Jun 6, 2024

The Greatest Teacher!

After I started reading GTO, I enjoyed it! I rated it pretty harshly in the beginning, but took a step back and I enjoyed it a lot more after doing so!
However, I hit a bit of a wall. Progress stopped at around chapter 99 or so, probably due exam week coming up and general motivation for reading it dipping. However, I persisted! And I’m glad I did!

For starters, GTO's comedy was good throughout. I remember a lot of the best jokes being after maybe 50+ chapters, before that they were just alright and I didn't find them THAT funny. Onizuka’s weird antics and...the situations he got in were great, but I wasn’t bursting out laughing or anything. It was still funny to me, and I enjoyed the comedy presented, but it wasn't the best. And that's fine.

Onizuka is also a highlight, as he served as a chaotic mentor who, despite his freaking chaotic personality and antics, is still a good- no- GREAT man at heart! I expected nothing less from the Great Teacher himself! It's such a simple concept, yet he works very well as a main character. The moments he shared with students were all really good, and seeing him connect with them personally was honestly one of my favourite aspects of GTO.

GTO was also great at balancing pretty heavy situations. It knew when to joke about stuff, which was surprising but nice to see! GTO was just generally great at making the best of awful situations and teaching the audience that people need to grow up and take responsibility!

I also felt as though it got better whilst I was reading it. Initially, like I mentioned, the jokes were fine—some funny ones here and there—but the jokes got better and the characters and stories became much more memorable after my reading block! It might just be me, but it was great to see the jokes improving overtime!
(I’ve used great a lot in this review...)

Anyway, GTO was a very enjoyable experience for me. Even when I was hitting my head on the wall trying to get through it despite my lack of motivation, I persisted! And that’s what GTO is all about! Persistence and dedication!

I, AlmightyTank, shall give Great Teacher Onizuka a 9!

Reviewer’s Rating:9

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Feb 9, 2025

I ran into GTO the first time when I was a young man in the late 90s and 2000, and it became one of my favorite series, it was funny, and had a great main character. Basically everything about this series as enjoyable.

And then in 2024, I started reading GTO again. Oh boy.

Now listen, I have often defended art of all forms to say that looking at stuff in a 2024-2025 view is relatively incorrect. You can dislike something that doesn't fit with the morals of today, but to not acknowledge that people's opinions have changed and it...was acceptable at one time is disingenuous.

However I think we start here.... A major story in the start of this manga is Eikichi Onizuka decides to become a teacher because a High school student he helps out goes running back to the old and unattractive teacher that apparently she was living with, and possibly her current teacher. That could be over looked. Admittedly Onizuka is getting into teaching for the wrong reasons, but consenting adults and all that.

Only problem is Onizuka then gets put in charge of a Middle school... a middle school where he at a number of time decides to talk about waiting until they are "18" in just "four years"... Now none of these are directly related to a specific student (At least most of the time) .. But Egads....

Admittedly by the second half of the manga, Onizuka really doesn't seem to have these thoughts, but a number of other characters around him do and while they're not intended to be heroic protaganists, it's still damn creepy. Plus, a number of sexual situations are discussed, shown, and even a few times the girls in Onizuka's class show or distribute their panties (mostly to Onizuka)... so... yeah.

And yet this isn't the reason I have Mixed Feelings, and if you think I hate this manga, my final Rating will definitely surprise you.

With that huge potential negative out of the way, I can now say that I still found GTO to be one of the funniest, and cleverest mangas. Onizuka as a character may be a creep, but he's a lovable one. He's one who almost always will do the right thing whether he wants to or not, and has a really solid moral compass, at least most of the time. He finds himself, or places himself into horrible situations, and will always find a way to succeed.

He usually does this and yet still gets a laugh out of me, not a thought that something is clever, or a little chuckle, but a solid laugh, and this is not the first time I've read this manga, and it's still remains funny all the way through. That's not something I can even think of another manga that delivers that reliably.

The characters are interesting in GTO as well, and much of the book is about Onizuka having to win over someone who disagrees with his teaching, or just hates teaches on a base level, but each challenge is solved in a different way, and so many of them are done with a level of humor. There's rarely a deep heart felt moment, without some humor surrounding it. Readers also won't be able to guess how a number of these complex relationships work out because ... well Onizuka is something special.

But I will say that GTO is not a beginner friendly Manga, there's a lot in GTO that is "Japanese Culture" or even other mangas. Early on Onizuka wears a ton of different costumes or makes references to other mangas or animes. And while these might not be required knowledge, most of what makes GTO great is knowing the in-jokes and references. Knowing why X is said, and that's the one problem.

