Great Teacher Onizuka was a pleasant surprise
Gotta be honest… after the disappointment that was Shonan Junai Gumi, I was really starting to dread its successor series, the 43 episode GTO.
It turns out that I had no reason to worry. GTO is substantially grounded and more focused. Fast forward a few years after Shonan and Onizuka is now a brand new teacher. He’s initially just after girls (like the last series), but he quickly takes a liking to teaching.
Onizuka is given the absolute worst class in the school, and a showoff begins. The students are out to get him fired, while Onizuka attempts to help the students see their own value. One by win, Onizuka starts winning them over. By the end, some last minute heroics succeeds in bringing the whole class to Onizuka’s side. Series reviews even frequently feature comments to the extent that they wish Onizuka was their high school homeroom teacher.
The show follows some thematic elements of its predecessor. The bizarre facial expressions are a fan-favorite feature of the show. Characters are perpetually vamping for the camera.
Understanding the humor element of the show requires watching the characters’ faces as the episode goes on — it’s an understated, non-physical humor that can’t be transferred by paying half attention to the show.
This isn’t like Gintama with a Shinpachi who constantly screams about ludicrous situations. To some extent, that’s for the worse, as the slow burn of the show could benefit from more overt comedy. I realize this isn’t a popular position to take, but I rarely follow the crowd.
The downside: like too many series based on manga, the show ends well before the completion of the manga’s storyline. This means that we get the dreaded anime-specific ending. It’s fully clear when you get into the filler ending episodes, as there’s a steep drop in quality compared to the previous canonical storyline.
It’s all good, though. GTO is better than the average for this type of series, and that’s perfectly acceptable.
Rating:
