flashback images, with emphasis added when he tells Nana that the past is just the past. And of course some excellent comic violence when he commandeered the biker gang to get his revenge on the blackmailing students.
- Eikichi seems to learn a bit not to lust after the high school students at the very end, though I think his brain will always in part be stuck in a permanent state of thinking like a 16 year old. He’s definitely from the same stock as Kimura-sensei.
- The only thing I didn’t like was that the animation looks like it came from the other end of the decade in which it aired. I knew it originally aired in 1999, but I thought that I had to be mistaken when I first started the episode. Definitely makes me think circa 1993, not 1999-2000.
44 Comments
Ahhh, GTO…. This brings back 1001 memories. How Eikichi’s brain is filled with H and how he represses himself as he falls victim for his students’ antics only to show them who’s boss is an all-time favorite for me. Thanks, EO! I’d be looking forward to the rest of the entries on this one.
This first episode only hinted at what could happen in future ones, but I can’t wait to find out how it all will play out. His ecchi nature, possible remaining links to his past, how he’ll break in a new class, his responsible teacher side coming out. Should be a lot of fun, glad you’re looking forward to the posts.
Good stuff this show, and I also like it for being ugly as sin. After watching this on TV many years ago I got hold of the live action series and it ended up being even better (though less pervy). It’s hard for me to call this show a favorite in any way, but I’ll always have a soft spot for it.
Yeah I agree. It has an edge that is still fresh even after all these years.
I’ve also heard good things about the live action version, and I believe both the anime and live action were played on HBO or Showtime years ago. Which is quite a thing for anime to get aired on, even back in the anime boom of the late 1990′s to early 2000′s.
As far as funny moments in classic anime go, for me the wagging tail bit as she was cooking was the funniest.
The wolf suit was out of nowhere but hilarious. I enjoyed how the show brought out comic props for a moment and then quickly put them aside, a fun break from the more logical spatial setups of the rest of the episode.
When I first watched Onizuka, I was younger than him. This is depressing.
I always run the risk of reminding original viewers of their age when I retroblog a series. It is a terrible and powerful thing.
OMGL, EO-sama! so you’re blogging this GUREITO SHIRIZU!? wow… it’s been 5yrs since I watched GTO for the very first time thanks to Animax and I was a fresh graduate from College back then… ahh, time flies~
anyway, I really like Onizuka’s goal and determination to be Japan’s No. 1 Teacher yet his wacky antics and sense of responsilibity really made me like this series so much. I’ve not yet read the manga but I’ll start reading it since after reading this post it fueled up my interest again with GTO! woohoo~ oh yeah, the live-action movie was great! Why not give it a shot to blog about it, and I suppose you watched that already?
GUREITO!
::Not so interesting stuff to share, Funny though..hehe.. –> keisatsu bosozoku: http://bit.ly/9zmv99
I haven’t watched any form of GTO before, my only experience being reading the first volume of the manga when I found it for cheap used at a bookstore outside Shirokane-Takanawa station a few years ago. But if I enjoy the series as I think I will, I’ll likely go looking for the live action versions as well.
WOOOOOOOO!
After watching this I got into the habit of citing my age and relationship status whenever I met anyone new
Carrying a sledgehammer over your shoulders also helps with the introductions.
Wow, I’ve been waiting to see this post series for a long time. GTO is my favorite series, and Onizuka himself is my favorite character.
Ah, glad you made it through the wait. When both this and Kare Kano got exactly the same amount of votes and there was so much enthusiasm in the comments, I knew I had to blog each. Kare Kano just happened to win the dice roll, but it all works out because I’m getting to cover two greatly loved series.
GTO huh? I can’t believe I haven’t watched this masterpiece yet. I’ve only read about half way though the post, and I stopped to download GTO. Watching it now atm, I like that song that plays in the background while Onizuka was dressed as a wolf. I recognised it right away from KareKano, so I suspect that it is a very well known, recognised song? Men are wolves indeed…in this case, he was dressed up as one too.
Ah good, it’s always fun to have someone who hasn’t seen a show I’m retroblogging following along too!
I recognize the song from somewhere (other than Kare Kano) but I can’t quite recall where. Hmm, makes me curious now.
Ah GTO I remember watching most of this in college until I lost interest (basically suffered from what all slice of life shows have, ie lack of a goal)
Still very fun ride, and i do remember the dub being decent enough.
I actually didn’t have any inkling that GTO is slice of life or has SoL elements to it, but I’ve enjoyed plenty of shows in that genre (that actually fit the genre and aren’t just slapped with a catchall SoL label) so I’ll be prepared to enjoy the journey more than the destination.
Did you know there’s a specific term for that blackmail scheme? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badger_game
(because knowledge is power!)
Just like the one Tadano Hitoshi busted up in the first episode of that show. (Except they fired the guy anyway, he was going to be a liability for the company going after high school girls and all…)
Nothing brings a greater smile to my face than Onizuka’s facial expressions! And yes, the animation is pretty bad for it’s time, but I think the producers really wanted to be as close as possible to the manga’s character designs.
