Great Teacher Onizuka is back, but this time he is living with troubled teens in a group foster home and he might not survive the machinations of one spiteful 14-year-old girl!
Creative Staff
Story & Art: Toru Fujisawa
Translation: Ko Ransom
What They Say
After guiding the infamous Tokyo Kissho Academy through a crash-course of his unique brand of life-lessons, a battered and bruised Eikichi Onizuka takes a well-deserved trip to his hometown of sorts, a typically quiet surfers paradise called Shonan. Unfortunately, with child neglect and abuse becoming a global phenomenon the self-proclaimed GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) quickly finds himself back in the saddle for what he hopes is a painless two-week long field trip with some teens in need. And while Onizuka’s curriculum may not rely on the reading, writing, and arithmetic that is common in most classrooms, he has more than a few good lessons in personal development, fisticuffs, and fun to teach a new generation of trouble teens.
The Review! (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Technical:
Vertical is one of the few boutique manga publishers that survived the American purge that began when our economy nearly collapsed back in 2008. Unfortunately, here in the U.S., where we lost the smaller publishers like ADV, Broccoli, and DR Master among others. Vertical survived by focusing their catalog on great stories and branching out into unique Japanese novels and non-fiction books. Their focus is on quality stories, and it shows with this release of GTO: 14 Days in Shonan with eight glossy color pages and a great page and exterior cover type that make it easy to open the book without doing any damage to the spine.
At this point, just about everyone should be familiar with Fujisawa’s art, even if your only exposure to it was the hugely popular anime adaptation of the original GTO series. Fujisawa’s art is a realistic seinen style with moments of Onizuka’s face distorted for comedic effect. Just great stuff with beautiful character designs and plenty of detail in backgrounds.
As it seems to be with everything I have picked up from Vertical the translation reads well and grammatical errors absent. The original Japanese SFX and sign text remains with smaller English translations alongside.
Content:
Onizuka is back, and he is causing just as much trouble as he always has. While things should be going well for him, he manages to say too much about an incident with a student on a live television show. It is enough to have everyone from the cops to the school principal calling for his head! Too clueless to see his mistake for himself, his students recommend he stay away from school until the break is over. Seems like the perfect time to head back to his old stomping grounds in Shonan. The only problem is that his mom is away on vacation and his old hoodlum buddies claim they can’t put him up for two weeks. But as fate would have it, he gets arrested for groping a teenage girl!
As it often happens with Onizuka, he wasn’t in the wrong and a beautiful woman explains to the police what really happened. They release Onizuka and while he is thanking the woman, he learns that she works at a group foster home for troubled teens. Things come together for Onizuka and he offers to help at the house in a live-in capacity. He is, after all, the Great Teacher Onizuka from Tokyo. But he quickly comes off as overeager when he walks into the foster home and jumps in the middle of what the kids are doing while they are hanging out in the living room. His effort explodes in his face as the kid’s bail or literally take their toys and escape to their rooms. It is hilarious to see Onizuka’s shock and a good humbling moment for him, reminding him that he has to start over from scratch with this new group of kids.
From here the story becomes a comfortable extension of the original GTO series with Onizuka fighting street thugs and outplaying the teenagers at video games. Some of the kids in the house will be relatively easy for Onizuka to win over, but his greatest feat will be opening the heart of the willful teenage girl, Katsuragi. Katsuragi isn’t just some bitchy teenager, she is intelligent and the daughter of the police chief. She quickly does everything in her power to send Onizuka packing with his tail between his legs. After the first attack or two, it isn’t surprising to see Onizuka wipe the blood from his face and keep coming at her. But having him arrested (again), attacked by street punks, start a war with the local Yakuza, and the douse him in gasoline before throwing a lighter at him might be even too much for Onizuka to handle!
In Summary:
Sometimes great things come to those that wait, and a seven-year break between the original GTO series and the continuation of the story in GTO: 14 Days in Shonan is a big wait! It all seems to be worth it with this first volume. Right from the start, Onizuka is continuing his antics aimed at annoying the hell out of the school principal, who is ultimately his boss. But Onizuka quickly takes it too far and has to bail out of Tokyo until things can blow over. This sets up a story that allows Onizuka to continue his unconventional method of “teaching” with a whole new group of students. It is a nice setup as he moves into a foster home for delinquents struggling to deal with their lives and each other. I like this much better than just giving Onizuka a new class of students at his school, as that wouldn’t be a very fresh idea. Likely hilarious, but ultimately just more of the same.
I have a lot of love for the original GTO series and greatly look forward to more of Onizuka’s antics in GTO: 14 Days in Shonan.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Vertical, Inc.
Release Date: January 31st, 2012
MSRP: $10.95
