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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.

Other dangers await him as well.  Teshigawara, a fellow teacher at the school, is obsessed with the beautiful Fuyutsuki.  The fact that she and Onizuka are so close bugs him to no end.  To get rid of this very large obstacle, he convinces the school that he needs to get a perfect score on the high school entrance exams in order to keep his job.  If a teacher can't pass, how can his students?  

Is it possible for this graduate of a third rate college to get a perfect score?

It's no problem 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, but its quieter than the Japanese. The center speakers have voices with the sides the music. 

The Audio on the Japanese track sounds better than the original broadcast version, and better than previous releases.  The sound is richer, with better surround sound elements.  It is louder than the English track!

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 overlaid by English titles. No edits to any of the episodes have been made.

EXTRAS: Text less opening and ending, still more GTO's greatest blow ups, an eye catch 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 GTO. When he yells, screaming that he wants to kill people, you believe it.

The same goes for David Lucas. His GTO gets better and better each time. In these episodes, he is finally shedding the overly cool tones that colored his performance in the early volumes. 

The rest of the cast on both sides do a good job, with John Smallberries doing a better Uchiyamada than his Japanese counterpart. I really don't like Debbie Rothstein as Chizuru. Her voice is a little too strong for the dorky looking, but very nasty girl.

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

Volume 3! So, here we are, and the story is getting more and more interesting. 

Picking up where Volume 2 left off, we see "Big Top" Nomura, a sweet, but none to bright girl, being bullied by Miyabi and her clique.  Because she failed to frame Onizuka by placing stolen bloomers (girls gym shorts) in his locker, Miyabi no longer considers Nomura a friend.  Now, she must endure insults, having trash thrown at her, and being treated like a "big stupid cow".

Enter Onizuka, who has a plan to help Nomura regain her self esteem.  He enterers the young girl into a beauty contest.  As it happens, Miyabi is also participating. So, how will Nomura, a girl with no brains and less talent, win against the very smart, and very talented Miyabi?  And what does a porn film producer have to do with it all?  You have to see it to believe it.

This volume also introduces us to Teshigawara, a math teacher at Holy Forest Academy.  Teshigawara is very smart, very sophisticated, and very obsessed with the lovely Azusa Fuyutsuki.  He spies on her, listens to her phone conversations, and is constantly scheming to get her to come to his apartment.  Problem is, Onizuka is a very formidable obstacle for him.  The only way he can remove Onizuka from the equation is to have him removed from the school.  Fortunately for Tashigawara, Onizuka's natural talent for attracting trouble is just what he needs to win.

Some of the things that go on in this series may be a little hard for folks to follow 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), students leaving class when they feel the teacher is not doing his or her job, and having students take a test to enter high school may seem strange. 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. There is more CG enhanced elements in this one, and it makes me wonder why the whole series wasn't done this way.  I like the cleaner look the CG elements provide.

Disc wise, TOKYOPOP has done a very good job. Their video quality is still excellent. The sound is a lot better than previous releases. The extras (especially Onizuka Goes Wild) are starting to get a little old, but it's really not an issue. Overall, TOKYOPOP shows everyone the right way to make a DVD. 

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