The Revengening
After the first photoshopped poster in the school commons, the Axis of Douche continues its campaign against Onizuka and even expands the conflict to try and take out Yoshikawa. The level of this bullying astounds in both technical sophistication and sheer brutality, with different factions favoring each. New photoshopping weapons have been deployed, driving Onizuka into retreat and almost convincing him that he has some sort of split personality disorder. But soon crucial information is delivered by Yoshikawa that brings a reversal of events, only to begin a continuing ladder of escalation in the War of Holy Forest Academy.
[With apologies for the significant delay due to being busier than usual and then sick this past week.]
Much like phase 4 of Kilcullen’s ‘Accidental Guerrilla Syndrome‘, his irrefutable but heavy-handed approach to disproving the poster ended up creating more believers.
The photoshops have reached new lows.
If that doesn’t put you in despair, I don’t know what would.
Well at least the last one is with an attractive woman…
Still reeling from the continuous attacks, Onizuka even starts thinking that he has a split personality that’s doing all these things while he’s asleep. At one point he thinks to himself that his spirit is leaving his body, but before that train of thought goes too far he’s interrupted by Yoshikawa coming up to the roof and letting him know that a classmate named Kikuchi is the one providing the photoshop ability to the male faction of the Axis of Douche. But Onizuka sends him away, saying he doesn’t want to rely on someone who’d rat out his classmates, a shrewd way of indirectly saying that he doesn’t want Yoshikawa to be the target of retribution for sticking his neck out for the teacher. That day after school Onizuka confronts Kikuchi in a most unorthodox manner: begging him to photoshop together a compilation of his favorite porn magazines and acting really friendly towards him. And it works! Using this information, Onizuka has managed to penetrate the soft underbelly of the Axis, removing Kikuchi and his abilities from the equation and then watching as the rest of the male students fall into line over an intentionally lame horror story.
Kikuchi, also known as ‘ ‘shop and awe’ by his former co-conspirators.
Suddenly this is turning into Ghost Hound.
There’s not a ghost of a chance of that happening.
Psychological judo: Onizuka didn’t fear the pervert label, he owned the pervert label and used it against him.
Going on in the background to all of this is Uchiyamada daydreaming about how getting his Cresta back will make his family appreciate him again, as well as flashbacks to moments at home where his wife and daughter ignore him. It’s a pretty sad and sympathetic picture of a character who is mostly a joke antagonist, so more on this later.
The leader of the female faction of the Axis, Anko, manages to deduce that Yoshikawa told Onizuka about Kikuchi, information that led to the taming of her male classmates. Expanding the Axis analogy, it’s almost like the boys were the Imperial Japanese Navy to the girls’ Army. The boys were generally tough, and sophisticated in their tactics and technology, but generally better disciplined and more honorable. Whereas Anko’s group works like the Imperial Japanese Army: brutal, lacking in discipline, callous, and not very sophisticated in their tactics. Getting back at Yoshikawa for them takes the form of grabbing him, beating him up, and then taking him to a closet where they stripped him and took pictures that they plan to blackmail him with unless he stops talking to Onizuka. It’s by far the most cruel attack yet perpetrated, and it drives Yoshikawa to attempt suicide again, an attempt only stopped by Onizuka’s quick reaction and the vice principal’s newly repaired Cresta. Following this, Onizuka Eikichi, 22 years old declares in no uncertain terms that “it” is “on.” Following them to their post-attack karaoke session and catching them completely off-guard, Onizuka proceeds to half strip them, return the favor of writing mocking words on them, and then takes pictures that he leaves for Yoshikawa to use as he wishes. And although Yoshikawa leaves the disposable camera behind, there is another step in the escalation crisis as the next day one of the girls’ mothers comes in to confront Onizuka.
Now things are getting back to ‘normal’ with Fuyutsuki.
Looks like he set the game *sunglasses* to hard mode. YYYEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!
The car’s sacrifice was not in vain.
It’s on like Donkey Kong, biatch.
Questionable as it may be, it certainly is effective.
Cry some more!!!
A new challenger appears!
Final Thoughts: – GTO has a lot of comedy to facilitate its serious content thus far, but even given the realistic issues it gets into, I was surprised by just how brutal Anko’s gang’s attack was. Granted, you do you have to wonder what kind of high school boy couldn’t defend himself against the girls, even outnumbered as he was. But moving past that, it had both physical violence and psychological humiliation in it, probably some of the worst bullying I’ve seen in anime so far. The girls got their comeuppance, but with one of their mothers now intervening things look set to just keep escalation. You have to wonder where it will end.
- In the background of all this, and continuing on the social commentary, are all the scenes with Uchiyamada and his Cresta fantasies. He’s not really a likable character, but he does become sympathetic given how crappy of a homelife he has. His wife and daughter barely acknowledge his existence except when he promises to buy them expensive pieces of disposable consumer culture. He’s channeled all his self-worth into his car because he’s got nothing at home and probably doesn’t get much fulfillment out of his job either. It is sad to see him in that situation, unlikable as he is, and it’s a fairly common theme in a lot of fiction from 1980′s-1990′s Japan as the economic good times grew and then receded in the real world.
