GREAT TEACHER ONIZUKA (Gureto Ticha Onizuka), by Tohru Fujisawa. First published in 1997 and first published in North America in 2002.
PLOT:
Eikichi Onizuka is tired of being just another aimless punk. He's determined to make something of himself, and he's convinced that he needs to be a teacher. Not just any teacher, though - he wants to be the greatest high school teacher ever, the sort who whips kids into shape and maybe scores a bit of action on the side! He manages to barely graduate his certification program, but his first assignment may be his greatest challenge. He'll have to use all his cunning and street smarts to survive not only a class full of delinquents determined to break him down as well as administrators skeptical of his ability to succeed at life, much less teaching.
Great Teacher Onizuka that has managed to linger in the hearts and minds of American anime and manga fans far longer than you would expect for a 22-year old shonen manga, considering how poorly its spin-offs have performed here, how far anime and manga at large have moved away from the glorification of yankiis, and how much both focus anymore on what is hot and new. So what gives this series so much lasting power? Well, if this manga is anything to go by, it's that Onizuka himself is so compelling funny and endearing and that his devil-may-care attitude allows Fujisawa to call out some of the hypocrisies of the Japanese school system from the perspective of both the students and the adults.
Onizuka is such a great protagonist because while he is a very flawed individual, his innate goodness still manages to shine through his actions. The story makes no bones about the fact that Eikichi spent his youth driving motorcycles, beating people up, and generally being a horny little hooligan. It also makes no pretenses about him being any sort of secret genius or having purely noble motivations, considering that he focused more on his karate team than school and hoping that becoming a teacher will help him score with high-school girls.
Yet in spite of all his sloth, perviness, and occasional tendencies towards criminal activity, Fujisawa manages to demonstrate his good qualities: his drive to succeed, his excellent people skills, his strong sense of justice, his refusal to exploit power (even when faced with temptation). All of these are facets of his personality, the virtues to his vices, even if they are sometimes undernourished or channeled in unconventional ways. Whereas most yankiis in manga are there to serve as nameless threats or celebrations of hypermasculinity, Onizuka is allowed to be a complex person. He can be a punk, a hero, a comic foil, a badass, and a good man all at once.
But enough about Onizuka - what about the story itself? Well, it's clear that Fujisawa is setting things up for the long run as far as this first volume is concerned. Much of this volume is just getting Onizuka to the point where he's ready to become a teacher. Otherwise there's a lot of fights and conversations about the good old days or bullshitting among Onizuka's fellow classmates. It's only in the last third that Onizuka starts helping someone other than himself, ending the volume with violent panache and a cliffhanger. It's good for character building, but it's hard to not wish that things would move forward a little faster. Thankfully, Onizuka is such a delightful character that it's not too much of a trial.
ART:
Fujisawa's art is kind of nostalgic in a weird way. While Fujisawa has always had a problem with drawing the same generically pretty women, there's something wonderful about the variety of faces and body types you find in the crowds here. Nowhere is this more evident than on Onizuka, who can be handsome one moment (even in flashbacks with his yankii pompadour) and making the strangest gonk face in the next moment. You can see all the love and attention he puts into each one.
He also puts a lot of love into the mundane grunginess of Onizuka's world, from Onizuka's dump of an apartment down to the everyday street scenes and classrooms. He packs in not just detail, but loads of visual gags. He also clearly loves drawing the action scenes, as all the fights and motorcycle rides are framed in big, exciting ways. If there's any downside to the art, it's that it was clearly drawn with magazines in mind. When the panels are shrunk down to tankobon size, the details tend to get lost along with a lot of the side comments and gags packed into the panels.
RATING:
Great Teacher Onizuka is...well, it's great. It's a genuine classic, with a delightfully compelling and well-written lead complement by some great, gritty artwork. I'm usually not one to get into long-running shonen series, but this is one of the few to grace my shelves in full. It may be hard to collect in full these days, but shonen connoisseurs should still seek it out.
This series was licensed by Tokyopop. This series is complete in Japan with 25 volumes. All 25 were published and are currently out of print.
Onizuka is such a great protagonist because while he is a very flawed individual, his innate goodness still manages to shine through his actions. The story makes no bones about the fact that Eikichi spent his youth driving motorcycles, beating people up, and generally being a horny little hooligan. It also makes no pretenses about him being any sort of secret genius or having purely noble motivations, considering that he focused more on his karate team than school and hoping that becoming a teacher will help him score with high-school girls.
Yet in spite of all his sloth, perviness, and occasional tendencies towards criminal activity, Fujisawa manages to demonstrate his good qualities: his drive to succeed, his excellent people skills, his strong sense of justice, his refusal to exploit power (even when faced with temptation). All of these are facets of his personality, the virtues to his vices, even if they are sometimes undernourished or channeled in unconventional ways. Whereas most yankiis in manga are there to serve as nameless threats or celebrations of hypermasculinity, Onizuka is allowed to be a complex person. He can be a punk, a hero, a comic foil, a badass, and a good man all at once.
But enough about Onizuka - what about the story itself? Well, it's clear that Fujisawa is setting things up for the long run as far as this first volume is concerned. Much of this volume is just getting Onizuka to the point where he's ready to become a teacher. Otherwise there's a lot of fights and conversations about the good old days or bullshitting among Onizuka's fellow classmates. It's only in the last third that Onizuka starts helping someone other than himself, ending the volume with violent panache and a cliffhanger. It's good for character building, but it's hard to not wish that things would move forward a little faster. Thankfully, Onizuka is such a delightful character that it's not too much of a trial.
ART:
Fujisawa's art is kind of nostalgic in a weird way. While Fujisawa has always had a problem with drawing the same generically pretty women, there's something wonderful about the variety of faces and body types you find in the crowds here. Nowhere is this more evident than on Onizuka, who can be handsome one moment (even in flashbacks with his yankii pompadour) and making the strangest gonk face in the next moment. You can see all the love and attention he puts into each one.
He also puts a lot of love into the mundane grunginess of Onizuka's world, from Onizuka's dump of an apartment down to the everyday street scenes and classrooms. He packs in not just detail, but loads of visual gags. He also clearly loves drawing the action scenes, as all the fights and motorcycle rides are framed in big, exciting ways. If there's any downside to the art, it's that it was clearly drawn with magazines in mind. When the panels are shrunk down to tankobon size, the details tend to get lost along with a lot of the side comments and gags packed into the panels.
RATING:
Great Teacher Onizuka is...well, it's great. It's a genuine classic, with a delightfully compelling and well-written lead complement by some great, gritty artwork. I'm usually not one to get into long-running shonen series, but this is one of the few to grace my shelves in full. It may be hard to collect in full these days, but shonen connoisseurs should still seek it out.
This series was licensed by Tokyopop. This series is complete in Japan with 25 volumes. All 25 were published and are currently out of print.
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