Great Teacher Onizuka

Great Teacher Onizuka (more commonly abbreviated to GTO) is a manga and anime series created by Tohru Fujisawa. This is a sequel of lesser known series Shonan Junaigumi lit. Shonan True Love Group where Onizuka's rogue highschool days are depcited.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

Story

This story is about the life of Eikichi Onizuka, a 22-year old biker who initially has no idea whatsoever about what to do with his life.

While peeping up girl's skirts at a local shopping mall, Onizuka meets a girl who agrees to go out on a date with him. However, Onizuka's attempts to bed her fail when her current 'boyfriend' - her teacher - shows up at Onizuka's apartment and asks her to come back. This teacher is old and unattractive, but so under this teacher's power is she that she leaps from a first-floor window into his arms.

Onizuka, seeing this display of a teacher's power over girls, decides to become one himself, and discovers three important things:

1. He has a conscience and a sense of morality. This means taking advantage of impressionable schoolgirls is out.
2. He enjoys teaching.
3. He hates the systems of traditional instruction.

With these realizations, he sets out to become the greatest teacher ever, using his own wacky brand of philosophy and the ability to do nearly anything when under sufficient pressure, an example being improving his grade from 8/100 to 100/100 on an SAT-equivalent in six days, after taking said test in two hours instead of the normal five, all with a few bullet wounds in him. Hired as a long-shot teacher by a private school to tame a class that has driven one teacher to suicide, one to nervous breakdown, and one to joining a cult, he embarks on a mission of self-discovery by one by one breaking through to each student, and helping each student, ranging from the busty bimbo to the Oedipal Rebel, to learn to genuinely enjoy life.

Media Information

Manga

The original Japanese manga was collected into 25 volumes (tankoubon) by Kodansha's Shounen Magazine Comics imprint. It is currently being translated into English by publisher Tokyopop. Of the original 25 volumes, 22 have been translated to date, with the final few volumes planned for release in the near future. Story and art by Tohru Fujisawa.

English Translation				Original Japanese
Name	Publisher	ISBN	Publication Date	Name	Publisher	ISBN	Publication Date
GTO Volume 1	Tokyopop	ISBN 1931514933	April 23, 2002	GTO (1)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063124118	May 1997
GTO Volume 2	Tokyopop	ISBN 1931514968	June 25, 2002	GTO (2)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063124363	July 1997
GTO Volume 3	Tokyopop	ISBN 1931514496	July 23, 2002	GTO (3)	Kodansha	ISBN 406312455X	September 1997
GTO Volume 4	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591820286	August 20, 2002	GTO (4)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063124819	November 1997
GTO Volume 5	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591820294	September 24, 2002	GTO (5)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063125033	January 1998
GTO Volume 6	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591820308	October 22, 2002	GTO (6)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063125386	April 1998
GTO Volume 7	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591820316	November 12, 2002	GTO (7)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063125599	June 1998
GTO Volume 8	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591820324	December 10, 2002	GTO (8)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063125831	August 1998
GTO Volume 9	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591820707	January 7, 2003	GTO (9)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063126196	November 1998
GTO Volume 10	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821061	March 11, 2003	GTO (10)	Kodansha	ISBN 406312665X	March 1999
GTO Volume 11	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821355	May 13, 2003	GTO (11)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063126889	June 1999
GTO Volume 12	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821363	June 17, 2003	GTO (12)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063127273	August 1999
GTO Volume 13	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821371	August 12, 2003	GTO (13)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063127737	November 1999
GTO Volume 14	Tokyopop	ISBN 159182138X	September 16, 2003	GTO (14)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063127915	January 2000
GTO Volume 15	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821398	November 11, 2003	GTO (15)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063128245	April 2000
GTO Volume 16	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821401	January 13, 2004	GTO (16)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063128482	July 1998
GTO Volume 17	Tokyopop	ISBN 159182141X	March 9, 2004	GTO (17)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063128822	September 2000
GTO Volume 18	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821428	May 4, 2004	GTO (18)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063129144	December 2000
GTO Volume 19	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821436	June 6, 2004	GTO (19)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063129470	March 2001
GTO Volume 20	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591821444	September 14, 2004	GTO (20)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063129802	June 2001
GTO Volume 21	Tokyopop	ISBN 1591824559	November 9, 2004	GTO (21)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063130061	August 2001
GTO Volume 22	Tokyopop	ISBN 1595324100	January 11, 2005	GTO (22)	Kodansha	ISBN 406313041X	September 2001
GTO Volume 23	Tokyopop	TBA	TBA	GTO (23)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063130738	March 15, 2003
GTO Volume 24	Tokyopop	TBA	TBA	GTO (24)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063130975	April 17, 2002
GTO Volume 25	Tokyopop	TBA	TBA	GTO (25)	Kodansha	ISBN 4063130983	April 17, 2002