- Speaking of sympathy for Uchiyamada, and incorporating much of Onizuka’s approaches to reforming students in the show, I refer to the below screenshot from Gintama:
While I’d say the sentiment expressed in the saying that Kagura was parodying is pretty common across Japanese culture for centuries, it seems to hold a particularly central place in GTO and its lead character’s mindset. Even when Onizuka dunked the blackmailers into the lake, it ended up leading them to become better. When he broke up the delinquents on his first day at Holy Forest Academy, it wasn’t because they were just ‘bad people’, but that they had been looked down upon and humiliated by the faculty and that made them turn to their antisocial behavior. There’s still a long way to go with this series, but even at this point I thought the saying seemed to fit the show’s outlook to a T.
15 Comments
Pretty much the worst bullying I’ve seen. The only thing worse is in a manga called SWEEET, but I find the example there beyond believable (not that the GTO fare is very believable — though the telling is effective enough to make it a believable thing for the purposes of the narrative).
I guess I’m pretty lucky how I’ve never really been bullied. Maybe because I was in the bully crowd — if our gang actually did bully anyone (we didn’t). It was just never ever a thing to do in the schools I’ve gone to (my younger brothers report the same).
It seems beyond realism, though I could imagine something not quite as extreme if the bullied person was very passive or didn’t resist. Hard to say exactly since I only ever caught the periphery of the bullying in Japanese schools things through some culture classes in undergrad. Maybe not this exact scenario, but I know there have been some pretty extreme cases there, and supposedly recently in the US too.
Aside from just occasionally getting picked on in middle school/early high school (being a fairly nerdy kid my whole life) I didn’t really experience or see anything on this level. Partly because I think most kids aren’t creative enough to go to the lengths that they have in GTO thus far. But those examples of bullying in Japan, particularly from the late 1990′s, do seem to reach some disturbingly creative and thorough extremes.
SHIT JUST GOT REAL…
Teach us, Onizuka-sensei!!!
Now we get to see the parental interference side of things too. Just keeps getting bigger.
that cosplay so freakin funny, too bad for yoshikawa… Those photos perfect for A.V Material and you can send that to A.V Scouts and earn some money
Well, there is the matter of it being illegal and all. On the count of them being MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS!
Finished GTO last week, sad to say the animation quality drops part way through. I first noticed this when looking at Fuyutsuki’s face; near the start she looks quite pretty, but part way though, her face starts looking…not so attractive.
That’s too bad. But if I can survive and still love Kare Kano and SDF Macross, I can endure anything!
The bullying of Yoshikawa does really go too far. Watching Onizuka for the first time I kinda wondered how bad bullying could get in Japan and how much was “artistic license”.
To this day I cannot see a Toyota Cresta without smiling and thinking of Uchiyamada.
I’m not sure of the specifics since I never read anything about it other than a little bit of reading material for a class and what I saw in the media in Japan, but I get the impression that there was a major problem with it in the late 1990′s, and that (if the media is to be believed and not just hyping it) there’s been a good bit about it in the media in recent years. Not just at schools too, but in the workplace. But you’d need to look it up or ask someone knowledgeable about such things to see how realistic or not GTO is in the details.
GTO had the most amazing property of being able to make me completely HATE characters in the beginning and somehow turn me into their biggest fans by the end of their arc or the show. The other amazing thing about it was being able to turn from ridiculous perverted humor in one minute and just heart poundingly intense drama in the next. Case in point, Onizuka saving Yoshikawa by catching him jumping and later getting revenge in a most ridiculously (but deliciously satisfying!) way.
I sort of felt the same way about Uchiyamada. On one hand, I also empathize with his pathetic home life… but they I realize a lot of it is his fault. His Cresta obsession was glorious though.
Going along with that “there are no demons in this world” line of thought, I can see what you mean. Though I’m wondering how at all those girls can be redeemed. Uchiyamada has become more sympathetic though, even if it doesn’t excuse all his actions. And yeah, GTO is great in engendering HAET in the viewer, but even Kikuchi is quickly becoming more of a victim of circumstance than a real villain.
Redemption from Anko comes in the only true way to redeem a bitchy “mean girl.” That is to magically transform her into none other than a beloved tsundere, complete with Asuka-esque twin-tails.
GTO really captured the sea-change in youth culture during the 1990s and perhaps even predicted a few future trends. Spiteful photoshopping of a public teacher might’ve seemed outlandish when the series first came out, but skill with Photoshop and other computer programs continue to seem the province of the young today (I for one still have a great deal of trouble comparatively with touch screens and motion-sensing controllers, having been raised on analog inputs). I find the series is at it’s strongest when it’s grappling with the paradoxes of modern education systems which often struggle to keep up with the generations they are supposed to be educating, like in these early arcs.
Actually, they may seem unbelievable but GTO’s kind of bullying is very real and although Yoshikawa is just a wimp representation of being bullied, it is quite true that many students die of suicide because of constant bullying in Japan.
The thing about GTO,especially the Yohikawa bullying arc is thatdespite the humor, the issues they show are painfully true. I can really relate to with Yoshikawa because during my primary and secondary education years, I was always on the “bullied and picked on” side. Also in light of the first comment, a perspective on bullying is starkly different between the bullied and the one being picked on.
But the long comment aside, GTO is one of the best anime ever, hands down.