Great Teacher Onizuka, officially abbreviated as GTO, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tooru Fujisawa. It was originally serialized in Kodansha‘s Weekly Shōnen Magazine from January 1997 to February 2002, with its chapters compiled into twenty-five tankōbon volumes. 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 continuation of 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 twelve-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 second live-action series aired in Japan during 2012, and two more in 2014. A sequel manga series, titled GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, ran in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from June 2009 to September 2011. Another sequel, titled GTO: Paradise Lost, began in Weekly Young Magazine in April 2014.

Both the anime and manga were licensed in North America by Tokyopop. The anime series was re-licensed by Discotek Media in 2012. The manga is licensed by Kodansha USA.

The Great Teacher Onizuka manga had sold over 50 million copies as of November 2007. It won the 1998 Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category.

Plot

Eikichi Onizuka is a 22-year-old ex-gang member and a virgin. While peeping up girls’ skirts at a local shopping mall, Onizuka meets a girl 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. The teacher is old and unattractive, but has sufficient influence over her that she leaps from a second-story window and lands in his arms.

Onizuka, upon seeing this display of a teacher’s power over girls, decides to become a teacher himself. However, he earns his teaching degree, just barely, at a second-rate college. In his quest, he discovers two important things: he has a conscience and a sense of morality. This means taking advantage of impressionable schoolgirls is out of the question, but their unusually attractive mothers are a different matter. He enjoys teaching and, most of the time, he teaches life lessons rather than the routine schoolwork. He hates the systems of traditional education, especially when they have grown ignorant and condescending to students and their needs.

With these realizations, he sets out to become the greatest teacher ever, using his own brand of philosophy and the ability to do nearly anything when under enough pressure. He is hired as a long-shot teacher by a privately operated school, in Kichijōji, to tame a class that has driven one teacher to a mysterious death, another to nervous breakdown, and one other to joining a cult. He embarks on a mission of self-discovery by breaking through to each student one by one, and helping each student to overcome their problems and learn to genuinely enjoy life. He uses methods that would be unorthodox, against the law, and also life-threatening, yet, somehow, he manages to succeed in educating and opening up his students.

Manga

Written and illustrated by Tooru Fujisawa, Great Teacher Onizuka was serialized in Kodansha‘s shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine from January 8, 1997, to February 13, 2002. Kodansha collected its chapters in twenty-five tankōbon volumes, released from May 16, 1997, to April 17, 2002.

The series was licensed in English by Tokyopop and was one of Tokyopop’s first releases in the “Authentic Manga” lineup of titles using the Japanese right-to-left reading style. In doing so the artwork remained unchanged from the original compared to previous publishing methods. The twenty-five volumes were published between April 23, 2002, and August 9, 2005. Kodansha USA republished the series digitally on February 2, 2022.

Great Teacher Onizuka
First volume cover, featuring Eikichi Onizuka
Genre	Action Comedy Yankī
Manga
Written by	Tooru Fujisawa
Published by	Kodansha
English publisher	NA Tokyopop (former) Kodansha USA (current, digital)
Imprint	Shōnen Magazine Comics
Magazine	Weekly Shōnen Magazine
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	January 8, 1997 – February 13, 2002
Volumes	25 (List of volumes)
Television drama
Directed by	Hiroshi Akabane Satoru Nakajima
Written by	Kazuhiko Yukawa
Original network	Fuji TV Kansai TV
Original run	July 7, 1998 – September 22, 1998
Episodes	12 + 1 special
Live-action film
Directed by	Masayuki Suzuki
Released	December 1999
Runtime	140 minutes
Anime television series
Directed by	Noriyuki Abe
Written by	Masashi Sogo
Music by	Yusuke Honma
Studio	Pierrot
Licensed by	AUS Madman Entertainment NA Discotek Media
Original network	Fuji TV
English network	NA SHONext Anime Selects on Demand SEA Animax
Original run	June 30, 1999 – September 24, 2000
Episodes	43 (List of episodes)
Television drama
Directed by	Imai Kazuhisa
Produced by	Kasai Hideyuki Yamamoto Yoshihiko
Written by	Masaki Fukuzawa
Music by	Haneoka Kei
Original network	Fuji TV Kansai TV
Original run	July 3, 2012 – September 11, 2012
Episodes	11 + 3 specials
Television drama
GTO In Taiwan
Directed by	Imai Kazuhisa
Written by	Junpei Yamaoka
Music by	Haneoka Kei
Original network	Fuji TV Kansai TV
Original run	March 22, 2014 – April 12, 2014
Episodes	4
Television drama
Directed by	Ken Iizuka
Original network	Fuji TV Kansai TV
Original run	July 8, 2014 – September 16, 2014
Episodes	11
Related
GTO: 14 Days in Shonan GTO: Paradise Lost