Great Teacher Onizuka Review

The premise reads as a gag and the execution is not one. Onizuka wants the job because he thinks it means access to teenage girls, the show says so plainly, and then it puts him in front of a class that has already broken three teachers on purpose. Each arc takes one student apart, finds the adult who did the damage, and has Onizuka answer with something between a stunt and an act of blunt sincerity. The comedy is loud, dated and often crude, and it functions as the delivery system rather than the point.

What holds up is that the students are not misunderstood so much as correctly angry, and the series names parents and teachers as the cause instead of reaching for a lesson about attitude. Pierrot's animation is flat television work from the late nineties, with limited motion and a lot of held expressions, and the pacing sags whenever the school administration subplot returns. The Miyabi arc is the one that justifies the whole run. It has stayed near the top of the era's comedies because the sentiment is unembarrassed and aimed at something real.