GTO: Volume 1

by Tru Fujisawa and Tohru Fujisawa

Book Overview

Meet Eikichi Onizuka, a 22-year-old college karate champ and ex-biker. He's crude, foulmouthed, and has a hair-trigger temper. Just the sort of guy you'd expect to see going back to school - to become a teacher.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931514933
• ISBN13: 9781931514934
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: TokyoPop
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.5"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8

Customer Reviews

Fun to read and quite funny

I haven't finished the whole series, but this first volume got me to purchase nine more (I have volumes 2-10 on the way). Its fun, cheeky, and quite hilarious in parts. This might cross a bit into the shojo manga, but I think a lot of readers would enjoy this. Imagine a former member of a biker gang wanting to become a teacher and the difficulties he might face with this generation of kids! I hope the other volumes are as funny.

Pretty Friggin Sweet

This is the best manga ever written. The premice may sound questionable to you manga lovers out there,I know it does not have any magic but you will survive. Trust me buy it. Even if you have never read a manga before it may change your life. With its amazingly funny toilet humor and awsome well rounded characters. So just buy it, its a very quick read and very funny.

REALITY MANGA STYLE

Great Teacher Onizuka, or GTO, for short, is one of the most popular mangas going, with over 37 million copies sold worldwide. I wouldn't really expect that, seeing as how it focuses on the life of a teacher. If you can imagine a cross between Marlon Brando as the Wild One and the beatnik attitude of Jack Kerouac along with the cool hipness of Japanese youth as a teacher. While being brillantly subversive, GTO succeeds as both entertainment and satire of the teaching establishment, much as Chaucer lampooned the Church in his Canterbury Tales.Eikichi Onizuka is the 22 year old ex-leader of a biker gang who has found out that he's not going to be able to goof off his whole life. He has to find a job. Having a fetish for young girls in uniform, he decides to become a teacher. He finds out that his impulsive decision is going to take a lot more courage than he thought. This first volume is basically his origin story as he is disappointed by his dreams of becoming something great and having to reevaluate his life as he begins his teacher training. It also begins a pattern that will continue in the following books, namely that he has to use his wits to escape the plots of hateful students and a vice-principal who would like nothing more than to fire him. This book was great. What can I say? If you are a teacher, you'll really get a kick out of seeing a cartoon character fulfill your wishes. Who doesn't want to karate kick their bonehead students sometimes? While Onizuka's attraction to high school girls seems lurid, we find out that he becomes overwhelmed with trying to help his students rather than wanting to seduce them in the end. I think it's just a Japanese thing to be attracted to girls in school uniforms. I think anyone with a sense of humor and semi-lewdness would find these manga entertaining and funny. I would especially recommend it to teachers.

GTO is the greatest manga on earth!

Tokyo Pop are know for quality, but GTO just blows every thing else away. The story is good, the art work is top class and it makes you laugh, but remains semi-believable. Tohru Fujisawa deserves so much respeck for both this and the rest of the GTO series. I would recommend this to everyone,I picked Vol. 1 up on a hunch and soon became a huge fan. If you like any manga and haven't read this you really have to. You will be left at the point you have to get (The 4-star rated by me and that's the worst!) Vol. 2. Get it now!

Better than expected

"GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka)" is a fun comic, with more heart than I expected. The premise, a tough, go-nowhere 22 year old bosozoku deciding to become a High School teacher in order to pick up girls, at first seems like a recipe for fan service and lewd humor. And it is. However, like the best of Japanese comics, this rather sketchy plot develops into something a little more personal and respectable. Onizuka, as he can relate to his pupils and is a tough guy in his own right, becomes "Great Teacher Onizuka."The art is great, and flows easily between two distinct styles, a classic Japanese cartoon style and a more expressive, violent style in some parts. The characters are fun and multi-dimensional. I can see why this series is so popular in Japan.Also, this is a comic where my experience teaching in the Japanese school system has richened the outcome. I "get" several of the jokes that I might have missed before, and I recognize the stereotypes. Good fun all around, and I will definitely be picking up the rest of the series.

Onizuka! Banzai!

GTO is one of the freshest stories I have had the pleasure to read. I have the first three volumes of the tankoubon and I think it is a great mix of interesting premise, good characters, and a very fresh visual style, which I guess could be called realistic expressionism (Especially when you get a scene with an expressive Onizuka or Uchiyamada).If you want to read some good manga with shonen elements and suprisingly well-used shoujo sensibilities that doesn't need magic, or robots or constipated overly powerful martial artists, GTO is the best bet.