Great Teacher Onizuka, officially abbreviated as GTO, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tooru Fujisawa.
The story focuses on 22-year-old ex-bōsōzoku member Eikichi Onizuka, who becomes a teacher at a private middle school, Holy Forest Academy, in Tokyo, Japan.
It is a standalone sequel to Fujisawa's earlier manga series Shonan Junai Gumi and Bad Company, both of which focus on the life of Onizuka before becoming a teacher.
Due to the popularity of the manga, several adaptations of GTO were created, including a 12-episode Japanese television drama running from July to September 1998; a live-action film directed by Masayuki Suzuki and released in December 1999; and a 43-episode anime television series produced by Pierrot, which aired in Japan on Fuji TV from June 1999 to September 2000.
A sequel manga series, titled GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, ran in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from June 2009 to September 2011.
While peeping up girls' skirts at a local shopping mall, Onizuka meets a schoolgirl who agrees to go out on a date with him.
Onizuka's attempt to sleep with her fails when her current "boyfriend", her teacher, shows up at the love hotel they are in and asks her to return to him.
He hates the system of traditional education, especially when other teachers and administrators have grown ignorant and condescending to students and their needs.
[12] A side story series, titled GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from June 10, 2009,[13] to September 14, 2011.
[15][16] A spin-off manga, titled GT-R, focused on Onizuka's friend Ryūji Danma, was published in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from June 27 to October 3, 2012.
[21][22] A 43-episode anime television series adaptation was produced by Studio Pierrot and directed by Noriyuki Abe, was broadcast on Fuji TV from June 30, 1999, to September 24, 2000.
[31] A 12-episode television drama adaptation starring Takashi Sorimachi as the titular character was broadcast on Fuji TV from July 7 to September 22, 1998.
[44][45] The mini-series places Onizuka in a Taiwanese school as part of a training program and is a joint Japan/Taiwan co production that contains both Japanese and Mandarin Chinese dialogue.
[48][49] The cast of third-year students and teacher team of Sotoku Gakuin High School, where this version takes place, includes Sae Okazaki [ja] (as Miyu Ayahara, a third-year homeroom and Japanese History teacher), Shinya Kote (as Takeshi Fujida, the vice-principal), Rikako Yagi (as Suzuka Ichikawa, an honor student, with a strained relationship with her father), Mei Hata [ja] (as Rin Endo, a student whose father's company's fraud problem was exposed), Wataru Hyuga [ja] (as Haruto Uno, a student on a baseball scholarship, unable to play because of an injury, whose father despises him for this), and Kosuke Suzuki (as Koichi Ichikawa, Suzuka's father and a candidate for the House of Representatives).
[50] Seven cast members from the original are reprising their roles in this new version: Hiroyuki Ikeuchi as Kunio Murai, Yuta Yamazaki [ja] as Masaru Watanabe, Yōsuke Kubozuka as Yoshito Kikuchi, Hidenori Tokuyama as Kenji Youda, Shun Oguri as Noboru Yoshikawa, Naohito Fujiki as Ryuji Saejima, and Nanako Matsushima as Azusa Fuyutsuki.
He added that in its best moments, the manga "goes beyond the level of an Adam Sandler movie and approaches true social satire".
They called the 1998 live-action adaptation "the quintessential GTO, with its handsome loner [protagonist] fighting injustices on his motorcycle like an educational lawman" but still found the anime adaptation to have "considerable bite" due to its animated origins allowing for "slightly more violence and menace than its prime-time live-action counterpart.
"[23] In 2008, Russian network 2x2 came under investigation by Rossvyazkomnadzor, the government watchdog, for allegedly promoting "child pornography, sexual aberrations, violence and cruelty" by broadcasting the GTO anime.