I love GTO because I grew up and read a bunch of 90s manga, I know most of the references because that's what is popular then. But in 2025, a lot of these references might be lost. If you focused on modern manga, enjoy yourself. But if you do venture back into classic series and classic anime, well GTO might work for you.

But then again, I will say you are going to have to push through a bit of questionable content still. It's never bad, but the story can be dark, have complex (dirty old men) characters, and even strange moments, but this could be nostalgia but 20 years after it's published I still find this to be one of the funniest mangas, I have read, and that's something I can't deny. It's an excellent manga, but that's a complicated meaning of excellent as well.

Reviewer’s Rating:9

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Feb 4, 2025

If you are looking for a manga that fits the textbook definition of "aged like milk," then this is it.

Before I dive into the criticisms, I must first sing the manga's praises. The art is some of the best I have ever seen; I didn't even know that this was possible with pen and ink alone. The intricacies of different settings, the sleekness of motorcycles, the beautiful backdrops, all have been captured effectively by the mangaka's immense artistic talent. GTO also brings attention to sensitive topics that plague high school kids. Most manga even until now try to avoid bringing up these issues.

However, that's...about where my praises end.

Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO) is a manga series that was published from 1996 to 2002. Much like all media that came out during that time, there are many humor and comedic elements that fall flat on its face. In many cases, a lot of the jokes are wildly unentertaining. I have also learned the valuable lesson of not taking a MyAnimeList rating at face value.

Earlier, I praised GTO for touching on sensitive topics most manga tend to avoid. However, I never mentioned that it did it WELL. In fact, the biggest issue I have with this manga is the extremely rapey nature. Before I begin, I would like to clarify that the perverted actions of characters are NEVER portrayed positively in this manga. But, it's literally contradictory; Onizuka is evidently illustrated as the protagonist when he is saving his students in a pinch. However, his willingness to profusely look up the skirts of underaged girls and getting weird with them is downright freaky. It's like antihero writing gone wild.

Rather than using topics such as sexual assault and rape to provide social commentary, the author of GTO uses them as if they were a goddamned literary device. I'm not going to dive too deep into this, but it's pretty clear from the first few arcs that there is a lot of crazy stuff involving Onizuka and underaged girls. Particularly, there were even entire chapters dedicated to the different techniques teachers from Holy Forest Academy would use for the purpose of peeping and groping women on trains. When the author leaned heavily on using rapey devices to create shock and humor, it just felt pointless, aimless and aged terribly.

I feel like a big offender in the back of my mind was the absolutely unnecessary scene involving a girl and a couple of her other friends. The author chose to illustrate underaged schoolgirls tied up in a hotel room surrounded by old naked men with the intention to repeatedly rape them. Of course, they were saved by Onizuka, but the entire ordeal being used as a literary device was so incredibly unnecessary. Another example was when Onizuka was getting revenge against these schoolgirls for sexually assaulting a boy, so he ties them up and pulls their underwear down and writes on their butts while they're sobbing. These things happen over and over again throughout the next hundred or so chapters of the manga.

Something else I wanted to touch on is how horribly out of touch the manga is. Sometimes, the conflict resolution felt too abrupt, making me think "Seriously? That's it?" In particular, there was a scene where a girl confesses that she was raped by several men, and right after that Onizuka makes her kiss another guy and somehow everything was fine after that. Like.. what? The author spends plenty of time in the buildup and giving each character a tragic backstory, but it feels like some conflicts are patched up in a matter of a few pages which not only does a disservice to these characters, but the social issues that the manga is trying to portray as well.

I love a manga that does character development well, and Onizuka had no character development. As for the students, their character development was okay at best. Onizuka already starts off as a really strong guy with no sense of shame and some degree of morals, and that stays relatively static throughout the entire story. The only thing that was different about him is that he came to like the students and realized that teaching isn't about the money. Other than that, do not read GTO expecting great character development. The author only shows off what Onizuka has always been capable of for 200+ chapters.

The ending's criticism can vary from person to person, but I personally don't think it's the best. It felt like any other arc in the many repetitive arcs GTO presents to the readers. Rather than tying up the overall story in a nice knot, we are really left not knowing what becomes of the characters afterwards. This coincides with my earlier argument that conflict resolution in GTO is not great.

While I acknowledge that this manga is not for everyone, I personally could not ever bring myself to recommend this to a friend. Overall, the manga's fantastic art does not make up for the crude humor, outdated writing and the utter lack of Onizuka's character development. I do not recommend this manga.

Reviewer’s Rating:6

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