SUMMARY
Eikichi Onizuka
is a foul mouth, arrogant, borderline psychotic, lame brain, ex-biker
punk who wants to be the greatest teacher ever. Despite his failings,
Ms. Sakurai, the Chairperson at Holy Forest Private School, sees great
potential in Onizuka, and hires him to tame the wildest elements in the
school. This causes great concern with Vice Principle Uchiyamada
who sees him as a huge pain in the ass.
It becomes his job nay, his personal crusade to find a way to rid Holy
Forest and himself of Onizuka Sensai.
Having overcome the first trap
set by his class, Onizuka is ready to continue his quest to become the
greatest teacher in the world.
Having befriended fellow game fan and
student Yoshikawa
and having made an reluctant ally out of class computer wiz Kikuchi, Onizuka seems
to have his life on track.
Little does he realize,
It is time for the next attempt. Anko, Murai and Miyabi each take turns to try
to get rid of Onizuka. Using more devious traps, all seems lost for Onizuka.
Will he survive and become GTO, or will he be fired for perverted behavior?
There is no problem to
tough for Great Teacher Onizuka!
DVD VISION TEST
VIDEO: The video is excellent.
No pixels , color bleeds or rainbows to be found. The video is so good that
it shows the moderate quality of the source animation. This is a very nice looking
release, at least on the technical side.
AUDIO: The 2.0 audio on both versions is quite well done. The English track
has a fuller sound to it, and better surround sound bits. The center speakers
have voices with the sides the music. It sounds better than their first disc,
which is always a good thing.
The Audio on the Japanese track sounds better than the original broadcast version,
but it's not very rich nor is there a lot of directionality. Most of the audio
is center speaker based.
EDITS: Using clean
animation, they have replaced the Japanese titles with English ones, as
well as adding their own GTO symbol. Episode titles have been replaced
by English. No edits to any of the episodes have been made.
EXTRAS: The original Japanese broadcast opening and ending, (not clean
opening, but ones with the Japanese cast and staff), another batch of
GTO's greatest blow ups, an eyecatch collection, and some more character
designs make up the extras.
WIDESCREEN
REVIEW
STORY: Based off the manga
by Tohru Fujisawa, this series pretty much follows the first few volumes of the
manga, with a group of staff writers keeping things on track. As each episode
unfolds, you start to see how they refined and improved on the characters and
the situations Onizuka faces. This makes for a more enjoyable viewing experience.
ACTING: Excellent job
on the Japanese cast. Wataru Takagi is perfect as the super strong, super kinky,
wack job that is GTO. When he yells, screaming that he wants to kill people,
you believe it.
The same goes for David Lucas. His GTO is exactly what you expect, although
he occasionally ventures into "Spike Spiegel Cool". All in all, he manages to
keep up with his Japanese counterpart.
The rest of the cast on both sides do a good job, with John Smallberries doing
a better Uchiyamada than his Japanese counterpart. Some of the English cast
voices are a little mismatched. I really don't like the voices for Kikuchi or
Yoshikawa. Their acting is fine, but the sound of their voices seem a little
to nasal.
FAN SERVICE: Wall to wall fan service. Most men are like the lecherous GTO,
and so the anime is full of panty shots, girls in their underwear, and other
surprises. No nudity (hey it was broadcast television!) though.
CONCLUSION
So, here we are with volume 2 in the great yet weird saga of Ekichi
Onizuka, AKA Ekichi the Evil. How does this second volume fair compared to the
first one? Well, lets take a look.
The first of the next
five episodes start with Onizuka trying to keep his student's attention. While
some of them have a grudging acceptance, there are those who are very much against
having Onizuka there. The ring leaders of the anit-Onizuka team is the spoiled
Anko, daughter of the PTO president, and Murai, a loud mouth bully who forces
kids to do what he wants.
Anko is not a very nice person. She
and her friends get their kicks by tourchering a shy young boy name Yoshikawa,
who has the added misfortune of being Onizuka's first friend. Now embarrassed
by allowing girls to hurt him, he is ready to kill himself (he tried once already
on Vol 1.). Fortunately, Onizuka is there to save the day. Unfortunately, in
saving the young boy, he once again wrecks Vice Principal Uchimada's car, the
physical manifestation of his perceived success.
Murai's motivation is a little different.
He does not trust men, and he lives in fear of Onizuka finding out that his
mom is really young and hot. His plan for Onizuka has to be seen to be believed.
While this is going on, a new player
enters the scene, the snobby Miyabi. Miyabi and her clique have their own ways
of getting rid of unwanted teacher. At the same time, Onizuka makes a new enemy
in the PE teacher, a self absorbed letch named Fukuroda. Now with two new enemies,
GTO has a long road ahead.
Some of the things that
go on in this series may be a little hard for folks to understand if they don't
have much knowledge of Japanese culture. Male obsessions with school girls in
their bloomers (a cross between briefs and gym shorts), the teacher making a
home visit to the students parents, and that the PTO president has as much power
as the school board are things that are unique to Japan. Others, like Onizuka
ogling a girls big breasts are not so hard to understand.
The art style is
very similar to the manga. Lots of bizarre looks, over the top gags, and
the use of a rougher look. While it looks better than the first four,
it seems that they spend a lot of money on the CG elements that make up
maybe 5% of the total disc. There are some scenes that are very clean
and refined, but don't expect too much.
Disc wise, TOKYOPOP
has done a very good job. Their video quality is excellent. The sound
is better, and the extras are not the typical batch, (this is the first
time seeing a collection of eyecatches), and their own rating system goes
a long way to show the anime world that they will remain a new power in
the anime community for a long time.
GTO: The Bully is a well
done disc, both technically and story wise. With better writing, sound, and animation,
this is a great continuation of the series. Based on the strength of this disc,
we will be picking up Vol 3!
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