Anime

Directed by Noriyuki Abe and Naoyasu Hanyu of Japanese language. She would, not that surprisingly, falls in love with Onizuka but as both are quite reluctant to admit their feeling and show them in the open, they claim that they are just "friends".

Nanako Mizuki

Nanako is a student at the Musashino Public High School who is in the class that Onizuka is given to teach while training. Initially she agrees to set Onizuka up, seducing him into taking her back to his apartment, where she undresses and some of the boys from the class take a picture of Onizuka and Nanako together.

However, Onizuka is able to persuade the boys to keep quiet about this (using a few of his biker friends to help - about 100 of them). Despite being set up once, Onizuka agrees to take Nanako to her house after she insinuates he might be able to have sex with her.

Eventually though she ends up at his house and sleeps there (though no sex happens) after explaining that her parents have no time for her anymore because of their businesses.

Onizuka solves this by bashing a hole in one if the walls in Nanako's house, thus ensuring that the wall does not act as a barrier between Nanako and her parents. The hole is fixed, but the rift is healed by the time it is.

Noboru Yoshikawa

Noboru is a pupil at Holy Forest academy, and has not had a good time there so far, being the victim of serious bullying, most of it by Anko and her group. He is extremely good with TV games and is something of an Otaku but proves to be quite handy with making things in a later episode.

This bullying is so bad it makes Noboru try to kill himself twice, by leaping off the roof of the school both times, but each time he is saved by Onizuka and strikes up a sort of friendship with him, as Noboru has a lot of stuff that Onizuka wants to borrow.

In the School trip to Okinawa, he finally gets over the bullying by pretending to be the ghost with help of Onizuka and scaring Anko's group to death. He would later get lost with Anko on an island but Anko discovers that he can be someone to trust and bullying stops.

Anko Uehara

Anko is one of the students in Onizuka's class. She is a typical female bully and Noboru is often on the short end of this.

However, after a particular degrading attack on Noboru, Onizuka ambushes Anko and two of her friends at a local Karaoke bar, taking some rather embarrassing pictures of them in return.

This makes Anko get her mother, who is part of the PTA, to file a complaint against Onizuka. However, this complaint is dropped when the mother is blackmailed by some evidence that has been fabricated by Noboru and others.

At some point after this, however, Anko switches sides because she doesn't like the way Miyabi is making others to her dirty work, and even helps Onizuka when Miyabi sets up the embezzlement of the school trip fund. On the trip in Okinawa, Noboru ends up helping Anko, and she falls in love with him.

Tomoko Nomura

Tomoko is a pupil in Onizuka's class. She has very large breasts, but is not too bright, leading to people calling her slo-mo-ko. She and Yoshikawa makes a good duo beating the tag of Onizuka in a watergun battle by blasting the room with multiple water rockets prepared by Yoshikawa himself (There had been no limit placed on what type of weapons to use).

After initially messing up her role in one of Miyabi's plans to get Onizuka fired, she is cut off from Miyabi's group. However, Onizuka sorts this out by getting her into a local beauty contest. She doesn't win, but she gets noticed by several TV producers and starts starring in various commercials and the like. Her young male manager, impressed with her naturalness and falling in love at the first sight, makes it a lifetime quest to make her succeed.

In the live action TV episode, instead of her succeeding dramatically in following episodes, she would part for an Okinawa actor school to learn dancing and singing.

