GTO #1 : Great Teacher Onizuka Tokyopop 125 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 03/26/2002

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I miss short haired girls, like, a lot. Those like the one pictured on the left (please ignore her companion with the lazy eye) are exactly my cup of tea. Though I generally prefer my women to be animated, I don't mean in the paint and brushes way. You might notice that she's smoking, normally that'd be a total turn off to me, but recently I've found myself realizing that's because the only girls I've ever dated that smoked weren't really hot anyway. A hot girl can get away with pretty much anything, I used to date a girl who lived 45 minutes away and kept me at her place until one or two on school nights. Basically, I find girls smoking to be cooler than I used to, but only if they're seriously attractive. I don't know what it is, but this long stretch of productivity is really getting to me. I have a little board now where I write what I have to do. On the left is my fan-service related material and on the right is my school work. Let's not mention the fact that half the stuff in the fan-service column are projects that Jonnie Skabs (AKA Fellonius Chimpanzee) has started but never finished. The productivity is infecting my school work. I studied (really studied, not studied for five minutes before leaving the book open on my bed as I went out) for my Crime Theory midterm and I got an "A" on it. I mean, can you believe that? Studying is like cheating that they LET YOU DO! From that point on I decided I was going to study for all my tests. Then I realized I don't even have the drive to play videogames half the time, so there was no way I was spending anymore than absolutely no time on studying. Oh well, that "A" sure does look nice.

Akichi Onizuka is more than a pervert, he's a school teacher with bleached hair, a badass suit, and pierced ears. The former gangbanger has decided to take up the honorable profession of educator. And for what reason? He wants to dip into some of that sweet school girl action. I can't entirely say I blame him, save for the fact that I'm now twenty years old and high school girls are getting less and less legal with every breath I take. Not to mention that I'd be ostracized from any community I was a member of. Aside from that, high school girls are too easy. They're all so eager to please and crap that I could probably pick up five or six of them at any random party. And I'm only -okay- looking! Think of what Onizuka could do, especially when he's voiced by the impeccable David Lucas. I've decided that I need a suit like his, I never knew white, blue and red could go together so well. I know, I know, call me un-American if you must. At least it'll go along good with the white fedora I'm planning to pick up over Christmas break in preparation for news reports in the convention circuit.

So, despite the fact that he's a pervert, Onizuka actually seems to be pretty good at this teaching thing. The only problem is it seems to happen entirely by accident, kind of like how I date women. I'll just be eating dinner one night and all of a sudden I'll wake up in a relationship. And just like that, Onizuka manages to screw things up just as fast as he fixes them. My one major complaint with this show is that the pervert angle is overplayed. Onizuka should spend the whole show walking around with his hands in his pockets going "Hmph!" Sure he's a badass more often than not, but those whiny baby times the show makes us sit through really makes my skin crawl. And as Skabs was quick to point out, the animation quality sucks. Onizuka's character design is flawless, as long as he's completely still and not making any goofy faces. While I'm not sure who it is, I know this character designer's work and I remember never really liking it in the other things I've seen. Some of the sight gags and still frames are great, but Onizuka's constantly shifting facial features make me feel like I've just spent the night in a vomitorium.

I've been waiting almost a year for this show, ever since I've heard about it I wanted very badly to see it. I hadn't heard a single thing about the whole "pervert" angle. Luckily it calms down significantly after the first episode, which is coincidentally 60 minutes long. You get 125 minutes of GTO on this disc and it's definitely not a bad thing. I think the show deserves the grade I gave it, but I had to deliberate a long time on whether or not it was really "4" material. In the end, I think it is, but those who aren't fans of slapstick humor would probably have some trouble getting into it. I should know, I'm one of them. But I'll be honest and say that GTO tickled my funny bone more than once. I respect a man in a double breasted suit that has no qualms about giving the school's vice principal a German Suplex when he's acting up. Onizuka's a man of action, just like me. It's a shame neither of us are getting any of it.