Before I dive into the criticisms, I must first sing the manga's praises. The art is some of the best I have ever seen; I didn't even know that this was possible with pen and ink alone. The intricacies of different settings, the sleekness of motorcycles, the beautiful backdrops, all have been captured effectively by the mangaka's immense artistic talent. GTO also brings attention to sensitive topics that plague high school kids. Most manga even until now try to avoid bringing up these issues.
However, that's about where my praises end.
Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO) is a manga series that was published from 1996 to 2002. Much like all media that came out during that time, there are many humor and comedic elements that fall flat on its face. In many cases, a lot of the jokes are wildly unentertaining. I have also learned the valuable lesson of not taking a MyAnimeList rating at face value.
Earlier, I praised GTO for touching on sensitive topics most manga tend to avoid. However, I never mentioned that it did it WELL. In fact, the biggest issue I have with this manga is the extremely rapey nature. Before I begin, I would like to clarify that the perverted actions of characters are NEVER portrayed positively in this manga. But, it's literally contradictory; Onizuka is evidently illustrated as the protagonist when he is saving his students in a pinch. However, his willingness to profusely look up the skirts of underaged girls and getting weird with them is downright freaky. It's like antihero writing gone wild.
Rather than using topics such as sexual assault and rape to provide social commentary, the author of GTO uses them as if they were a goddamned literary device. I'm not going to dive too deep into this, but it's pretty clear from the first few arcs that there is a lot of crazy stuff involving Onizuka and underaged girls. Particularly, there were even entire chapters dedicated to the different techniques teachers from Holy Forest Academy would use for the purpose of peeping and groping women on trains. When the author leaned heavily on using rapey devices to create shock and humor, it just felt pointless, aimless and aged terribly.
I feel like a big offender in the back of my mind was the absolutely unnecessary scene involving a girl and a couple of her other friends. The author chose to illustrate underaged schoolgirls tied up in a hotel room surrounded by old naked men with the intention to repeatedly rape them. Of course, they were saved by Onizuka, but the entire ordeal being used as a literary device was so incredibly unnecessary. Another example was when Onizuka was getting revenge against these schoolgirls for sexually assaulting a boy, so he ties them up and pulls their underwear down and writes on their butts while they're sobbing. These things happen over and over again throughout the next hundred or so chapters of the manga.
Something else I wanted to touch on is how horribly out of touch the manga is. Sometimes, the conflict resolution felt too abrupt, making me think "Seriously? That's it?" In particular, there was a scene where a girl confesses that she was raped by several men, and right after that Onizuka makes her kiss another guy and somehow everything was fine after that. Like.. what? The author spends plenty of time in the buildup and giving each character a tragic backstory, but it feels like some conflicts are patched up in a matter of a few pages which not only does a disservice to these characters, but the social issues that the manga is trying to portray as well.
I love a manga that does character development well, and Onizuka had no character development. As for the students, their character development was okay at best. Onizuka already starts off as a really strong guy with no sense of shame and some degree of morals, and that stays relatively static throughout the entire story. The only thing that was different about him is that he came to like the students and realized that teaching isn't about the money. Other than that, do not read GTO expecting great character development. The author only shows off what Onizuka has always been capable of for 200+ chapters.
The ending's criticism can vary from person to person, but I personally don't think it's the best. It felt like any other arc in the many repetitive arcs GTO presents to the readers. Rather than tying up the overall story in a nice knot, we are really left not knowing what becomes of the characters afterwards. This coincides with my earlier argument that conflict resolution in GTO is not great.
While I acknowledge that this manga is not for everyone, I personally could not ever bring myself to recommend this to a friend. Overall, the manga's fantastic art does not make up for the crude humor, outdated writing and the utter lack of Onizuka's character development. I do not recommend this manga.
