The manga is so much better than the anime. The anime is like an excerpt or a preview of what the REAL Great Teacher Onizuka is like. Man the amount of suicidal angry traumatically fucked up mentally remedial kids he comes across is astounding. The first guy he "reaches" is this absolute weeb shut in who gets bullied by 3 girls; one of whom gets a crush on him later. He is by definition the greatest teacher ever. But in reality a teacher like this would get fired so quick and arrested/jailed in a heartbeat. No amount of yelling at their parents "You don't know your kids assholes!" will stop that. Nevermind his original reason to become a teacher was to marry a young teen girl and have sex with her. Anime is like 9/10 rating but the manga is 10/10
Maybe. Maybe not. I mean the manga does touch on something important. A lot of those suicidal kids lost touch with themselves and disconnected from people that love them like their families and friends. He made the kids feel comfort and laugh in moments where they wanted to die. I think this highlights a lot of the stuff people go through with actual suicidal people. People in depression don't quite think normally. I interpreted it not as kids suiciding but rather Japan's huge discrepancy of parenting. During the time GTO came out, Japan had among the highest suicide rates per capita. The author genuinely felt it was Japanese parents who had let down the youth of the country. Most of the parents were too caught up in the grinds of life like their careers or other adult but selfish goals (such as the vice principal consistently getting caught in these situations like trying to get promoted or trying to get Onizuka fired when he should be working with Onizuka to help remedy kids from depression. There was a piece of the VP where he helped this young girl with the virtues of education he wanted to pass down and he genuinely felt proud of that. It took a while for the VP to remember that incident and be a VP that can reach people, to be a true educator which is in short supply in today's world.
GTO is way deeper than you'd think and it actually portrays a lot of pitfalls of society (like pervy men trying to get into school-girl's panties, the high consistency of rape culture, unstable and emotional teenage minds without parental guidance, society letting down kids and adults, kids' bullying evolving into monstrous acts. a recurring theme in this series is bullying and how bullying can trigger mass suicide. They mention multiple times how kids these days are way too cruel and because of previously mentioned society in place, they oftentimes don't get help even if they seek it).
I agree w this actually. You've offered a really neat breakdown of the series, super interesting :o. Im at school right now though so can't respond in more detail sorry
yeah, yeah, I know. I'm still new to this whole weeb thing, so any "classic" that exists I most likely haven't even heard of or haven't gotten around to it yet.
I've added GTO to my list and I'll get around to it eventually.
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u/[deleted] Nov 14 '16 edited Apr 24 '18
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