Think I’m gonna love reading Executive Otaku’s take on Eikichi’s antics.
Happy to hear that you’re looking forward to the posts. And yes, those facial expressions are great. I’ve always loved the over-the-top yakuza sort of expressions in live action stuff, and GTO does them really well in animated form. Having read one volume of the manga, it does stay true to the art style but unfortunately for viewers the manga is almost from a different era as far as how it’s drawn. Kind of hard to make that translate directly on screen.
Will be following your posts on this series with great interest. I can’t really think of any teacher-centric that’s comes close to Onizuka (the only one that comes to mind is Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and that’s a different objective altogether… although a Onizuka-sensei/Zetsubou-sensei crossover is an amusing thought).
The animated version GTO is actually a pretty interesting series in that the pilot episode just sums up the entire series in a nutshell. The show is pretty formulaic, which makes it a lot more character centric.
Onizuka as a substitute teacher for Itoshiki-sensei’s class? Tsunetsuki would really have to up her stalking game if he starts trying to peek at every girl that walks by.
In a way the formula you describe reminds me of a less perverted (I know!) version of Golden Boy. Except instead of traveling around using his intelligence and understanding to solve problems he goes from one school to another using boldness, muscles, and PURE GUTS to do so.
…why did I ever watch Golden Boy?
I can’t comment on Karo Kano as i watched the 1st episode and had to stop. GTO on the other hand. Just like the other commenters here, it’s not my favorite show but this show deserves it’s own special awesome sauce category that is better than your typical honorable mention category
It does look like something special. And quite different from Kare Kano, lol.
Vintage anime is the best
It’s certainly a fun change of pace, and helps give someone who wasn’t watching anime back when the older series aired a sense of perspective and evolution of the format.
Ah this brings back memories..
The GTO is THE show to lure friends into the anime world *hehe* The episodes are absolutely hilarious, and they even wrapped them up with nice moral messages.
So it’s great to see one of my favourite anime’s being blogged. I hope you will enjoy this show, just like many others before.
Of the handful of shows that got to be ‘big name’ series during the start of the anime boom around the end of the 1990′s/beginning of the 2000′s, I remember GTO being squarely among them even as I was just getting in to my first few anime series at that time.
Heheh.. I need to rewatch this anime again. lol onizuka is a badass teacher and still great until now.
GTO just seems like one of those classics that will always be in the collective consciousness of the fandom.
About time you got to one of my favorite non-Macross series ever.
One thing about this, it strikes me as interesting how they decided to play it straight and keep the same pilot arc from the manga. Especially since no characters from this part reappear later on. A more modern animé adaptation would have likely found a way to add more of the recurring cast – even the dorama version had Nana (played by Kirari who sings the animé’s ending theme) as a recurring character.
Speaking of which, now might be a good time for me to reread the entire manga again. In fact I might be able to add annotations and not animé/manga differences based on what you post.
It is interesting how the adaptation was done, since as others have pointed out the animation being so poor looking for its time seems to have been the result of trying to keep the artistic design of the manga. The whole concept of a longer pilot episode was something that also struck me as unusual for an anime. It’s not numbered as ‘episode 01-02′ or anything, but as ‘episode 01.’ I wonder how it aired and how the timeslot worked out when the rest of the episodes are the standard 25-ish minutes long?
It might simply be that the franchise was big enough that the network execs thought they could take the risk. After all, this did also spawn a live action dorama and eventual movie spinoff.
GTO, one of the funniest animes I’ve ever seen (and rewatched 3-4 times). I totally love this anime, and totally hate how it ended (was cut).
After the my most recent rewatch I read the manga which is way better since it’s way more H and didn’t have the crappy rushed ending the anime had, although it was a total shame that it also ended.
No matter how old this gets it’s always a great show to watch.
There’s always the spinoff “Shonan 14 Days” where Onizuka is on vacation and ends up helping yet another school.
The ending was cut? Yeesh, I sure know how to pick ‘em don’t I? Well, I think it’s safe to assume that no anime will end as horribly as Kare Kano did.
I fully expect to be typing out a full summary of the manga’s ending by the time you’re done with this.
Your first impression of Eikichi is par for the course. You’re selling him short though if you’re putting him in the same group as Kimura. He is without a doubt one the most badass characters I have ever had the pleasure to watch. You’re definitely in for a treat!
Looking forward to seeing more from him. And I do expect him to have much more content to him than Kimura-sensei since one, he’s the main character, and two, because he’s shown signs of some fundamental, deeply seated motivation to actually be a great teacher to his students. There’s an interesting and genuine commitment to education somewhere inside him, as well as an interesting past to reconcile himself with.
wow, I can’t even remeber when was the last time I watched the dorama. I didn’t even watch the anime. Guess I have to dig out some time to watch.
As someone entering into the teaching profession, the mind set of Onizuka and Kimura-sensei is certainly… close at hand. There has to be professional boundries naturally, but being in close proximity to attractive female students day in and day out has its advantages. Just ask any college professor whose second wife is an ex-student…