Miyabi Aizawa

Miyabi is another pupil in Onizuka's class, and seems to hate teachers quite severely. She is easily the most popular girl in school though her queen-like manner can easily irritate anyone.

Originally just out to be rid of Onizuka on principle, she quickly makes it personal when he arranges for Tomoko to get noticed at the beauty contest, whereas she did get anything out of it.

Miyabi is behind the school trip embezzlement, in which she blackmails Mr.Sakurai (not Mrs. Sakurai husband) into asking parent to submit the money by cash. This allows her to steal the money and plant it on Onizuka, who manages to lose it all in a sting step up by Miyabi.

However, Urumi, who is Onizuka's side by this time, gets revenge for him by setting her and her three friends up with a Sadomasochistic group, where she is narrowly saved from being raped by Onizuka who dives into a room of a skyscraper through the window from another skyscraper.

Urumi Kanzaki

Urumi is a child genius, with an IQ over 200. However, she is also psychologically disturbed, specifically having an intense hatred of teachers.

Her genius is displayed repeatedly by such abstract actions as blasting every single disposable boxes with firecrackers right on the 0:00 PM, making a fake sillicone head so a snake look like a viper, or more genius like actions like shouting curses in French and being able to speak Cantonese.

This hatred stems from her elementary school days. Her teacher wasn't able to handle Urumi properly, and Urumi's constant requests for the teachers time both inside and outside of school eventually made the teacher snap. The teacher then told Urumi's secret to her class (something about her father, but it isn't stated explicitly then. It is later told that her mother had selected a genetical father based on his intelligence and nothing more). Naturally this caused a great deal of psychological trauma to Urumi, and a quite understandable hatred of teachers.

However, after a couple of run-ins with Onizuka he is able to get through to her by almost killing both himself and her by jumping over the gap in a suspension bridge, and by making her see that her past trauma, however bad, just isn't worth messing up her present with.

Hiroshi Uchiyamada

Uchiyamada is the vice-principal at Holy Forest academy. He has some very set ideas on how peoples backgrounds relates to how well they can do. Despite his many failings, he is not an evil man but is just very serious about the job of teaching.

Uchiyamada rubs Onizuka up the wrong way in the interview because of his background. However, Onizuka is not the first to experience this, and a couple of expelled students come to the academy looking to pay Uchiyamada back for their own treatment. He offers Onizuka a job if he can get rid of these students, but after hearing what Uchiyamada has to say about them, he incapacitates Uchiyamada instead.

Because of this, because of Onizuka's background and because Onizuka trashes his car twice while saving Noboru from killing himself, Uchiyamada wants Onizuka fired.

He is a not quite extreme example of punishing an ordinary older middle-aged Japanese man takes from his home and workplace. He is forced to work with a young man like Onizuka who easily breaks his rule and things he do doesn't make sense to him. The boss he serves under seems to think it is fun. At home, his daughter and wife openly disdaines him even though everything they do is funded by him working everyday in a stressful workplace.

Mayu Wakui

Mayu is the grandson of Chairwoman Sakurai. He attended Holy Forest for a while, then left for an unknown reason.

As part of Miyabi's continuing (as of book 14) quest to get rid of Onizuka, she asks Mayu to come back to try and get him removed.

Mayu comes back and almost immediately rubs Onizuka up the wrong way. This results in him bursting a water main and almost doing Mayu in with an entire set of lockers. At this point Onizuka finds out that Mayu is Chairwoman Sakurai's grandson, and she lashes out at him. Uchiyamada then takes that opportunity to suspend Onizuka.

However Mrs. Sukurai then calms down, realises that it was all Mayu's fault (it always is according to her) and asks Onizuka to come back and try and bring him back onto the straight and narrow.

Mayu has a terminal illness because of a medical mistreatment and later makes a debut in the mainstream media by confessing his illness. This is the reason to his chaotic manner as no matter what he does, he can be dead next day.

Yoshito Kikuchi

Yoshito is one of Onizuka's students. This computer prodigy serves as the class president.