First Semester of Great Teacher Onizuka

Anime of Great Teacher Onizuka is based on a manga authored by Tohru Fujisawa with same title. Personally, I like this anime very much. Tohru Fujisawa made the hero, Eikichi Onizuka, appears uniquely. He is portrayed as lazy, stupid, and former delinquent person with low level of IQ, but amazingly passed board exam to be an educator. Despite his bad background, Onizuka has caring and loving sides to his students far more than any other ‘normal’ skilled teachers, who are portrayed lacking educational souls.

Onizuka is a former gang member, but strangely obsessed to be a perfect teacher despite his bad education background. Somehow he succeeds to become a teacher when chairwoman of Holy Forest, Ryoko Sakurai, is convinced by his spirit and hires him, and from this start, his story as a teacher in Holy Forest begins.

Great Teacher Onizuka has 43 episodes, and this First Semester contains Episodes 1-23, each episode are titled as Lesson #, so they are Lesson #1, Lesson #2, and so on. In first semester, important characters are introduced one by one, starting from Onizuka himself, Principal Uchiyamada who hates him, his colleague teacher – Azusa – who has a crush on him, and his students like Noboru Yoshikawa & Uehara Anko, Kunio Murai, Tomoko Nomura, Miyabi, Urumi Kanzaki, etc. These episodes show how Onizuka builds his relationship with his students, who initially don’t trust him at all and even try to abuse him (something they did to their previous homeroom teacher).

Usually, there’s two languages option in the DVD, English and Japanese (with English subtitle). I like to watch it in Japanese; English dub is weird in my ears. This anime is not suitable for kids, for there are harsh words and scenes emphasizing partial nudity. Harsh words and violence are present almost in all episodes. And even if there are serious plots about Onizuka trying to solve problems connected to his students or himself, I still see funny things in them. Onizuka is always portrayed in funny ways when he panics over some problems. And last comment from me, first semester has 23 episodes, each episode around 20-25 minutes, so this anime can be a choice for “movie marathon” in weekend.
-